This talk skirts round many of the extraordinary achievements in engineering of this remarkable but flawed man, and focuses on the visions, dreams, frustrations and even the failures of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Why did the man who was declared in a 2005 BBC poll to be the 2nd greatest Briton who has ever lived win no honours or awards at all in his own lifetime? Why did he achieve so much so quickly but was at the same time capable of such major failures and huge miscalculations?