It’s some measure of the extent of urbanisation that the bookends to our day may not be birdsong but the sound of a kettle as the water in it reaches boiling point. That “tock” is made by a miniature device, a small disc consisting of alternating strips of two different metals. When exposed to heat, the metals expand at different rates, the disc gradually curves, and a switch is tripped, cutting off electricity to the kettle. Few of us know this; we write odes to nightingales, not thermostats, even though it is the latter that provides our morning soundtrack, those sonic notches that mark the passing of each day. Tock, tock, tock.
I thought little about those metallic notes until I read Tim Minshall’s new book, an ambitious exploration of the world of manufacturing. In it, he examines the myriad things that surround us, from transistors to ice-cream: the intricate, ingenious ways in which they are made, then shuttled around the world to reach our doorstep. For Minshall, manufacturing has been overlooked and undervalued, with perilous consequences. He writes that it “has become like a sewage system: essential for our lives, yet out of mind until things go wrong”.
Minshall writes from the ivory tower and the factory floor. He’s a Cambridge professor with an engineering PhD, but also heads the university’s Institute of Manufacturing, which advises the private sector (any profits are returned to the university). He is comfortable in the company of scientists, programmers and engineers, but also enjoys translating for non-specialists, and at its best his writing hums with a tinkerer’s curiosity (he proudly keeps all his old phones in a suitcase, a personal archive of obsolete technology).
In his book he takes us into a journey to the “innards” of the manufacturing world, peeling off its skin to reveal the layers beneath. He shows us not only the factories, from the Isle of Man to mainland China, but also delves into the world of logistics: how all those things actually reach us (or don’t, as when the Suez Canal was blocked in 2021). What emerges is a universe of fantastic scale and complexity, one that befuddles even its architects. Minshall advocates a return to local manufacturing, sensitive to the environment, though his book is light on policy suggestions.
It is a great literary challenge to conjure the awe-inspiring scale and complexity of manufacturing (perhaps it’s no coincidence that some of the most memorable representations of the factory are visual, such as Edward Burtynsky’s magisterial photographs of production in China). Parts of this book feel as if they require illustration, and indeed Minshall continually invites us to access his website to view videos or images. The narrative becomes most resonant, the text standing on its own, when he turns to the objects that surround us: a kettle, bike or loo roll, prompting us to see our surroundings anew and appreciate the ingenuity embodied in everyday objects. The word “manufacture” is derived from two Latin words: manus, meaning hand, and factura, something made. It appeared in the English language around the mid-16th century (possibly because the rise of machines necessitated a term to distinguish the means of production). In Minshall’s telling, that process – the replacement of hand by machine – appears nearly complete. His chief protagonists are datacentres, AI, robots and machines guided by machines. Hands makes only a cameo appearance: to place crystallised fruit on top of thousands of bakewell tarts, for example. And yet, they are in truth much more than the cherry on the top; in the garment industry most stitching is still done by hand.
The case studies, stories and experts tend to come from Cambridge or its environs. If this is congruent with Minshall’s localist theme, it also has drawbacks: references to his own institute come so thick and fast that it sometimes reads like a sales pitch. More curious is his profile of Strix Group plc, a firm that produces those metallic discs in our kettles, and its founder, inventor John C Taylor. Strix is a British industrial success story, and a worthy subject for Minshall, but Taylor is also a major donor to Cambridge, and the very man who endowed his professorial chair. He is thanked for his support in the acknowledgments, but as a reader, I would have appreciated greater clarity on how the author himself is entangled in the universe he so diligently charts.
Minshall hopes that, by revealing all that manufacturing and logistics entails, we’ll pause before thoughtlessly ordering something online. I would like to believe him, though perhaps we are like nicotine addicts who continue to buy cigarettes even though the pack is covered in photographs of the consequences. And yet we do need to somehow imbue the objects around us with an emotional resonance; to bridge the gap between ourselves and the things we buy, shrinking the distance between home and factory; to hear the tock of a kettle, and listen to what it says about the world we have built.
• Your Life Is Manufactured: How We Make Things, Why It Matters and How We Can Do It Better by Tim Minshall is published by Bloomsbury (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
