This is the first ever book devoted to the popular hobby of roundabout spotting. A self-confessed traffic-island fanatic, author Kevin Beresford has travelled the length and breadth of the country to record the very best of the species, which range in scope from humble painted minis to magnificent landscaped beauties. Some feature works of art or are wildlife havens, others are sources of local history or simply have that certain something that sets them apart. Featuring over 80 of his favourites in glorious full-colour, he offers advice on the practical side of the pastime, with an exposition of the traffic-island's colourful history, following its French and American roots through to the first British roundabout in Letchworth and up to the present day.
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About the Author
Kevin Beresford was born in Birmingham and still lives just outside the area, in the village of Astwood Bank. His household includes his wife Linda and his six-year-old son, Ben. He also has three more boys (he claims he can only make boys) from a previous marriage, Lee, Scott and Elliott. Kevin has spent most of his life in the printing industry apart from a brief period selling time-share in Tenerife (what was all that about?). President of the U.K. Roundabout Appreciation Society, he also owns a flourishing business selling roundabout products.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Magic roundabouts,
This review is from: Roundabouts of Great Britain (Hardcover)
Clearly the ideal stocking-filler for highway engineers! The rest of us can leave this quirky book around and I bet anyone seeing it will pick it up and flick through the pages. The seventy-eight photos show the best and no doubt the worst of what the road professionals have to offer to speed traffic flow. Unfortunately, for a highly visual book the presentation does not bring out the best of what these structures do. The photography is average and I thought many of the shots should have been color corrected and better cropped. They are presented one to a page and many of the roundabouts are not even worth that, the dull ones could easily have been placed four or more to a page and that would have allowed some of the great ones to run over two pages, Birmingham's Spitfire for instance or Swindon's five-and-one construction, this must surely be unique as it looks like one huge reverse-flow. I thought the biggest mistake was to show twenty-two photos as ovals, roundabouts at eye-level just don't fit that shape. This book is a bit of fun but I think it could have looked so much better.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An American invention developed in Britain,
By
This review is from: Roundabouts of Great Britain (Hardcover)
This book had its beginnings in a calendar. A small publishing house in Redditch (near Birmingham and Stratford-on-Avon) had a tradition of producing a calendar each year in small volumes. In 2002, they were so desperate for ideas that they decided (as a joke) to do a roundabouts calendar. With over forty in Redditch, they had plenty to choose from. Although some people laughed at the calendar, the ten they originally printed expanded to a few hundred, so the idea for this book was born. We often hear about things invented in Britain but developed elsewhere, often America, so it is nice to know that occasionally events happen in reverse. The first roundabout was actually installed in New York in 1903 but, despite that, roundabouts have not become widespread in America. France came next but it is in Britain that roundabouts have really proliferated. The first British roundabout was installed in Letchworth, north of London but within commuting distance. They are now so common in the UK that it would be difficult to do any kind of road journey, especially in well-populated areas, that avoiding them. What is clear from this book is that roundabouts are not as boring as they might seem. Most but not all are of a generally circular shape - the book shows roundabouts that look more like triangles and rectangles, albeit with rounded angles. Some are very small - mini-roundabouts just painted on the road. Others are very large with the spaces in the middle used for a variety of purposes including wildlife, landscape, monuments and electricity pylons. One roundabout was built where (it seems) an ordinary junction would have been sufficient for traffic purposes, but there was an old oak tree at the site. The roundabout was apparently built around the tree. It is said that the contributors researched roundabouts the length and breadth of the UK but it is clear that some towns proved to be disproportionately interesting. I was disappointed by the absence of Basingstoke, which is famous for its roundabouts - one of them is mentioned in Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. I would have thought that one would have got into the book simply for that reason, but it didn't. However, Swindon, Slough, Milton Keynes, Grimsby/Cleethorpes, Telford and (of course) Redditch are all well represented. The star is, of course, the magic roundabout in Swindon (that really is the name by which it is known). It is actually one central roundabout with a series of roundabouts in a circle around it, which has to be seen to be believed - you can look at it and think that the traffic is sometimes going the wrong way. I lived in Swindon when it was built and no photograph (not even the one in this book) can do justice to it. The book also describes a type of person whose existence I was unaware of - the roundabout spotter. These people have get-togethers and exchange ideas. Well, you can always learn something new. But although this book is interesting and I may never look at roundabouts in quite the same way again, I definitely will not be joining the ranks of roundabout spotters. So, many roundabouts are very ordinary but this book shows that there is much more to roundabout design than you could ever imagine. America is really missing out on something.
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