The Bridge

When it was finally officially opened in 1932, the Sydney Harbour Bridge had taken almost nine years to complete at a cost of more than six million pounds. This is the epic story of the most recognisable symbol of Sydney and Australia and the people who built it: their ambitions, political wrangling and incredible feats of engineering. Going behind the public face of the bridge, Peter Lalor recreates the intriguing characters who populate its history: Lennie Gwyther, the nine-year-old boy who made a 900-mile solo journey on horseback to see it, John Bradfield who eventually realised his dream of connecting Sydney's two shores, and Vince Kelly, the larger than life boilermaker who fell from the arch and survived and many more. From the bizarre attempt to sabotage the opening ceremony to the bridge's role in the Sydney Olympics, this is a lively history of one of the world's most famous structures.