Leslie's Industrial Business History

In May, Leslie Shore launched his third book, The Tredegar Company – One of the South Wales Coalfield’s ‘Big Three’. After graduating in 1993 with an Master's in Business Admnistration, he took on a general management post in the Furness District that concerned product and process development. Considering the commercial aims of such work, his MBA, gave him an essential sound base to perform his duties, from which he has retired.

Another discipline acquired during his MBA was the practice in written work of referencing sources. This discipline was a chore for a professional engineer like himself. Yet, over a decade ago, it became ingrained when he transformed his lifetime’s interest in industrial-business studies into book form.

In 2011, Black Dwarf Lightmoor published his first book, Vickers’ Master Shipbuilder: Sir Leonard Redshaw. Redshaw was one of the most innovative shipbuilders of the twentieth century with one legacy being the British nuclear submarine programme. Leslie had researched and written this book in parallel with another.

As a result, a year later, his Peerless Powell Duffryn of the South Wales Coalfield was issued. The story of the origin and growth of Britain’s largest coal company before industry nationalisation in 1947 also sold well. Moreover, as his MBA studies had taught him, such marketing information helped him decide the theme that he should pursue for his third book.

The Tredegar Company work offers in part an account about an organisation adapting to industrial-market change. The Tredegar Ironworks flourished in the nineteenth century due to the growth of railways. By the late nineteenth century, the company enjoyed a rich trade in steam coal shipped worldwide to fuel fleets of merchant ships.

Last, Leslie extols the thought that business study course students could learn much from reading histories about the successes and blunders of industry and commerce.