Mick Hamer has been a journalist for more than 45 years, mostly writing for news-stand magazines as well as contributing to Fleet Street papers. For most of this time he was New Scientist’s transport consultant. In 2001 he was short-listed in the Syngenta science writing awards.
Transport has been the focus of much of his journalism. He covered major public inquiries into the King’s Cross Fire, the Clapham rail crash and the Zeebrugge ferry disaster for several national media organisations.
His latest book, The Great Tramways Conspiracy, will be published by Pen and Sword at the end of May. It is a major investigative work, an exposé of a highly successful covert campaign to kill off the British tram.
His previous book, A Most Deliberate Swindle, was published in 2017. In it Mick revealed a massive swindle that not only relieved Edwardian investors of their nest eggs but continues to pollute the air we breathe. In May 2018 it was named popular transport book of the year by the Railway and Canal Historical Society.
Dog-eared copies of Wheels within Wheels: A Study of the Road Lobby, which was published by Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1987, can still be found online and in second-hand bookshops. It was, said a review in the Listener, “provocative and fact-packed”.
Before carving out a career in journalism, Mick worked for Friends of the Earth. In 1977 he became the first director of Transport 2000. He later worked on transport research at University College, London.
Mick lives in Brighton and in his other life moonlights as a jazz pianist, playing regular gigs along the south coast and in London. You can find his music website here.