After Dan Dare, the most famous and fondly remembered part of the Eagle comic was the cutaway. Basically, these were beautifully detailed drawings of the inner workings of pretty much anything: from steam trains, jet liners and racing cars, to oil wells, suspension bridges and tube lines beneath Piccadilly Circus. The Eagle had a team of three or four artists, but the king of the cutaway was undoubtedly L. Ashwell Wood, whose forensic attention to detail -- be it a cross section of the Cutty Sark or a grand landscape of how electricity is generated -- enthralled a generation of school boys.

The Eagle Annual of the Cutaways is here for today's dads to see how their fathers bluffed their way sp well when it came to the workings of jet planes, steam engines, oil rigs etc. the almost forensic detail in these artworks is a marvel in itself. FQ There's more scientific and engineering marvels to be found in The Eagle Annual of the Cutaways which features some of the Eagle comics' most celebrated artistic impressions of inner workings of buildings, vehicles, tube stations and bridges. CHOICE MAGAZINE This proves you are big enough to show you love him, despite the fact that under his Paul Smith shirt beats the heart of a geeky little boy. -- Kerry Fowler GOOD HOUSEKEEPING This book is about enjoying a visual autopsy of the future, as imagined in the past. Best bought for a child, even if it is one hidden inside an adult. -- Tom Simonite NEW SCIENTIST Ideal Christmas browsing material for all those ageing space cadets betrayed by history and stranded miserably in the 21st century. -- David Sutton FORTEAN TIMES A fantastic present for Dad or anyone fascinated by how things worked in the 1950s. Beautifully reproduced from the original colour plates, this book is sumptuous in every sense of the word. Prophetic cutaways of a channel tunnel and a modern family car rub shoulders with classic cars like the Triumph TR2 and gasometers, oil rigs and ten ton trucks. Absolutely fascinating - it'll keep Dad quiet for hours and hours! GATEWAY MONTHLY

Daniel Tatarsky is the author of Flick to Kick, An Illustrated History of Subbuteo, and editor of The Eagle Annual of the 1950s.