Jonathan Brown is a rural and business historian, and is now Hon Fellow at the Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading, where he has worked in various capacities for a number of years. He has written extensively, producing Tracing Your Rural Ancestors for Pen & Sword in 2011. He has also written Steam on the Farm (2008) and histories of the engineering firms, Allens of Oxford and Barrett, Exall & Andrewes of Reading Iron Works (the latter in conjunction with Roy Green). His father introduced him to the early preserved railways in the 1950s, and he has followed their progress ever since, a member of a number of the preservation societies at different times.
