Brown recounts the story of the bridge's predecessors, from the Roman Pons Aelius-the first crossing over the Tyne-to the Victorian era. He then brings to life the individuals who built the modern bridge: Ralph Freeman, the structural engineer who also designed the Sydney Harbor Bridge; Dorothy Buchanan, the first female member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, who produced drawings and calculations; John Carr, the boatman who bravely rescued workers from the Tyne on dozens of occasions; and the scaffolder Nathaniel Collins, the only man not to survive construction of the arch, who fell from the bridge just weeks before its completion.

This richly illustrated book charts the Tyne Bridge's story right to the present, exploring how it remains a North-Eastern cultural emblem, in a region that has changed almost unrecognizably since its heyday in the late 1920s.