The Iron Tsar

Born in South Wales in 1815, John Hughes was a self-made Victorian entrepreneur and inventor, running a complex foundry in Newport by the time he was 36. He then moved to London where despite being only semi-literate he became a very successful industrialist. In 1870 aged 55, he left his family behind, sailing to Russia with one hundred British workers and all the equipment to build a modern iron and steel works. The company he founded became an important foundation stone in the industrialisation of Russia. As well as the iron works, he built coal mines, railways and a whole town for his workers where he took a keen interest in their welfare. The town he established became known as Hughesovka and is now the modern Ukrainian city of Donetsk with a population of over one million. This extraordinary story of Hughes' life and times is interwoven with links to some of the most famous people of the period.