The long haul for Britain’s last industrial world leader

Mark Benton is quite clear why he followed his father into working for Rolls-Royce; after three years toiling away as a roofer, he discovered that ‘it’s nice and warm in here…. Oops, perhaps I shouldn’t have said that.’ Benton, 28, born and bred in Derby, rushes to add that he’s better paid, has had five different jobs since joining nine years ago, and is literally at the cutting edge of the company’s technology, machining turbine blades.

Let’s get one thing straight: Rolls-Royce Group plc doesn’t make motor cars. The famous badge and ‘spirit of ecstasy’ statuette on your Roller are there under licence and should a jumped-up carmaker decide to put them on some cheap import, it would find rather more than a sense of humour failure from Rolls’ Buckingham Gate HQ. When the carmaker last changed hands, Rolls’ combative chief executive Sir John Rose extracted £40 million from the buyer, BMW, for the right to use the name.