Barrie Trinder is well-known for his research on the industries of the Coalbrookdale Coalfield in Shropshire. His standard work on the subject, The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire, was published in 1973, and is currently available in a much-revised third edition of 2000.

(Times Literary Supplement, 20 July 1973)

Iits awareness of national trends and movements, in industrial as well as labour history, will ensure it a permanent place on the shelves of all those who seek to understand the transformations of the 18th and 19th centuries

(the late Professor Sidney Pollard, in the Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History)

If there were any suspicion that the careful and scholarly study of the industrial regions was a declining genre, Mr. Trinder's book should prove that it can still flourish...this many-sided and well-written study of a very interesting industrial community at its most important period

(the late Professor J.R.Harris in History)

Trinder has given us a deeply fascinating, penetrative and well-integrated history of a small part of the English Midlands which never becomes parochial but is neatly placed within both a regional and national context...this work deserves to be compulsory reading for all students of the British Industrial Revolution

(Tom Donnelly in Industrial Archaeology Review, vol. 6, 1982)

The best book of local history (in Shropshire) is Barrie Trinder's massive 'The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire'

(New York Times, 20 April 1975)

One of my top half-dozen books, 'The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire' by Barrie Trinder

(Vivian Bird, Birmingham Post, 3 March 1984)

..such works ...(The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire) have a vital role to play if we are to take forward an understanding of the regional dimensions of British history

(Jeremy Black, Archives, 2001)

If there is one book which British industrial archaeologists should have at their disposal (in addition to the Bible and Shakespeare), it might well be Barrie Trinder's Industrial Revolution in Shropshire)...In studying this vital region in such depth, it transcends typical subject boundaries and observes the interconnections of activities in one place; something which is fundamental to the principles of local history. For every subject specialist...such a book is not a textbook merely; more an education.

(Peter Wakelin, Industrial Archaeology Review, XXV, 2003)