  We begin by giving a detailed exposition of the original Bourgain-Delbaen
construction and the generalised construction due to Argyros and Haydon. We
show how these two constructions are related, and as a corollary, are able to
prove that there exists some $\delta > 0$ and an uncountable set of isometries
on the original Bourgain-Delbaen spaces which are pairwise distance $\delta$
apart.
  We subsequently extend these ideas to obtain our main results. We construct
new Banach spaces of Bourgain-Delbaen type, all of which have $\ell_1$ dual.
The first class of spaces are HI and possess few, but not very few operators.
We thus have a negative solution to the Argyros-Haydon question. We remark that
all these spaces have finite dimensional Calkin algebra, and we investigate the
corollaries of this result. We also construct a space with $\ell_1$ Calkin
algebra and show that whilst this space is still of Bourgain-Delbaen type with
$\ell_1$ dual, it behaves somewhat differently to the first class of spaces.
  Finally, we briefly consider shift-invariant $\ell_1$ preduals, and hint at
how one might use the Bourgain-Delbaen construction to produce new, exotic
examples.
