Christian Wolmar is a writer and broadcaster specialising in transport. He has spent nearly all of his working life as a journalist, and was at The Independent from 1989 to 1997, mostly as transport correspondent. Although he mainly concentrates on transport matters, he covers other social policy issues and has written on a wide range of subjects ranging from cricket to the Private Finance Initiative.
After graduating from Warwick university in 1971, Christian worked on various publications including the Retail Newsagent, Marketing and the Hampstead and Highgate Express. He later moved to the New Statesman and the London Daily News and spent a year working for Camden council editing its magazine. He is currently a freelance, working regularly for a wide variety of publications including the Evening Standard, The Independent, the Yorkshire Post, and Public Finance. He has a regular column in both Transport Times and Rail and all his recent material, since 2000, is available on the website.
Christian has become one of the UK’s leading commentators on transport matters and has won several awards for his work. He broadcasts frequently on radio and TV and is a regular pundit on the national news bulletins of terrestrial channels and Sky, as well as having appeared on virtually every radio news programme from World at One and the World Tonight to Radio One’s NewsBeat and LBC. He has made several radio documentaries, including a recent Radio 4 programme on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, 20 years after the riot.
Christian undertakes consultancy and advisory work for organisations seeking to understand the workings of the rail industry. Christian is also a regular speaker at conferences and is often asked to chair sessions at them. He is also available for after dinner speaking on his favourite topics, the London Underground and the railways. His books include Stagecoach (1999), an account of the firm which rose from nothing to the FTSE 100 in 20 years, The Great British Railway Disaster (1997), a humorous series of anecdotes about rail privatisation, and On the Wrong Line, which is the definitive story of rail privatisation first published as Broken Rails in October 2001 and updated in 2005.
“Our most eminent transport journalist,
Christian Wolmar”
Rod Liddle, Spectator, April 27 2007
He has written two books on the London Underground, Down the Tube, an account of the Public Private Partnership, published in 2002, and The Subterranean Railway, published in 2004 but now available in paperback, which has been widely acclaimed by the critics (see the reviews elsewhere on this website). His latest book, Fire and Steam, a new history of the railways in Britain (reviews) was published by Atlantic Books in September and has been widely praised. It is the first history of the railways to be published for many years and a paperback edition is due out in the summer of 2008. It covers the whole history of the industry from its beginnings in the early 19th century right through to today’s privatised railway.
“Christian Wolmar, the greatest expert on British trains”
Simon Hoggart, The Guardian, October 2008
He also wrote Forgotten Children, a groundbreaking study of children’s homes scandals of the 1970s and 1980s and several books aimed at schoolchildren.
Christian takes a strong interest in European affairs, coming from a background of studying at a French school and having a Swedish mother and a Russian father. He takes regular breaks to Italy, where he owns a holiday home and can speak passable Italian, as well as fluent French which he occasionally uses for broadcasting. He speaks regularly at conferences in Europe and in 2004 was invited by Queensland Rail to address an audience of rail managers in Brisbane, Australia.
He is a member of the board of Cycling England with a special interest in intermodal transport and uses his bicycle as his principal means of transport around London. He is a keen cricketer (see articles from The Oldie on this site), plays tennis regularly and has become an enthusiastic but slow runner, taking part in half marathons and 10k races. Christian recently celebrated half of a century of supporting Queens Park Rangers whose fortunes are definitely on the up.
Christian is on the board of trustees of the Railway Children (visit their website at www.railwaychildren.org.uk), a charity which helps homeless and destitute children at stations home and abroad. Christian is keen to help young journalists and has several times been a judge on the “Best Student Magazine” in the National Union of Students Journalism Awards.
Christian has three children and currently lives in Islington.
