Books

Purchase my books online by clicking the links below:

Subterranean Railway (Atlantic Books, 2012)

A social history of the tube
The Subterranean Railway celebrates the fantastic achievement of the Underground’s pioneers who created a transport system that was not only unique in the world but also was vital in creating the London we know today.  Read more >>

Stagecoach (Kemsing Publishing, 2012)

A classic rags to riches tale
The rise of Stagecoach was an emblematic story of the Conservative era of the 1980s and 1990s. This book tells the story of how the two founders, the brother and sister team of Brian Souter and Ann Gloag, emerged from humble beginnings on a bleak Perth council estate in central Scotland to become multi-millionaires, worth at one time £300m each. Read more >>

On The Wrong Line (Kemsing Publishing, 2012)

How ideology and incompetence wrecked Britain’s railways
Britain’s rail privatisation has been one of the greatest political failures of recent history. A well-functioning industry was torn apart to satisfy political dogma and privatised in a way that not only compromised safety and wrecked performance but also resulted in financial melt-down. In this new Kindle edition, read a new preface and a never-before-published statement written by Sir John Major on the privatisation of the railways; a subject he never mentions once in his autobiography. Read more >>

The Great Railway Revolution (Atlantic Books, 2012)

The growth of the US railroads was much more than just a revolution in mode, speed and convenience. They united the far-flung components of a vast and disparate country and supercharged the economic development that fuelled its rise to world-power status. America was created by its railroads and the massive expansion of trade, industry and freedom of communication that they engendered came to be an integral part of the American dream itself. Read more>>

Engines of War (Atlantic Books 2012)

The nature of warfare changed radically in the 19th century. Contrast the Napoleonic Wars, with battles such as Waterloo that were decided in a day, with the prolonged and entrenched conflict that characterised the First World War a century later. What brought about this remarkable change? The Napoleonic Wars were the last major battles fought before the crucial invention that transformed the very nature of how wars were conducted: the railways. Yet, this aspect of military history has been widely ignored. There has been much focus on how the development of weaponry increased the efficiency of armies as killing machines but little attention has been paid to how the weapons got to the front. And it was the railways which changed the logistics of war. Read more>>

Down The Tube (Kemsing Publishing, 2012)

The battle for London’s Underground
Strikes and the threat of strikes, breakdowns, signal failures, crumbling infrastructure and rising crime – for every Londoner, and many commuters, too, the disastrous condition of London’s underground system is a daily reminder of the political and managerial failures that have brought a critical public service to the verge of collapse. Read more >>

Blood, Iron and Gold (Atlantic Books 2010)

The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830 marked the beginning of a revolution in transportation. Blood, Iron and Gold reveals the huge impact of the railways as they spread rapidly across the world, linking cities that had hitherto been isolated, stimulating both economic growth and social change on an unprecedented scale. From Panama to the Punjab, Tasmania to Turin, Christian Wolmar describes the vision and determination of the pioneers who developed railways that would one day span continents … Read more >>

Fire and Steam (Atlantic Books 2008)

A new history of the railways in Britain

This is the first comprehensive general history of Britain’s railways for over 30 years. Fire and Steam sets out the story of the people and events that shaped the world’s first railway network: one of the most impressive engineering achievements in history.  Read more >>

Broken Rails (Aurum, 2001)

How privatisation wrecked Britain’s railways

British Rail was the subject of an extraordinary experiment at the hands of the Tory government of 1992-7. It was hurryingly broken up into 100 parts and privatised in away that had never been tried anywhere else in the world. This book traces the roots of that government’s most contraversial privatisation and its consequences. It is a devastating account of what turned out to be a complete disaster, quite literally in the case of a series of fatal accidents which had their roots in the botched privatisation. Read more >>

Archived Books (click here to read more…)

• Blue Book on Transport (Politico’s Publishing, 2002)
• All Change: British Railway Privatisation (McGraw-Hill, July 2000)
• Forgotten Children (Vision, 2000) – click here
• The Great British Railway Disaster (Ian Allan, 1997) – click here
• Unlocking the Gridlock (Friends of the Earth, 1997) – click here
• DRUGS: Drugs and Sport (Hodder Wayland, 1992)
• Points of View: Censorship (Hodder Wayland, 1990)
• Points of View: Drugs (Hodder Wayland, 1990)
• Councils in Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan, 1989)
• Squatting: The Real Story (Bay Leaf Books, 1980)