Judith Flanders reviews Fire and Steam
Two kinds of history are especially difficult to write. There are those whose subjects have almost no source material (biographies of Shakespeare); and there are those with so much source material it is almost impossible to know where to begin.
Histories of the railways fall into the latter category. The Bibliography of British Railway History alone lists 25,000 titles covering ...
Fire and Steam Review by Frank McLynn
Railways in the 19th century had the transformative effect that the automobile would have in the 20th, and Christian Wolmar is a sure-footed guide to the oft-told tale of British railway history. The author has an unerring eye for relevant detail. His scholarship is everywhere evident and he gives us full measure on the three great accidents in rail ...
Fire and Steam Review by Michael Binyon
Michael Binyon powers through a rollicking new history of the British railway system, while Stephen McClarence makes tracks around the country to train-related bookstores.
There is something John Majorish about our nostalgia for the golden days of the old railway companies: the cream-and-chocolate livery of the Great Western (“God’s Wonderful Railway”), steam’s 1938 record as Mallard raced up the LNER at 126mph, Austin’s triumphal Doric arch beyond which lay the LMS ...
