British Rail

You think you know British Rail. Stale sandwiches, inefficiency, and violent yellow carriages: we haven't looked kindly on the last of our state-owned organizations to be privatized. But through its 50-year lifetime, British Rail transformed our transport system, and for a time provided one of the fastest regular rail services in the world. Born into postwar austerity, impoverished, and exploited by a hostile press, British Rail became a punchline, dismissed and swept away by Conservative government. Now, Christian Wolmar provides a new perspective on public loss in a time of privatization. British Rail is ripe for a new history.

Acknowledged as one of the UK's leading commentators on transport matters, Christian Wolmar is an award-winning writer and broadcaster specializing in transport, and the author of a series of books on railway history. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, regularly appears on TV and radio, and writes for a wide variety of publications including The Times, The Guardian, The Oldie, and Public Finance. His books include The Great British Railway Disaster (1997), Stagecoach (1999), Down the Tube (2002), The Subterranean Railway (2004), Broken Rails (2001, updated 2005), On the Wrong Line (2005), Fire and Steam (2009), Blood, Iron and Gold (2009), Engines of War (2010), The Great Railway Revolution (2013), and Railways and The Raj (2017). He has been described as "our most eminent transport journalist" by The Spectator and "the greatest expert on British trains" by The Guardian.