Michael Williams:
author & journalist

Michael is a journalist, academic and author – writing, blogging and broadcasting on railways and the media. He is also a travel writer, having covered the world for a variety of publications. Read more…

The Trains
Now Departed

Michael Williams’s most recent book The Trains Now Departed: Sixteen excursions into the lost delights of Britain’s railways is published by Arrow Books. Find out more about Michael’s other books, including ‘On the Slow Train’, ‘On the Slow Train Again’ and ‘Steaming to Victory’.

The very British tragedy of HS2

September 25, 2023

I WAS never a great fan of HS2, believing that it would have been better to sprinkle the largesse across the  existing network, bringing benefits to our ailing railways in general. If it had to be built I believed it would have been better to construct it on the trackbed of the old Great Central Railway from Marylebone to the north, closed in the 1960s. This would have saved many billions as well as sparing much scarring of the countryside. […]

MICHAEL'S BOOKS