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“A delight it proves to be: 16 compellingly fascinating accounts… together with a delightfully surprising cast of characters, strange tales and maybe even a ghost or two. Stir in the author’s humour and wit, and it makes for a jolly good read” – a nice review of my latest book The Trains Now Departed from […]

Delighted that my book ‘The Trains Now Departed’ has just been named as one of the ‘Books of the Year’ in the influential ‘Tablet’ magazine http://amzn.to/1xKrjzz

By Michael Williams (From the Sunday Telegraph, December 6 2015) It’s hell out there on the Ypres frontline. Crowds file off tourist buses marked Passchendaele and Tyne Cot, shops are touting maps, medals and memorabilia and the Flanders Fields museum is handing out digital history packages on plastic Fitbit-style wristbands. Only halfway though four years […]

It’s from a review by Andrew Martin of Simon Bradley’s excellent new book, The Railways, Nation, Network and People  

WATCH me in a new History Channel series starting this week about railways and warfare, called Combat Trains. It’s on Sky and Virgin among other channels. I’ve done some thrilling stuff on World War II, based on my book ‘Steaming to Victory: How Britain’s Railways Won the War’. Here are some pictures of me filming […]

The inside story of the making of David Lean’s masterpiece, 70 years old this month, from Chapter 14 of ‘Steaming to Victory’ “YOU KNOW– David Lean chose me personally for my part in Brief Encounter. He said, “That’s the girl I want to play the part of Beryl. She was the woman behind the counter […]

NICE to see my published views on the value of reopening old rail routes quoted in this new report from the influential Bow Group http://www.bowgroup.org/policy/revive-britains-railways-improve-capacity-says-bow-group

Listen to me here: http://ab.co/1KMRNJH http://ab.co/1KMRNJH