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Join me for my talk on ‘The Lost Delights of Britain’s Railways’ next Monday July 27 in Camden

I’D BE VERY pleased to see you at my talk at the Owl Bookshop – one of London’s most charming independent bookshops – on ‘The Delights of Britain’s Railways’, based on my bestselling new book ‘The Trains Now Departed: Sixteen Excursions into the Lost Delights of Britain’s Railways’, published by Penguin Random House. There may […]
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Public rage and a tragic fall at Lloyds

Black Horse Ride: The Inside Story of Lloyds and the Banking Crisis’, by Ivan Fallon, The Robson Press, £25 THE global financial crisis was not just a failure of banking but of journalism, too – with the media in the dock for failing to warn an unsuspecting public of impending disaster. As a news editor […]
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Not railways, but a piece in my media writer role: Review of Ivan Fallon’s ‘Black Horse Ride’ in the Independent newspaper

THE global financial crisis was not just a failure of banking but of journalism, too – with the media in the dock for failing to warn an unsuspecting public of impending disaster. As a news editor might put it, “we screwed up”. However, there are plenty of revelations still to be made by those prepared […]
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‘Where are the green silk blinds of the once luxurious Metropolitan Line?’ Lovely review of The Trains Now Departed in the Spectator: ‘Dreamlike…vivid…highly readable’

A lovely review of The Trains Now Departed by Andrew Martin, famous for his Jim Stringer detective novels. He writes: “In The Trains Now Departed Williams celebrates ‘the best of what is gone from our railways’ in 16 vivid, highly readable chapters. One concerns Verney Junction, formerly the furthest outpost of the Metropolitan Railway. Nominally part of […]
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The Trains Now Departed: Sixteen Excursions into the Lost Delights of Britain’s Railways is recommended by ‘Choice’ Magazine

‘Fascinating’ – another nice mention of The Trains Now Departed in the latest  edition of ‘Choice’ magazine.
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Steaming to Victory – setting off on a personal journey to the battle sites of World War 1

VERY EXCITED to be travelling tomorrow by train to the battle sites of WW1 to write a piece for the Daily Telegraph. This is a very personal journey for me, since my grandfather, Bertie Wenn, was injured at Passchendaele serving in the Royal Horse Artillery. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Steaming-Victory-How-Britains-Railways/dp/0099557673/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=  
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Farewell Ian Allan – inspiration for The Trains Now Departed

  SO SORRY to hear of the death of Ian Allan, the patron saint of trainspotting, who fired up the imagination of a generation of schoolboys, with his ABCs of British Locomotives (and many other subjects). The huge passion of the British for trains and train travel today owes much to to this inspired publisher, […]
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The Trains Now Departed: ‘An historian’s eye for detail and a novelist’s sense of pace’, says The Tablet magazine review

ANOTHER nice review of The Trains Now Departed, this time in The Tablet – the international Catholic weekly – which says, in reviewing three new books about railways: ‘The best of the three is The Trains Now Departed. Subtitled “sixteen excursions into the lost delights of Britain’s railways”, Williams explores old routes and services with […]
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