Product Description

There's a magical romance about trains that no other form of transport can capture. Meeting under an iconic station clock at a grand terminus. Gathering speed through city, town and country, swooping across viaducts, rattling across huge junctions and whistling through tunnels. At long last you are in a small Sussex beachside halt, or a Welsh valley country station, beside a quiet Norfolk waterway, or winding through a remote forest high above a Scottish loch. Dreamily you think, 'Do those same twin ribbons of steel really lead all the way back to the greatest city in Europe? Can this really be the very same seat?' Britain by Rail travels to a world far from the endless queues and prodding security of ugly airport terminals. It abandons the cars to their motorway jams and soaring petrol prices, and revels instead in the gems of Britain's historic railway system.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43719 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Review
'Whether you're a first time visitor or time-served commuter, Benedict le Vay's book will open your eyes to the sights and history of Britain's best train journeys. And his choice of top ten British train routes is spot on!' --Smith, The Man in Seat 61

'And the book that will hold me absorbed, in anticipation and during the journeys is Benedict le Vay's Britain from the Rails: A Window Gazer s Guide, a quite superb, indeed incomparable, combination of maps, railway trivia, engineering insights and breathtaking landscape features to look out for. It also has, and I know this will be a prerequisite for many of you men out there, a quite superb gazetteer. My excitement on coming across this book meant I felt like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken, or like stout Cortes, when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific.' --Michael Gove, The Times

'Le Vay is a devotee of rail travel because he believes it to be romantic, civilised, sociable and fun. Anyone who travels regularly by train, and has endured hours of criminally expensive, seat-less travel, might have cause to argue, but this book at least makes you look at the possibility of train travel with renewed enthusiasm. Le Vay makes a compelling case for some picturesque train journeys, detailing points of historical and geographical interest on a selection of routes across the country. Interspersed with maps, fact boxes, humorous sketches and a handful of colour photographs, the book almost has the feel of a scrap book. Le Vay hopes this book will be picked up not just by holidaymakers, but also commuters keen to find out about the history behind their lines, and anyone who might eschew Europe in favour of a holiday closer to home.' --Clover Stroud, The Telegraph

Customer Reviews

author's reply

As the author, I spotted this criticism on the day I did ten interviews with BBC local radio stations about this book. In half of those interviews, the presenters mentioned unprompted how much they liked the look and feel of it - 'all those little illustrations, like a personal scrapbook' etc. 'Charming, like Wainwright's hand-drawn notebooks' said Radio Cumbria, referring to the great hill-walking author, which I take as high praise. Design and humour is a matter of taste, and on this occasion it didn't suit this one reader. That's a shame. But I have written several books which have unrelieved grey type running up one page and down the next and I know which most readers prefer. I'm enormously grateful to the publishers for having made such an effort to make this book visually appealing while cramming in nearly everything I wrote, and most people just love the book. So I'll give them five stars too!
There are people who can digest reams of material printed straight up and down like an old-fashioned telephone directory or railway timetable, and all credit to them, but they are in a tiny minority. With respect, I'd say most people - as I know from working in newspapers - much prefer and even demand a bit of display, interest, brightness, wit and, dare I say it, fun.

Beautifully produced travelpaedia
I used to take a seven hour train journey twice each week through England's heartland, trundling slowly through landscape of which I knew little and changing trains three times in the process. If only I had had Ben Le Vay's book then! It is a perfect accompaniment to any train journey, and the ideal gift to those strange people who sit on trains staring out the window doing nothing, absorbed in their own imaginings. Here is the antidote to boring train journeys. Full of interesting bon mots, amusing cartoons, drawings, maps and photographs no one could fail to be delighted with this excellent publication. It is now permanently in my brief case, even for those short journeys on God's Wonderful Railway that take me over Brunel's amazing Maidenhead Bridge into the Metropolis, about which there is always something new to learn.

Train travel transformed
Extensively researched and detailed, but not at the expense of entertainment. Don't be fooled by the jokey cartoons, this is genuinely interesting information presented in a palatable, not to say delicious, serving. Highly recommended for all travellers who need to refresh their sense of wonder.