Stopping-train Britain: A railway odyssey

by Alexander Frater

Excellent Book

Genres: Travel

168 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1985

About the author

Alexander Frater has contributed to various UK publications--Miles Kington called him "the funniest man who wrote for Punch since the war"--and been a contracted New Yorker writer; as chief travel correspondent of the London Observer he won an unprecedented number of British Press Travel Awards. Two of his books, Beyond the Blue Horizon and Chasing the Monsoon, have been been into major BBC television films. One, the Last Aftican Flying Bat (based on the former), took the Bafta award for best single documentary, while a programme for BBC Radio 4 (about his South Seas birthplace) was named overall winner of the Travelex Travel Writers' Awards. He lives in London, though, whenever time and money allow, is likely to be found skulking deep in the hot, wet tropics.

Reviews

[Gordon Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Stopping-Train Britain" began as a series of articles published weekly in the mid-1980s in "The Observer", at a time when the future of the country branch line was uncertain. It is a fascinating, deeply evocative time capsule from the period, and it must surely rank amongst the very finest books ever written about railways in Britain.

Alexander Frater is not a rail enthusiast, but a seasoned travel writer and journalist. His accounts of these journeys are beautifully-written - poetic, in fact - and rich in observations of period detail. The text is accompanied by Alain Le Garsmeur's glorious colour photographs, which can be described only in superlatives.

Frater and Le Garsmeur journey on many of Britain's most cherished railways (Settle-Carlisle, Glasgow-Mallaig, and the Vale of Rheidol) as well as several other more obscure routes (Oxenhome-Windermere, Norwich-Sheringham, and London's Broad Street Line). The author rides in the cab with the drivers, who share their personal reflections of each line, and he gleans further local knowledge from passengers. The book is altogether wonderful, and my only complaint is that "The Observer" did not commission a further series covering some of the more obvious omissions.

"Stopping-Train Britain" has given me hours of pure joy, and I recommend it without hesitation.