Christian Wolmar: British Rail - Part of Summer Derby Book Festival
£12
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Date:
30 May 2025
7.30pm
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‘Wolmar is the high priest of railway studies‘ – Literary Review
‘The greatest expert on British trains‘ – Guardian
Award-winning journalist Christian Wolmar returns to Derby, future home of Great British Railways, in the year designated for Railway 200 celebrations.
British Rail wasn’t how we’re asked to remember it …
From ancient rolling stock to patchy service, stale sandwiches to the wrong kind of snow, British Rail – our last great state-owned organisation to be privatised – has received a terrible press. But after its controversial 1948 creation, British Rail was actually an innovative powerhouse that over five decades transformed the UK, creating one of the fastest regular rail services in the world.
Christian Wolmar takes us from promise to punchline, exploring British Rail’s birth into post-war austerity and how, at the height of its success, the service was misunderstood and unfairly maligned, ruthlessly broken up and privatised.
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