Product details
- ISBN 9780008700089
- Weight: 500g
- Dimensions: 159 x 240mm
- Publication Date: 08 May 2025
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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'A beautifully observed and sympathetic tour of modern Britain that runs on the tracks of our years.'David Quantick
'Charming…The accounts will make any fan of railways want to experience these delights for themselves.' – The Independent
All aboard for a one-of-a-kind journey by train to some of the most obscure parts of Britain
On the 200th birthday of the world’s first passenger-carrying railway, Nige Tassell sets out to ride Britain’s railway network all the way to its lesser-travelled-to corners, its seldom-visited outposts. From Wick to Penzance and many points in between, he stays on until the end of the line. He is the last man sitting.
The sixteen final destinations he visits offer sixteen different stories. By delving into their histories, by speaking to their people and by having a good old-fashioned nose around, Tassell reveals much about places that rarely have light cast upon them – from ferry ports to abandoned resorts, from tiny hamlets to towns being reclaimed by the sea. It's a journey that takes in Harry Potter, Muhammad Ali, goths, Alan Bennett, Vera Brittain, Viz comic, Alex Horne, Nigel Farage. Vikings, John Betjeman, Aneurin Bevan, Tyson Fury, Charlotte Rampling's dad and the weepy judge from The Great Pottery Throwdown. All human life is here.
So grab yourself a window seat for an odyssey that tells us much about Britain today. All aboard, all aboard.
Over the past three decades, Nige Tassell’s journalism has been published in The Guardian, the Sunday Times, The Independent, New Statesman, GQ, Esquire, Mojo, WORD, BBC History, BBC Countryfile and many others. He is the author of nine books, including Whatever Happened To The C86 Kids? (shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize) and non-league football classic The Bottom Corner. His books have been praised by the likes of Richard Osman, Ian Rankin, Stuart Maconie, Ian McMillan, Danny Baker, Lucy Porter, Adrian Chiles, Mark Chapman, John Niven, Janice Long, Colin Murray, Bob Stanley, Harry Pearson and Robert Elms.
