Railways
How the railways shaped modern culture
Cue track seven of Frank Sinatra’s 1957 album Only the Lonely and you can hear Ol’ Blue Eyes pretending to…
What it means to be English
How can you ever put your finger on the comfort, the joy, the absurdity, of being English? Not, perhaps, through…
My memories of the royal train
It is the most civilised way to travel anywhere in the kingdom. Which is why I am so distraught that…
London’s best contemporary art show is in Penge
If you’ve been reading the more excitable pages of the arts press lately, you might be aware that the London…
The BBC’s Israel problem
Intrepidly, the BBC dared recently to visit Dover, Delaware – source, it implied, of starvation in Gaza. I listened carefully…
Will Labour’s rail replacement service leave travellers stranded?
By spooky coincidence, on Saturday night I watched an old episode of Slow Horses in which a passenger died mysteriously…
Stop scoffing food on trains!
I’m on the 10.45 slow train to Ipswich. It’s not even lunchtime, yet everyone around me is already gorging on…
In defence of McJobs
The burden of higher taxation must fall on those with ‘the broadest shoulders’, says the Prime Minister, and City folks…
Portrait of the week: prisoners are freed, Ted Baker closes and train drivers announce strikes
Home Emergency measures, known as Operation Early Dawn, were brought in to ease prison overcrowding. Defendants would be summoned to…
A brief glimpse of secretive Myanmar
Taking advantage of a relatively open period after the 2015 election, Claire Hammond explored the country’s interior through its complex, unofficial railway network
Letters: the Tory party has gone mad
Right is wrong Sir: Katy Balls’s article ‘Survival Plan’ (4 May) starts from a false premise. The problem is not…
Live the high life… in a mid rise
How radically left-wing is Labour’s proposed ‘renationalisation’ of the railways? Though militant Mick Lynch of the RMT union ‘strongly welcomed…
‘There is no plan! You’re on your own!’
The first LNER train I booked on Sunday from Durham to London was cancelled due to ‘action short of a…
Reasons to be cheerful? Yes, I think I see some
‘Always be cheerful’ – a motto to which I’ll return in the final item – speaks to my natural demeanour.…
Southeastern’s on the wrong track
A few years ago I wrote here about the unexpected symbiosis between economy passengers and business travellers on commercial flights.…
Diary
I met a Canadian couple for lunch in Edinburgh. They were from Vancouver – he a judge, she an opera…
Voice of concern
The creep of nannying announcements
Women-only train carriages help no one
Sooner or later, somewhere in the UK, we’ll have trains with women-only coaches. It’s an idea which keeps rolling around,…
Boris’s rail betrayal is no surprise
A promise made is merely a promise waiting to be broken. If events complicate life for all governments it is…
Who cares if rail is public or private? Just make the trains run on time
The long-awaited review of the railways by former British Airways executive Keith Williams chugged past the platform of public debate…
Great
‘Why didn’t they call it Very British Railways?’ asked my husband. Unwittingly (as in most of his remarks), he had…
A moving target
‘They’ll slowly undress us first and then kill us, so our clothes won’t get bloody and our banknotes won’t get…
Vital signs
Laura Gascoigne meets Margaret Calvert, the designer who dragged British signposting into the modern era
