This is not a book about trains but about the variety of Spain. The bestselling author Christopher Howse makes ten great railway journeys that explore the interior of the peninsula, its astonishing landscapes & ancient buildings. The focus is the way the Spanish live now: their habits, streets, characters, stories
- & quite a bit about their eating & drinking. Christopher Howse has been travelling around Spain for 25 years, & has now made a 3, 000 mile circumnavigation by train from the top of the Pyrenees
- through the vulture-haunted wilds of Extremadura & the Spaghetti Western deserts of the south, to the ancient hilltop city of Cuenca & beyond. On the way he meets troglodytes, visits a city ruined by an earthquake, runs into a dancing lion, stumbles across a body-snatching plot & tries out a recipe for acorn pie. An entertaining exploration of a much-loved country, The Train in Spain gives a fascinating & entirely original portrait of a strange land at a time of great change.

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” Great fun
- fast moving & inventive”
- Philip Reeve, author of Mortal Engines” An exciting, imaginative, wild ride of a

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SOMETIMES you come across a lofty railway viaduct, marooned in the middle of a remote country landscape. Or a crumbling platform from some once-bustling junction buried under the buddleia. If you are lucky you might be able to follow some rusting tracks, or explore an old tunnel leading to...well, who knows where? Listen hard. Is that the wind in the undergrowth? Or the spectre of a train from a golden era of the past panting up the embankment? These are the ghosts of The Trains Now Departed. They are the railway lines, & services that ran on them that have disappeared & gone forever. Our lost legacy

Includes:: lines prematurely axed, often with a gripping & colourful tale of their own, as well as marvels of locomotive engineering sent to the scrapyard, & grand termini felled by the wrecker`s ball. Then there are the lost delights of train travel, such as haute cuisine in the dining car, the grand expresses with their evocative names, & continental boat trains to romantic far-off places. The Trains Now Departed tells the stories of some of the most fascinating lost trains of Britain, vividly evoking the glories of a bygone age. In his personal odyssey around Britain Michael Williams tells the tales of the pioneers who built the tracks, the yarns of the men & women who operated them & the colourful trains that ran on them. It is a journey into the soul of our railways, summoning up a magic which, although mired in time, is fortunately not lost for ever. THIS EDITION REVISED & UPDATED TO INCLUDE MAPS.

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Sometimes you come across a lofty railway viaduct, marooned in the middle of a remote country landscape. Or a crumbling platform from some once-bustling junction buried under the buddleia. If you are lucky you might be able to follow some rusting tracks, or explore an old tunnel leading to...well, who knows where? Listen hard. Is that the wind in the undergrowth? Or the spectre of a train from a golden era of the past panting up the embankment? These are the ghosts of The Trains Now Departed. They are the railway lines, & services that ran on them that have disappeared & gone forever. Our lost legacy

Includes:: lines prematurely axed, often with a gripping & colourful tale of their own, as well as marvels of locomotive engineering sent to the scrapyard, & grand termini felled by the wrecker`s ball. Then there are the lost delights of train travel, such as haute cuisine in the dining car, the grand expresses with their evocative names, & continental boat trains to romantic far-off places. The Trains Now Departed tells the stories of some of the most fascinating lost trains of Britain, vividly evoking the glories of a bygone age. In his personal odyssey around Britain Michael Williams tells the tales of the pioneers who built the tracks, the yarns of the men & women who operated them & the colourful trains that ran on them. It is a journey into the soul of our railways, summoning up a magic which, although mired in time, is fortunately not lost for ever.

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Fascist. Strongman. Thief. Traitors. September 1939. For years now Britain has been rudderless, divided & grievously unequal. Successive governments have floundered as they struggled to cope with economic misery at home & machinations abroad. Many of the country`s citizens are seduced by fascism; others are simply left alienated by leaders who seem unwilling or unable to take the decisive action that is so desperately needed. When war breaks out the imperiled nation achieves the unity & purpose that has eluded it for more than a decade. It is a time of heroism & sacrifice in which many thousands of soldiers & civilians give their lives. But some Britons choose a different path, renegades who will fight for the Third Reich until its gruesome collapse in 1945. The Traitors tells the stories of four such men: the chaotic, tragic John Amery; the idealistic but hate-filled William Joyce; the cynical, murderous conman Harold Cole; & Eric Pleasants, an iron-willed pacifist & bodybuilder who wants no part in this war. Drawing on recently declassified MI6 files, as well as diaries, letters & memoirs, The Traitors is a book about disordered lives in turbulent times; idealism twisted out of shape; of torn consciences & abandoned loyalties; of murder, deceit, temptation & loss. It shows how a man might come to desert his country`s cause, & the tragic consequences that treachery brings in its wake. ...

At the heart of the Ottoman Empire, in the main square of Constantinople, a niche is carved into ancient stone. Here, the sultan displays the severed heads of his adversaries. People flock to see the latest head & gossip about the state of the empire: the province of Albania is demanding independence again, & the niche awaits a new trophy... Tundj Hata, the imperial courier, is charged with transporting heads to the capital
- a task he relishes & performs with fervour. But as he travels through obscure & impoverished territories, he makes money from illicit side-shows, offering villagers the spectacle of death. The head of the rebellious Albanian governor would fetch a very high price. The Traitor`s Niche is a surreal tale of rebellion & tyranny, in a land where armies carry scarecrows, state officials ban entire languages, & the act of forgetting is more complicated than remembering.
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In The Trans-Siberian Railway – A traveller’s Anthology Deborah Manley blends her personal account of this fascinating rail trip with excerpts of works from a variety of writers of the like of Newby & Theroux but also Sir Henry Norman, Peter Fleming, Lindon Bates Jr, Lesley Blanch; each offering a different perspective on the experience, Russia, its people & culture. This fascinating book is the result of the author’s research & thirst to know anything about the Trans-Siberian from its early planning & building to the people, the landscape & the culture encountered on the journey as well as the experiences lived by earlier travellers. It imaginatively captures the magic of this trip. As you read Manley’s contemporary experience & perceptions you will be able to live the same journey through the eyes & minds of those who have been there before. The pages will whizz you to distant times & places as far back as 1891 as you read Over the Urals by George Kennan to 2007 with Chris Moss’s Trans-Siberian Excess. The Trans-Siberian Railway – A Traveller’s Anthology is an extremely enjoyable read for anyone interested in this region, planning this trip by train or from a comfortable armchair. ...

At the end of 2007, St Pancras became the new London terminus for the high-speed channel tunnel rail link to continental Europe, taking over from Waterloo International. Central to this change, the entire structure & area around St Pancras have been renovated & transformed as one of the largest civil engineering projects in Europe. This book looks at the history & process of the project & shows how the old St Pancras one of Londons finest Victorian stations has been both restored to its original glory & extended for the demands of 21stcentury rail travel. Packed full of specially commissioned photography & written by those intimately involved in the project, The Transformation of St Pancras Station tells the remarkable story of how the original building was renovated & expanded with major new additions & how the surrounding area has been regenerated to become a desirable destination in its own right. This is the paperback version of the original hardback, with a new cover design. ...

At the end of 2007, St Pancras became the new London terminus for the high speed channel tunnel rail link to continental Europe, taking over from Waterloo International. Central to this change, the entire structure & area around St Pancras have been renovated & transformed as one of the largest civil engineering projects in Europe. This book looks at the history & process of the project & shows how the old St Pancras one of London`s finest Victorian stations has been both restored to its original glory & extended for the demands of 21st-century rail travel. Packed full of specially commissioned photography & written by those intimately involved in the project, ” The Transformation of St Pancras Station” tells the remarkable story of how the original building was renovated & expanded with major new additions & how the surrounding area has been regenerated to become a desirable destination in its own right. ...

A monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation of the World offers a panoramic & multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jurgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric & chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope & towering erudition. He examines the powerful & complex forces that drove global change during the ”long nineteenth century, ” taking readers from New York to New Delhi, from the Latin American revolutions to the Taiping Rebellion, from the perils & promise of Europe`s transatlantic labor markets to the hardships endured by nomadic, tribal peoples across the planet. Osterhammel describes a world increasingly networked by the telegraph, the steamship, & the railways. He explores the changing relationship between human beings & nature, looks at the importance of cities, explains the role slavery & its abolition played in the emergence of new nations, challenges the widely held belief that the nineteenth century witnessed the triumph of the nation-state, & much more. This is the highly anticipated English edition of the spectacularly successful & critically acclaimed German book, which is also being translated into Chinese, Polish, Russian, & French. Indispensable for any historian, The Transformation of the World sheds important new light on this momentous epoch, showing how the nineteenth century paved the way for the global catastrophes of the twentieth century, yet how it also gave rise to pacifism, liberalism, the trade union, & a host of other crucial developments. ...