Christian Wolmar: British Rail

Friday 30 May, 7:30pm, QUAD DE1 3AS

This event will be filmed and made available as a digital recording after the Festival. Available for purchase here.

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.

"Wolmar is the high priest of railway studies" - Literacy Review

"The greatest expert on British trains" - The Guardian