Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations

Description

The railway station is a place of coming and going, meeting, greeting and parting. It is the setting for our hopeful beginnings and our intended ends, with its own furnishings, rituals and priests. Britain's stations are also an architecture that is little studied and much neglected. They were the 'below stairs' of the railway, carrying a legacy of soot, decay and industrial decline. Yet they are fascinating buildings, and ones that are returning to prominence with the revival of railway travel. Simon Jenkins has travelled the length and breadth of Great Britain, from Waterloo to Wemyss Bay, Betws-y-Coed to Beverley, to select his hundred best. Blending his usual insight and authority with his personal reflections and experiences - including his founding the Railway Heritage Trust - the foremost expert on our national heritage deftly reveals the history, geography, design and significance of each of these glories.Beautifully illustrated with colour photographs throughout, this voyage of discovery through our social history shows the station's role in the national imagination; champions the engineers, architects and rival companies that made them possible; and tells the story behind the triumphs and follies of these very British creations. These are the marvellous, often unsung places that link our nation, celebrated like never before.

Author description

Simon Jenkins is the author of the bestselling books A Short History of England, England's Thousand Best Churches and England's Thousand Best Houses. He is the former editor of the Evening Standard and The Times, and a columnist for the Guardian and Evening Standard. He has served as deputy chairman of English Heritage and chairman of the National Trust, was a founder member of SAVE Britain's Heritage and chaired the revision of the Pevsner guides from 1994 to 2011. He founded the Railway Heritage Trust and has served on the Boards of British Rail and London Transport. He lives in London and Aberdyfi.