Great British Railway Journeys - Series 11 (2020)

Between the wars a Bradshaw was an essential guide to a golden age of rail travel, when glamorous locomotives travelled at world-record speed. Michael Portillo uses a 1936 edition of the famous railway guide to explore an unmistakably modern era of mass consumption, when art deco cinemas and dance halls entertained millions, while industrial Britain was cast into unemployment and poverty, and storm clouds gathered across the English Channel. Michael explores interwar Britain by train from Cornwall’s St Ives to Salisbury, through England’s North East to the Scottish Highlands and from Canterbury in Kent to Skegness. Along the way, he uncovers the desperation which led 200 men from Jarrow to march to London; visits the childhood home of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother; joins a monster hunt in Loch Ness; investigates an extraordinarily high murder rate in 1930s fiction in Devon and joins military manoeuvres with the Royal Tank Regiment on Salisbury Plain. Michael is honoured with a Red Coat in Skegness, drives a pioneering pick-up truck in Dagenham and sells ice cream on the pier at Southend.