Easy-going, discursive and digressive, even those to whom trains are a closed timetable will find this a charming travelogue. * Stuart Maconie, author of The Full English: A Journey in Search of a Country and its People * What a pleasure to share this railway odyssey with Tom Chesshyre, whose intrepid wanderings and wry observations present an engaging portrait of Britain in 143 trains. * Simon Bradley, rail historian and author of Bradleys Railway Guide * This is a book to inspire even the most sluggish of armchair travellers. Not only a paeon to the many deep pleasures of train travel, it is full of practical details, hearty enthusiasm and quirky observations. In his 143 circular train visits all over Britain, Tom Chesshyre meets passengers, railway workers, bureaucrats and trainspotters, and listens to their stories of eccentric hobbies as well as their struggles with red-tape and timetabling and making things work. And although he conveys beautifully the romance of the golden age of steam travel, he never wallows in nostalgia, taking an infectious delight, for example, in the many Wetherspoons pubs he finds in railway stations all over the country. * Lucy Lethbridge, author of Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves * Seasoned traveller that he is, Chesshyre still manages to give a fresh perspective to every new discovery on his journey round the nooks and crannies of the British rail network. * Christian Wolmar, author of Blood, Iron & Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World * A splendid reminder that all (rail) roads lead to Darlington and that, as with food, so with trains: speed can be greatly overrated. Two hundred years on from the dawn of the railway, Tom Chesshyre brilliantly captures the enduring appeal of George Stephenson's world-changing creation. A must-read bicentennial tribute from a self-confessed railway 'nut' who is, mercifully, neither nerd nor trainspotter. * Robert Hardman, author of Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story. * Tom Chesshyre has a gift for transforming the seemingly mundane world of trains into a thrilling ride. Slow Trains Around Britain left me itching to grab a ticket and set off on my own cross-country rail adventure. * George Mahood, author of Free Country: A Penniless Adventure the Length of Britain *
