Trains to the Sea

‘An ardent train buff and a first class journalist’ Independent

The British seaside was created by the railways – and the fortunes of Britain’s seaside towns have almost always paralleled those of their railway lines. This account of travelling on the Great British Seaside Holiday is part social history, part documentary, part personal quest, and part nostalgic evocation of the trains to the sea.

The book has a strong contemporary as well as historical feel, and contains much first-hand reporting to support the thesis that the decline of many of Britain’s seaside towns today is linked to the decline or loss of their railway lines. No equivalent book to this has ever been written – Trains to the Sea is the definitive history of that great British institution, the outing to the seaside.