72. Eleven Minutes Late

We apologise for the late arrival of this edition of Skylines. It's unlikely to be the last time, I'm afraid: some stuff happening in the non-work bit of my life has disrupted my schedule somewhat, but I still hope to get the next episode out by the end of next week.Anyway, enough about that: this week my guest is journalist and author Matthew Engel. In 2009, he published Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain – his history of the British railway system which, running pretty late myself, I didn't read until last year.Matthew gives me a quick tour of railway history, from the Victorians to Dr Beeching. He also explains why privatisation was a total disaster – but why he fears nationalisation won't help.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman's cities site, CityMetric. It's hosted by Jonn Elledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.