Name: Great British Railway Journeys
Released: 2010-01-04T00:00:00.000Z
Cast: Michael Portillo

TV Show · Documentary · Travel

Armed with his copy of Bradshaw’s Victorian Railway Guidebook, Michael Portillo takes to the tracks and over a series of four journeys, he travels from coast to coast to see what of Bradshaw’s Britain remains.

2010 · 28m

Starring Michael Portillo

Director Tom Richardson

EPISODE 1

Episode 1

Michael Portillo starts in the city of dreaming spires, Oxford, where in 1921, women were awarded degrees for the first time.
EPISODE 2

Episode 2

Michael Portillo continues his travels through England's Home Counties at Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, where he discovers the legacy of a German Jewish doctor who fled the Nazis to settle in Britain.
EPISODE 3

Episode 3

Michael Portillo heads for leafy Hatch End, where he investigates an illustrator whose work was so popular in the 1920s and '30s that his name entered the English dictionary.
EPISODE 4

Episode 4

Michael Portillo resumes his tour of the home counties in the picturesque and historic county town of Guildford. His 1936 Bradshaw's guide commends its "fine old castle keep" and guildhall, but makes no mention of its hilltop cathedral.
EPISODE 5

Episode 5

Michael heads for Farnborough, Hampshire, famous for its airshow and home to what was once the Royal Aircraft Establishment. Richard Gardner of the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust tells Michael about the boffins who worked here.
EPISODE 6

Episode 6

Armed with his 1930s Bradshaw's guide, Michael Portillo explores East Anglia between the wars. His railway journey begins at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, where archaeologists made a staggering discovery.