Gavin Fuller – författare

John Betjeman began writing for the Telegraph in 1951 and continued to do so for a quarter of a century. During that time Britain underwent profound social and cultural changes. In architecture, grand Victorian edifices were pulled down to make way for gleaming brutalist monuments to the Future. In literature, a new generation of angry young men (and women) challenged convention head on. In music, pomp and circumstance gave way to the electric guitar. And in fashion, hemlines crept up.Amongst much of the population, however, such rapid change met with disquiet: a nagging sense that the New had displaced much that was wonderful in the Old. By turns eccentric, wistful and polemical, Betjeman’ s writing for the Telegraph gave voice to this unease. From contemporary reviews – often refreshingly caustic – of novelists such as Ian Fleming, Nancy Mitford and J.D. Salinger, through prescient warnings about the threat posed to the English skyline by office blocks,  motorways and concrete lamp-standards, to elegiac paeans to  Norman churches  and, of course, the gothic majesty of St Pancras station, Lovely Bits of Old England collects the very best of Betjeman’ s contributions to the Telegraph for the first time. Taken together they offer a eulogy for what was lost and an impassioned defence of the past in the face of progress’ s  relentless onward march.

Whether it’ s leaves on the line or the wrong kind of snow, whether the extortionately priced, curled-up sandwich on sale in the buffet car, or the militancy of the rail unions that seem to be endlessly on strike over nothing, everyone in Britain has an opinion about our railways. After the weather, they are probably the country’ s most reliable talking point.With Telegraph readers being the trenchant, choleric and waggish letter-writers that they are, our railways have always figured high on the list of subjects requiring a missive to the Editor. Now, in this fascinating and hilarious selection, Gavin Fuller has put together the best letters on trains to the paper over the years. Here is the end of Steam and the start of Eurostar; the punctuality of Swiss trains and the signal failures of ours; the laments for the branch lines lost under the Beeching cuts, and also for the much-missed peace and quiet of a railway carriage, replaced by the menace of personal stereos and fellow passengers booming, ‘ I’ m On The Train!’ into their mobile phones.