Monthly Archives: June 2014

It’s the end of another academic year. Success to all our young people and happy holidays.

I have been thinking about what Peter Wollen was saying about thrills, speed and cinema. You will recall, if you read what I wrote previously, that Wollen describes the psychoanalytical compound of excitement and desire that is evoked by the … Continue reading →

Here’s a text I wrote, back in 2007, about the history of the seaside and the up-and-down railway track of the big dipper…I am a bit of an expert in the cultural history of the English seaside and have taught … Continue reading →

Here’s a picture of a wonderful machine. It’s a converted pick-up truck that can be driven along the thousands of miles of abandoned railway track in Mexico. It is a kind of spaceship that explores distant, now lost (disconnected), worlds … Continue reading →

This is a small notebook of drawings from the train window approaching Waterloo. The image, book and train all synchronised…well done BAGD graduating student, Maciej Rackiewicz.

The World Cup in Brazil reminds us of how football became the global game – it travelled by train! More accurately, it travelled with the engineers that built the railway system in Latin America. For example, the introduction of football … Continue reading →

I found this at home. It’s a sugar lump with a promotional wrapper for the Russian railway. We travelled on this train in the 1980s. But, the wrapper looks as though it was designed earlier than that. I remember that … Continue reading →