Category Archives: Uncategorized

Here is a poster by the great Russian/French designer AM Cassandre for the LMS railway. Terrific.

This is an O scale model railway station. It’s homemade from bits of wood and metal and covered in paper. You may be wondering why we bought this. It’s simple, it is covered with reproduction posters. These miniature posters were … Continue reading →

All this talk of the machine-ensemble may conjure-up the idea of the railway as an implacable system. The Freudian themes I’ve described in relation to trains usually make things worse by speaking of anxiety and trauma… Still, things are not … Continue reading →

Everyone should sleep within the distant earshot of the railway. Nothing is as pleasingly poetic, or romantic, than to hear the sounds of trains in the distance. I’m not saying you need to see the railway, or feel the trains … Continue reading →

if you don’t like Marnie (the film), you don’t really like Hitchcock; and if you don’t love Marnie (the woman), you don’t really love cinema Robin Wood These pictures are from the opening sequence of Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964). Actually, I’ve put them in a … Continue reading →

These pictures of the railway, across the American mid-west, are by the photographer Dorothea Lange. The pictures were part of a project to document the real-life conditions of the American poor during the great depression of the 1930s. Photography has … Continue reading →

There was an interesting film about the development of the British Rail, diesel powered, Intercity 125. You can watch it, here http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01mqv43/The_Age_of_the_Train/ The train was the flagship modernisation project of British Rail at the end of the 1960s. The Intercity … Continue reading →

ITV’s new crime thriler, The Bletchley Circle, ticks all the boxes for me… You can watch it, here http://www.itv.com/itvplayer/video/?Filter=324058 The story is set just after WW2 and against a backdrop of general austerity – it shares the visual style, colour … Continue reading →

We watched the first episode of BBC TV bench-mark autumn drama yesterday evening. It’s a dramatisation, by Tom Stoppard, of Ford Maddox Ford’s four-volume set, Parade’s End. It’s got an all-star cast and everyone has those distinctive bee-sting lips. No expense … Continue reading →