The Journey Matters: Twentieth-Century Travel in True Style

Description

What was it really like to take the LNER's Art Deco Coronation streamliner from King's Cross to Edinburgh, to cross the Atlantic by the SS Normandie, to fly with Imperial Airways from Southampton to Singapore, to steam from Manhattan to Chicago on board the New York Central's 20th Century Limited or to dine and sleep aboard the Graf Zeppelin? In the course of The Journey Matters, Jonathan Glancey travels from the early 1930s to the turn of the century on some of what he considers to be the most truly glamorous and romantic trips he has ever dreamed of or made in real life. Each of the twenty journeys allows him to explore the history of routes taken, and the events - social and political - enveloping them. Each is the story of the machines that made these journeys possible, of those who shaped them and those, too, who travelled on them.

Jonathan Glancey is well known as the former architecture and design correspondent of the Guardian and Independent newspapers. He is also a steam locomotive enthusiast and pilot. A frequent broadcaster, his books include Concorde, Harrier, Giants of Steam, the bestselling Spitfire: The Biography, Nagaland: A Journey to India's Forgotten Frontier, Tornado: 21st Century Steam, The Story of Architecture, The Train: An Illustrated History.

Glancey combines his passion for the era with an insight into the social and political clouds brewing over the heads of passengers... The joy really is in the minute detail... For anyone with an obsession with the Golden Age of Travel, this will be the first class ticket. * Wanderlust * A thoroughgoing, eloquent corrective to complacency... The historical context is always nicely etched in, but what stands out is the experiential detail... Detailed yet dreamlike. * Country Life * Engrossing and lively... The most enchanting book you'll read this winter. * Steam Railway Magazine * Jonathan Glancey's imaginative work is a reminder that it is often the journey rather than the destination that is the best part of travelling. His book cleverly brings to life various historic settings through the mechanism of transport, with entirely believable scenarios, and each time helpfully brings us up to date. -- Christian Wolmar, author of Railways and the Raj