A superb guide to Britain's villages, towns and connecting railways, dating from 1866. 'Hard to put down ... truthful and opinionated, often funny but never predictable ... the finest travelling companion.' – Michael Portillo on George Bradshaw. Unavailable for many years and much sought after, this classic guide book is now faithfully reissued for a new generation. Bradshaw's Railway Handbook was originally published in 1866 under the title Bradshaw's Handbook for Tourists in Great Britain and Ireland. It appeared in four volumes as a comprehensive handbook for domestic tourists, offering a detailed view of English life in the Victorian age. Now available to a new generation of readers, this facsimile edition will appeal to railway, steam and transport enthusiasts, local historians, and anyone with an interest in British heritage, the Victorian period, or the nation's industrial past.

This book explores components of national identity in Victorian Britain by analyzing travel literature. It draws on published and unpublished travel journals by middle-class men and women from England, Scotland, and Wales who toured the Continent and/or Britain. The main aim is to illustrate both the contexts that inspired the various collective identities of Britishness, Englishness, Scotsness, and Welshness, as well as the qualities Victorian men and women had in mind when they used such terms to identify and imagine themselves collectively.