Post Description

Travelling around Great Britain by train, Michael Portillo uses a copy of Victorian cartographer George Bradshaw's Railway Companion to compare and contrast modern Britain with that documented by Bradshaw in the 1840s, visiting recommended points of interest noted in Bradshaw's guide book, and where possible staying in recommended hotels. George Bradshaw was a cartographer who in 1840 became the first person to produce a comprehensive timetable and travel guide of the railway system in Great Britain, which at the time, although extensive, still comprised a series of fragmented and competing railway companies and lines each publishing their own literature.