FINAL DESTINATION: Riding Britain's Trains

Take a return ticket to Timbuktu on the Inverness to Wick railway line during a February half term. There are 16 final destinations in this wonderful collection each telling their own story: Glasgow Queen Street to Mallaig; Glasgow Central to Stranraer; Newcastle Airport to South Shields or some tales from the river bank, Middlesbrough to Whitby on a vampire weekend, Leeds to Morecombe, Manchester Piccadilly to Buxton on Higher Ground, Birmingham New Street to Pwllheli, Cardiff Central to Ebbw Vale Town in the Valleys, Bristol Temple Meads to Severn Beach; Norwich to Sheringham; London Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness; Aldgate to Chesham; Hythe to Dungeness; Ryde Pier Head to Shanklin and lastly the train in the night, London Paddington to Penzance. On the 200th birthday of the world's first passenger-carrying railway, Nige Tassell set out to explore Britain's railway network all the way to its lesser-travelled-to corners and seldom-visited outposts. From ferry ports to abandoned resorts, tiny hamlets to towns slowly succumbing to the sea, it's a journey that takes in Harry Potter, goths, Alan Bennett, Vera Brittain, Viz comic, Nigel Farage, John Betjeman, Charlotte Rampling's dad and you as you grab yourself a window seat on an odyssey that reveals much about Britain today. 294 pages, map.