The Book Depository Eleven Minutes Late by Matthew Engel
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Price: £11.98
Brand: The Book Depository
Description: Eleven Minutes Late : Paperback : Pan Macmillan : 9780330512374 : 0330512374 : 01 Mar 2010 : A funny and affecting portrait of Britain's love hate relationship with the railway with a new chapter for this paperback edition. The Book Depository Eleven Minutes Late by Matthew Engel - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9780330512374
MPN: 0330512374
GTIN: 9780330512374
Author: ITCrowd
Rating: 5
Review: Have bought this book several times for myself and for gifts for other people. As a frequent commuter to London, I regularly draw on the knowledge from "Eleven Minutes Late" in conversations as transport is such an integral part of modern life.
Author: Bill Dean
Rating: 3
Review: Eleven Minutes Late is former Guardian journalist Matthew Engel's thesis on Briain's railways. He sees the railway system as the ultimate expression of Britishness, representing all of its ingenuity, incompetence, nostalgia, corruption, humour, capacity for suffering and even its sexual repression Engel eschews the romanticism that many other travelers employ or the sense that there were `good old days' never mind a golden era in British railways. They have always been dirty, cramped, late, subject of incompetent government policy - though perhaps never quite as expensive as they are now. This is no love letter to Britain's railways. It falls down somewhat because it is neither travel book, history, nor extended piece of journalism. It seemingly starts out entwining Engel's experiences with British railways and their story. But quite abruptly, around chapter 2, he abandons his journey and resumes it only around 30 pages from the end, as if an after thought. It is all written in a lively and engaging manner, but there is nothing particularly new or original. On the other hand his account of the 1990s privitisation of British Rail, which he presumably covered as a journalist, is an outstanding polemic against slap dash and ill considered political doctrine. In his travels he comes across as a more erudite Bill Bryson, rather than someone who writes with the genuine wit and insight of Stuart Maconnie (to give a recent example) or the brilliance and élan of a Paul Theroux. As a historian he lacks the authority of Christian Wolmar and as a journalist the controlled anger of Ian Jack. None of this is to say that Matthew Engel isn't a fine writer, more that Eleven Minutes Late would have benefited significantly had he decided at the outset which form of writing was going to dominate. This is a fine, entertaining book, but ultimately, it all felt a little rushed: I read it over the course of a weekend, but by next weekend I feel that there will be nothing that lingers in the memory.
