Telegraph Books

Ever since Paul Theroux embarked in London on the first train of his “Great Railway Bazaar”, railways have been a rich source for the best travel writing. This is truer than ever in the twenty-first century. As the environmental implications of relentless air travel cast an ominous shadow over the prospect of foreign adventure, the opportunity to jump on a train at St Pancras and be whisked straight to the continent offers a wonderful alternative. Train travel has assumed a new pragmatic importance as well as romance—which is no doubt why so many more tour companies are offering a great train ride as part of their holiday itineraries. Now, Michael Kerr, the Telegraph's deputy Travel Editor, has burrowed deep in the newspaper's archives and collected together the very best of its writings about the railway: here are journeys non-stop from London to Vladivostok; across the Canadian Rockies; the first train to traverse Australia from Darwin to Alice Springs; and on the teeming, crawling, travelling adventure of Indian railways. In scenes much more familiar to the British commuter, Boris Johnson discovers his "inner McEnroe" thanks to signal failure in the Midlands, and Michael Palin samples the delights of British Rail Inter-City. This is an anthology that will appeal to the railway buff and the armchair traveller alike; to anyone who has ever Inter-railed in their youth and everyone nostalgic for the days when the only way to cross a continent was by train.

Whether it's leaves on the line or the wrong kind of snow, whether the extortionately priced, curled-up sandwich on sale in the buffet car, or the militancy of the rail unions that seem to be endlessly on strike over nothing, everyone in Britain has an opinion about our railways. After the weather, they are probably the country's most reliable talking point. With Telegraph readers being the trenchant, choleric and waggish letter-writers that they are, our railways have always figured high on the list of subjects requiring a missive to the Editor. Now, in this fascinating and hilarious selection, Gavin Fuller has put together the best letters on trains to the paper over the years. Here is the end of Steam and the start of Eurostar; the punctuality of Swiss trains and the signal failures of ours; the laments for the branch lines lost under the Beeching cuts, and also for the much-missed peace and quiet of a railway carriage, replaced by the menace of personal stereos and fellow passengers booming, 'I'm On the Train!' into their mobile phones.

For the record-breaking third time London will be hosting the Olympic Games in 2012. From the inception of Baron Pierre de Courbetin's crusade to revive the Games of the ancient Greeks, in the 1890s, through the triumphs and disasters of twenty-nine Olympiads, “The Daily Telegraph” has been there to provide eye-witness accounts of the greatest sporting moments in history with characteristic authority. This comprehensive and colourful review of the summer Olympics takes you back to 1908, the first time London held the Games, with Dorando Pietri's infamous disqualification in the marathon. Then to Fanny Blankers-Koen and Emil Zatopek lifeting the War-scarred capital in the Austerity Games of 1948. With more recent record-breaking moments from the Olympics of Sydney, Athens and Beijing, this is the perfect scene-setter for the Games' return to London. From Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett to Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis, Kelly Holmes, Steve Redgrave, Ian Thorpe and Daley Thompson, the tears and the glory of all the heroes and villains from 116 years of Olympic history are collected here in this wonderful anthology of the greatest show on earth.

Whenever an august figure departs the world of cricket, The Daily Telegraph records a decorous tribute. There will certainly be an obituary – in days of yore penned by the doyen of cricket writers, E.W. Swanton, in recent times unafraid to be a lot more whimsical, waspish, and even extremely funny. There will often be an appreciation by one of the paper's stable of cricket correspondents, such as Derek Pringle, Michael Henderson or Scyld Berry, most likely drawing on their memories of having played against the subject or watched his deeds. And sometimes a hero's demise will prompt a heartfelt tribute from someone whose only qualification as an elegist is their own eloquence, as John Major displays on Denis Compton and Michael Parkinson on Keith Miller. And those cricket lives deemed worthy of memorialising need not be illustrious Test careers, though all the great names from Bradman to Bedser, Cowdrey to D'Oliviera, are here. They can also be quixotic county mavericks like 'Bomber' Wells, self-effacing professionals like Tom Cartwright and Derek Shackleton, or charismatic one-offs like Colin Milburn or the Nawab of Pataudi. They may not even be cricketers, but rather much-loved commentators and broadcasters like Brian Johnston and Christopher Martin-Jenkins, players-turned-umpires like David Shepherd and Bill Alley, or, like the Bishop of Liverpool who previously opened for Sussex and England, have made their name equally elsewhere. Their achievements are often hymned by their peers – Mark Nicholas on his Hampshire team-mate Malcolm Marshall, Tony Lewis on John Arlott, Colin Croft on Alf Valentine, and Simon Hughes on facing the fearsome Sylvester Clarke. Here, then, are more than eighty greats of the game – Australians and South Africans alongside Somerset yeomen and Yorkshire's finest. For any cricket lover, this little book is an endlessly browsable testament to the sheer richness and variety of the cricketing life.

An exploration of everything the countryside means to us, from a hundred years of the Telegraph's archive. “The Telegraph” is, as its former editor Max Hastings identified, more than any other national broadsheet the newspaper of the countryside, which over the years has been written about in its pages by such distinguished writers as J. H. B. Peel, John Betjeman and W.F. Deedes, alongside eminent modern naturalists like Richard Mabey and even unlikely proponents of the rural life like Boris Johnson. This anthology is no bland celebration of bucolic idyll, but rather an exploration of everything that the countryside represents to the British. For some it means the reintroduction of long-lost wildlife such as the red kite, or ancient crafts like thatching. For others it means jouncing along a green lane in a four-wheel-drive Range Rover. To the Prince of Wales, his new town of Poundbury is the countryside while subjects as diverse as crop circles, second homes, Mad Cow Disease and polytunnels are all flashpoints in the modern debate about what, and who, the countryside is for. Hugely varied, by turns funny and provocative, this is an essential exploration of a central aspect of our national identity.

The Telegraph's obituaries pages are renowned for their quality of writing and capacity to distil the essence of a life from its most extraordinary moments. A unique mix of heroism, ingenuity, infamy and the bizarre, Thinker, Failure, Soldier, Jailer collects the very best of those obituaries to present an endlessly absorbing compendium of human endeavour. Organised day by day around the calendar year, with each life presented on the date it ended, the book features hundreds of remarkable stories. World statesmen jostle with glamorous celluloid stars, pioneering boffins sit alongside chart-topping rock 'n' rollers, while artists and their muses mingle with record-breaking sportsmen, Victoria Cross winners, spies, showgirls and captains of industry — as well as the titans of rather more esoteric fields. Here, for instance, can be found Britain's greatest goat breeder, a hangman who campaigned to abolish the death penalty, a priest to Soho's pimps, a cross-dressing mountaineer and a minister who preached a gospel of avarice - donations in notes only, please, as 'change makes me nervous'. A treasure trove of human virtue, vice and trivia, Thinker, Failure, Soldier, Jailer is the perfect gift for the armchair psychologist in all of us.

A man, a bike and the open road. What could be simpler? Certainly not the Tour de France, the annual travelling circus which for more than a century has been the ultimate test of sporting endurance. There's been pain. There's been joy. There's been death. There's been derring-do of mythic proportions. There's been cheating. There've been drugs. There've always been drugs. And there's always been the Daily Telegraph. On the peaks of Mont Ventoux, Alpe D'Huez and Col du Galibier, in amongst the picnicking, partying crowds, whizzing through London in 2007's wondrous opening stage, dropping in and out of the peloton, the Telegraph has been there for every turn of the wheel. The book features eyewitness accounts of cycling greats Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain and Lance Armstrong, along with details of the contest's darker side—including the 1967 death of Tom Simpson and the stain of doping. Boasting contemporary, firsthand reports from leading cycling correspondents including J. B. Wadley, David Saunders and Phil Liggett, this book captures the full drama of the tour. Chris Boardman and David Millar provide views from the saddle; James Cracknell swaps his boat for a bike on a pre-race reconnaissance mission; Paul Hayward catalogues the 1998 'Tour of Shame'; while Brendan Gallagher eulogises the colossi who bestrode the race, and searches for their modern-day successors. Together, they chronicle the greatest show on two wheels. Martin Smith was formerly assistant sports editor and sportswriter at the Daily Telegraph, where he worked for more than twenty years. An enthusiastic cyclist in his youth, he graduated to the less arduous four wheels as soon as he was able.

John Betjeman began writing for the Telegraph in 1951 and continued to do so for a quarter of a century. During that time Britain underwent profound social and cultural changes. In architecture, grand Victorian edifices were pulled down to make way for gleaming brutalist monuments to the Future. In literature, a new generation of angry young men (and women) challenged convention head on. In music, pomp and circumstance gave way to the electric guitar. And in fashion, hemlines crept up. Amongst much of the population, however, such rapid change met with disquiet: a nagging sense that the New had displaced much that was wonderful in the Old. By turns eccentric, wistful and polemical, Betjeman's writing for the Telegraph gave voice to this unease. From contemporary reviews—often refreshingly caustic—of novelists such as Ian Fleming, Nancy Mitford and J.D. Salinger, through prescient warnings about the threat posed to the English skyline by office blocks, motorways and concrete lamp-standards, to elegiac paeans to Norman churches and, of course, the gothic majesty of St Pancras station, Lovely Bits of Old England collects the very best of Betjeman's contributions to the Telegraph for the first time. Taken together they offer a eulogy for what was lost and an impassioned defence of the past in the face of progress's relentless onward march.