The Glory of the Rails

"More than any other technical design or social institution, the railway stands for modernity."



In this brilliant essay the historian Tony Judt describes the singular contribution made by railways to the development of our shared way of life. From the transformation of urban spaces to the reorganisation of our sense of time, it is impossible to imagine the world we live in without the social and economic changes wrought by rail travel: no other mode of transport can represent with such potency "risk, opportunity, uncertainty, novelty, and change: life itself."



Tony Judt (1948-2010) was a historian who spent much of his career teaching at New York University. Among his books are the acclaimed volumes Postwar A History of Europe since 1945 and Ill Fares the Land: A Treatise on Our Present Discontents.