Agatha Christie Mobi

Night trains have long fascinated us with the possibilities of their private sleeping compartments, gilded dining cars, champagne bars and wealthy travellers. Authors from Agatha Christie to Graham Greene have used night trains to tell tales of romance, intrigue and decadence against a rolling background of dramatic landscapes.

The seaside, like football and the railways, is a distinctly English and largely nineteenth century invention. At the Festival of Britain in 1951, a replica of a seafront represented hope and modernity - once the preserve of the sickly elite, the seaside had become one of the great English egalitarian institutions.