Secret Life of Books

The Secret Life of Trains: how rail travel changed fiction - for ever

16 Sep 2025

Audio

Description

It was five o’clock on a winter’s morning in Syria. Alongside the platform at Aleppo stood the train grandly designated in railway guides as the Taurus Express. So Agatha Christie began her sleeper [car] hit, Murder on the Orient Express (1934).All aboard! In the latest of SLoB's much-loved special episodes on surprising, fun, and always deeply revealing literary themes, Sophie and Jonty take an all-stations train journey through literary locomotion. One of life's great pleasures is reading a good book on a train, as it rattles through scenic countryside. But what's more annoying than cramming onto a packed underground train at 8am, desperate for a moment with a book before work, only to be wedged between an armpit and a stroller? Trains are social levelers: a means of bringing unlikely people together; and often keeping them apart. Trains help tell stories about social divisions and distinctions in status, love affairs and heartbreak, unwanted changes in landscapes and the ever-increasing encroachments of modern life.Tune in to find out why, in short, trains are at the heart of many great books, and why train travel turned out to be the ideal metaphor for the experience of reading modern fiction.Books mentioned in this episode:George Eliot, MiddlemarchHenry David Thoreau, WaldenCharles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, "The Signal Man"Leo Tolstoy, Anna KareninaBram Stoker, DraculaAgatha Christie, Murder on the Orient ExpressJ.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's StoneGraham Greene, The Little TrainLev Grossman, The Silver ArrowEdward Thomas "Adlestrop"Jilly Cooper, Rivals-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast-- Follow us on our socials:youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shortsinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.social Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcription

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Help us prioritize this episode for transcription by upvoting it.

0 upvotes

🗳️ Sign in to Upvote

Popular episodes get transcribed faster

Other episodes from Secret Life of Books

Transcribed and ready to explore now

The Women Who Made Jane Austen

16 Dec 2025

Secret Life of Books

View all episodes from Secret Life of Books

Comments

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.

Report any issue

Secret Life of Books

The Secret Life of Trains: how rail travel changed fiction - for ever

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Other episodes from Secret Life of Books

The Women Who Made Jane Austen

Sign in to Audioscrape

Share this moment