It’s a like from me

A beautiful glimpse of the past. I could smell the engines and the livestock and the moorland air, but I suspect that Horace Jay would have been happier as a poet than a station master.

To quote Ruskin “if a book is worth reading, it’s worth buying.” Lucky this book came my way free of charge. I skipped the first chapter then all the others because I prefer reading motorcycle manuals.

A solid read which is highly satisfying for the trains lover.

A comprehensive snapshot of a distant time and place. As an academic, I appreciated the author’s bold departure from conventional formatting such as using non-justified text to avoid silly word spacing, and dependence on phonetic spelling in colloquial speech where possible to avoid blizzards of apostrophes. This, along with a well-chosen font and modern notation for those oft recurring train times in the narration, led me to believe the author has written this book with considered sympathetically for the reader.

Lovely book. Such a pleasure to read

For me, this memoire began promisingly. Until I lost it during a reorganisation. Pity.

I am a historian and I found the concept of this book interesting. My peers often speak of the developments which improved the lives of people during the industrial revolution, using phrases like ‘they’ could now travel beyond their parish boundaries, and ‘they’ could now eat out-of-season foods, and ‘they’ could now benefit from labour-saving appliances etc. But I’ve often wondered who ‘they’ were as individuals and what effect such rapid developments had on their psychology? Historical fiction often dramatizes the lives of society’s privileged or dirt poor but seldom animates plain, working people. I think Stationmaster is a laudable attempt to claim this ground.

I took an instant dislike to Horace Jay and would never have employed him.

A lot of interest beneath the humour.