Books: Paperback reviews

Published on Friday 4 July 2008 19:42

FIRE AND STEAM: HOW THE RAILWAYS TRANSFORMED BRITAIN BY CHRISTIAN WOLMAR (Atlantic Books, £8.99)

"THE future is rail": the final chapter in Christian Wolmar's superb history of the UK railway network ends on a whistle blow of hope. With the glam new St Pancras operating full steam ahead, and many travellers growing more guilty over the size of their carbon footprint, perhaps the iron horse will start looking less like an old nag and more like a white stallion. Having covered privatisation in 2005's On the Wrong Track, this time around Wolmar is all about accentuating the positives: the invention and the expansion, the freedom and the egalitarianism. Just the ticket for a long slog in rush hour.

ONE MAN AND HIS DIG: ADVENTURES OF AN ALLOTMENT NOVICE BY VALENTINE LOW (Pocket Books, 7.99)

WHETHER your fingers are the muckiest green or purest ivory, it'll be hard to keep them from turning the pages of this weirdly gripping chronicle of a digging year by the Evening Standard reporter. He details all his experiences, from initial trip to the manure depot to first harvest of the spuds. Yes, he's raking over familiar ground: chinwagging with the colourful locals, scrapping with the wife over which type of beans to grow (runner, broad or borlotti). But Low does so with such charm and wit it's impossible to mind.

COMRADES – COMMUNISM: A WORLD HISTORY BY ROBERT SERVICE (Pan, 9.99)

UNTIL recently, communism was out of the headlines, gazumped by a whole different kind of fundamentalism. But as attention shifts to Beijing, it seems a good time to dig out the history books. And, on the face of it, this mammoth effort by the author of biographies of Stalin and Lenin looks just the job. Chopped into 40, easily digestible instalments, it's communism as classy canap: lively, accessible, but still, in the end, vaguely unsatisfying.