A chance opportunity in late 2008 enabled the author to access several hundred hitherto unseen views of the Southern Railway in the period 1939-45. A collection which taken as a whole reveals damage and destruction on a scale it is hard to imagine. Yet through all this the railway continued operating, providing a vital link in a national system, which had it failed, could well have been the precursor to unimaginable horror.

The Press cameras of the period recorded what they were allowed to take; these photographs show what actually occurred.

The book presents no romantic approach. Graphic scenes of damage together with contemporary records of tragedy and heroism blend together to reveal what can only be described as ‘The British Spirit.’ The photographs are unbelievable, the story breathtaking. Wartime Southern looks in greater detail at the railways in this period than ever before.