Trains, planes, ships and automobiles - James Hamilton-Paterson

A lavishly illustrated celebration of the golden age of aircraft, cars, ships and locomotives from 1900 to 1941 by the author of the bestselling Empire of the Clouds.

This dazzling book describes the flourishing of transport and travel, and the engineering that made it possible, in the years before the Second World War. It is an homage to the great vehicles and their mechanisms, their cultural impact and the social change they enabled.

James Hamilton-Paterson explores the pinnacle of the steam engine, the advent and glory days of the luxury motorcar and the monster vehicles used in land speed records, the marvellous fast ocean liners and the excitement and beauty of increasingly aerodynamic forms of passenger aircraft. These were the days when for most people long-distance travel was a dream, and the dream-like glamour of these machines has never been surpassed.

Hamilton-Paterson has an unrivalled ability to write evocatively about engineering and design in their historical context, and in this book he brings a vanished era to life.

James Hamilton-Paterson is one of Britain's most versatile writers. He won a Whitbread Prize for his novel Gerontius and is the author of Marked for Death, Eroica and Blackbird.

'Airships and electric cars take centre stage in this fascinating transport book' Scotsman.

'Lavishly illustrated with wonderful photographs ... Unusually for this type of picture book, it is elegantly written, by somene who has an easy command of his subject, and firm opinions. It is the opposite of bland' Mail on Sunday.

'This book is full of extraordinary images and bizarre facts - barely a page goes by without some amazing form of transport, whether real or imagined' Yorkshire Post.

'Hamilton-Paterson describes the extraordinary progress made in each individual category of transport' This England.