British Passions on Film

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1x3)

Air date: Sep 25, 2012

Throughout the 20th century, archive films and newsreel footage has chronicled Britain's enduring fascination with the nation's most important modes of mass passenger transport. This film shows how Britons responded to advances in transport technologies and the emergence of new automobiles, rail services and aircraft designs - each of which held out the possibility of travel to new, exciting and previously inaccessible destinations. Featuring contributions from the cultural critic Jonathan Glancey and the transport historian Christian Wolmar, it celebrates the contribution that these different forms of transport made to the collective imagination of the nation, and shows how such developments as jet aircraft and the Channel tunnel opened up new horizons for successive generations of British people.