Book interview

WE LIKE to think of the British as the great railway builders of the Victorian era, yet while rail networks were being cast over the United Kingdom and its Empire, a quiet revolution was taking place in a tiny landlocked country in the middle of continental Europe. `Slow Train to Switzerland?? is Diccon Bewes?? fascinating account of how, with a little help from British engineers, the country we now think of as famous for chocolate, watches and cuckoo clocks, developed its reputation for efficiency and punctuality with trains that ran like clockwork.