Great British Railway Journeys
Great British Railway Journeys is a TV show on BBC4. Documentary series in which Michael Portillo travels the country by train. The program has been available since 2024. A total of 153 episodes have been broadcast, most recently in December 2024.
Last episode
25:00
25:00Great British Railway Journeys
Michael Portillo visits Crewe, a town steeped in railway history, to investigate the making of cinema classic The Night Mail during the 1930s.
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25:00Michael Portillo is in Suffolk on the last leg of his tour of East Anglia, visiting the racecourse at Newmarket and the Roman Catholic shrine at Walsingham.
30:00Michael Portillo heads for the Hertfordshire village of Perry Green to learn about Henry Moore became one of the defining artists of British modernism.
30:00Michael Portillo's travels resume in leafy Hertfordshire, where he attempts a canoe slalom course, and visits the estate of author Barbara Cartland.
35:00Michael Portillo continues through East Anglia, where he discovers the Essex origins of the BBC and joins the Women's Land Army to pick damsons at Tiptree.
25:00Michael Portillo explores East Anglia between the wars, beginning at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, where archaeologists discovered a 27-metre-long Anglo-Saxon ship in 1939.
30:00Michael Portillo heads for Farnborough, Hampshire, famous today for its airshow and home to what was then the Royal Aircraft Establishment.
30:00Michael Portillo resumes his tour of the Home Counties in the historic town of Guildford. Eventually he crosses into Hampshire to reach Aldershot.
35:00Michael Portillo travels to leafy Hatch End in north-west London, where he meets the great-nephew of the famous illustrator William Heath Robinson.
25:00Michael Portillo continues his travels through England's Home Counties at Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, before making his way to Beaconsfield.
30:00Michael Portillo sets out on another railway adventure as he explores Britain between the world wars, beginning a tour of the Home Counties and beyond in Oxford.
Series 11
30:00
30:00Michael Portillo begins the last leg of his rail journey through 1930s Britain in Norfolk at the headquarters of an international horse welfare organisation.
35:00Michael Portillo's journey takes him to the Snape Maltings music and arts venue, the Norfolk seaside resort of Great Yarmouth and the city of Norwich.
25:00Michael Portillo's railway journey from Canterbury to Skegness reaches Witham in Essex. He visits the factory of the world's oldest supplier of metal-framed windows.
30:00
Michael Portillo explores the east of England en route to Lincolnshire. He learns how the Crossrail project is helping to conserve birds.
30:00Michael Portillo explores the east of England in the inter-war period, his journey beginning in Canterbury and ending at Alexandra Palace in London.
35:00In Bath, Michael visits the ex-home of a refugee emperor, whose country was invaded by the Italian dictator Mussolini.
25:00Michael Portillo arrives in Paignton, where the Dartmouth Steam Railway takes him to the home of Agatha Christie, in the company of her great-grandson.
30:00Michael Portillo reaches Bodmin en route to Totnes, as he explores the West Country from St Ives to Salisbury Plain, learning more about Daphne du Maurier on the way.
30:00Michael Portillo visits Cornwall's county town, Truro, heading to the historic estate of Trewithen, whose gardens were stocked from China by plant hunters.