Great British Railway Journeys

Michael Portillo strikes out to explore the Britain of his youth, starting at Preston's Fulwood Barracks and heading across to Bury Bolton Street station in Greater Manchester.

Michael's journey through north west England from Preston to Hebden Bridge reaches Greater Manchester, where Michael celebrates new beginnings for the nation in the years after the Second World War.

Greater Manchester's Metrolink tram delivers Michael to the former cotton town of Oldham. He heads across to Wakefield and the striking postwar sculptures of Barbara Hepworth.

From Wakefield, West Yorkshire, Michael visits the National Coal Mining Museum for England at Caphouse Colliery. He heads across to Leeds to investigate the origins of the Leeds West Indian Carnival.

Michael Portillo continues his postwar exploration of north west England in Bradford, Shipley and Hebden Bridge.

Michael Portillo travels through the Britain of his youth from London's Docklands and East End to the ‘city within a city', the Barbican.

Michael Portillo continues his railway exploration of the post-war Britain of his youth on a journey from London to Cambridge, starting at South Bank.

Michael Portillo ventures deep underground onto London's newest railway: the Elizabeth Line. He travels across London before transferring to the Epping Ongar Heritage Railway.

Michael Portillo continues his rail exploration of the east of England, starting on the seafront of Felixstowe and finishing in the plate glass campus of the University of East Anglia.

Michael Portillo completes his railway journey through the east of England during the post-war period, heading from RAF Lakenheath to the city of Cambridge.

Michael Portillo explores the postwar Britain of his youth on a railway journey from the Midlands to the West Country.

Beginning in Derby's famous 19th-century railway works, Michael hears how the Victorian sheds now house some of the most up to date assembly lines in Britain for building electric trains. In Leicester, Michael looks back to the early 1970s, when around 10,000 Asians arrived in the city after being expelled from Uganda by the dictator Idi Amin.

On the outskirts of the city, Michael discovers a factory where, shortly after the Second World War, an entrepreneurial butcher turned his hand to something completely different - with the company he founded, Walkers, now producing 11 million bags of crisps a day. And from Hinkley Station, Michael heads for Stoney Cove, where a submerged quarry proved an ideal place to train divers in the 60s and 70s.

In Coventry, Michael recalls the destruction by the German Luftwaffe of the city's gothic cathedral in November 1940. He hears how architect Basil Spence won a competition to build it anew and tours the breathtakingly modernist concrete structure built alongside the medieval ruin. And from the city's recently redeveloped station, he heads to the factory of the London Electric Vehicle Company, manufacturers of the iconic London taxi.

Heading south to Royal Leamington Spa, Michael visits the Guide Dogs for the Blind National Centre, established in the town in 1941. Michael learns how the organisation was founded and how dogs are bred today.

Michael Portillo's railway journey reaches the heart of the Warwickshire countryside, where work is underway on a section of the biggest project of new railway infrastructure in Britain for a hundred years: HS2.

In the Tudor town of Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare, Michael visits the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, home since 1961 to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In Birmingham, Michael recalls the redevelopment of the whole city centre during the 1960s and the arrival of black and Asian communities in areas where he once tried to enter parliament. In the Prince of Wales pub in Handsworth, he investigates the fusion of Asian and British cultural influences which produced modern Bhangra music.

Michael finishes this leg of his railway journey in the leafy suburb of Moseley, where in order to combat the housing shortage after the Second World War, prefabricated houses were put up - and, in some cases, remain to this day.

At the African and Caribbean Heritage Centre in Wolverhampton, Michael finds out about the impact of Enoch Powell's 1968 speech on immigration in Wolverhampton and across the nation. In Kidderminster, he discovers the site of a secret wartime enterprise: a subterranean world of shafts, workshops and offices known as the Drakelow Tunnels.

In the cathedral city of Worcester, Michael joins pupils of King's Hawford School to hear about their chosen sport, pigeon racing. The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway transports Michael back to the 1950s and on to Cheltenham, on the edge of the Cotswolds, where the town's splendid jazz festival is gearing up for its 25th anniversary.

Michael Portillo is on the last leg of his railway journey from the train-building city of Derby to the aircraft manufacturing base of Filton. From Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, he heads to the fairy-tale castle of Eastnor at the foot of the Malvern Hills.

At a factory in Coleford in the Forest of Dean, Michael recalls his childhood screen debut in an advertisement for a fruity cordial and discovers it remains popular today. At Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, Michael heads for the wetlands of the Severn Estuary, where the postwar conservation movement in Britain began with the opening of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.

Michael's last stop is Filton, where he investigates the centre of Britain's postwar aviation industry and the manufacturing base for the fastest passenger plane on earth, Concorde.