RAIL Columnist

In the first of two columns, Vitali Vitaliev recalls his life’s most important train journey

A round 3.30pm on 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker. Minutes later, his still warm body was carried outside by loyal staffers and burned in the Reich Chancellery gardens. H

“ From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” It was the soundbite of the century – or at least of the Cold War. Uttered by a former pri

Is this the age of dictators?” asked veteran journalist Sir Sidney Low. He was writing in September 1923, the month in which a military coup brought Miguel Primo de Rivera to power in Spain. At the sa

This moment is surely imbued with the most global symbolism. It was when, according to the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, adventurers sailed across the north Atlantic from settlements on the west coast of