Between the wars, a Bradshaw's was an essential guide
during a golden age of rail travel
when glamorous locomotives travelled at world-record speed.
I'm using a 1930s edition
to explore a discernibly modern era of mass consumption.
Bravo!
When Art Deco cinemas and dancehalls entertained millions...
..while industrial Britain was thrown into unemployment
and poverty, and storm clouds gathered across the Channel.
My journey continues in East Anglia, and I'll stick close
to the east coast of England as I move up into Lincolnshire.
Despite its chilly reputation, the North Sea attracted crowds
of holiday-makers to its beaches around the time of my guidebook.
Shortly afterwards, since these shores face Germany,
this flat terrain was populated with aerodromes
for defence and attack.
I'll investigate the aircraft that enabled Britain to defy Hitler.
I started in Kent and then visited London, before crossing Essex
and stopping off at the county towns of Suffolk and Norfolk.
I'll continue my journey west through Cambridgeshire
and will finish in Lincolnshire.
On this final leg, I'll start in Attleborough in Norfolk
before crossing the Fens,
bound for the cathedral city of Peterborough.
From there, I'll head north towards sunny Skegness.
On my trip, I'll open the floodgates.
Engineering on a big scale.
I wouldn't want to raise that by hand, I don't think!
I'll say hi-de-hi to the Redcoats...
You look great! Ta-ra!
THEY LAUGH
..and witness the phenomenal power of a typhoon.
Started its journey along the runway,
within a few seconds it is airborne.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Welcome to the service for Cambridge.
We will be calling at Attleborough,
Thetford, Brandon,
Ely, Cambridge North,
and Cambridge.
The next stop will be Attleborough.
I'm alighting at Attleborough, Norfolk,
a market town 16 miles southwest of Norwich.
I'm investigating the origins of a British animal welfare charity,
which was founded in the 1920s.
The book, play and film War Horse enlightened modern audiences
as to how we relied on animals at the Western Front
during the First World War, investing the beasts of burden
with human qualities such
as courage, loyalty and nobility.
In the wake of the Great War,
the slaughter of horses -
as well as people -
pricked the public conscience.
World Horse Welfare is based at
Hall Farm just outside Attleborough.
Tony Tyler is the deputy chief executive of the charity.
Tony, introduce me to your friend, please.
So, this is Star. He arrived with us in 2016.
He was actually found pretty much on the side of the road
in a fairly horrendous condition.
What are the origins of this charity? World Horse Welfare
was started by an amazing lady called Ada Cole.
She lived in a village quite close to here, called Croxton, and grew
up initially there, but travelled to the continent with her sister.
Ada Cole, in 1911, saw horses on the docks
in Antwerp being whipped
three or four miles to a local abattoir, and was horrified
by the conditions that they came in.
Before the First World War,
English horses were sent to the continent to be eaten.
Appalled by their treatment during the journey, Ada Cole
campaigned against the transport of live horses for meat.
After the First World War, the fate of some surviving military
workhorses, which were also sold for consumption,
compelled Ada to act.
Seems so desperately unfair, doesn't it,
that these animals who had served us, served their country,
would then just be slaughtered at the end.
Absolutely, but those were desperate times.
People needed meat and they needed income.
And what Ada Cole tried to do
was not to tell people
to stop eating horses. What she wanted to see
was humane treatment for them.
In 1927, she established a charity.
And despite her own frailty and ill
health, her relentless campaigning
resulted in legislation
which effectively stopped the export
of life horses for meat
from Britain -
a law which is still in place today.
When did the charity get into the business
of rescuing individual horses?
So, our first rescue centre opened in 1949.
That was a yard called Cherry Tree down in Surrey,
and we've subsequently expanded to now have four centres
dotted across the country, where we have
around about 315 horses in at this moment.
Well, I've met Star. Any other celebrities I should encounter?
Well, we're hoping to introduce you to Rudolph, who's a small pony
that was found next to a field
of Christmas trees, hence his name.
And today, we're going to be doing a
little bit of clipping of his coat.
Very good. I shall look for a horse with a red nose.
Tony, thank you very much. Bye, Star.
Adele Edwards is a supervisor at the charity.
This, I assume, is Rudolph.
This is Rudolph.
And Tony indeed mentioned to me that he needed a clip.
He does need a clip.
The reason that we clip horses here is part of a weight-loss programme
So, horses, obviously, naturally grow quite a thick, dense coat
in the winter, so by stripping off the bottom layer of coat,
you're actually then... Meaning a horse has to use some calories
to burn the fat to keep itself warm.
I've just introduced the horse to the clippers gently
without them turned on,
just to make sure that they're going to cope with the noise.
CLIPPERS START WHIRRING
What's the reaction been like? He seems fine.
I don't think he's bothered at all. All right.
Do you want to show me the way?
If you start off on the shoulder area.
Make sure you keep your lead away from the pony.
And then just gently, you want a nice, firm pressure, nice and even.
Keep the blade straight.
And just slowly pick up, and you'll see the fur comes off quite nicely.
Maybe here? Yep, that's fine along there.
Just a nice, firm pressure.
Nice, straight line and quite a slick movement.
That's right. Keep it firm on the coat.
That's right.
WHIRRING STOPS
Clipping a horse called Rudolph -
there's no limit to where my rail journeys take me.
I'm leaving Norfolk and crossing the Fens into Cambridgeshire.
East Anglia is all about water.
The sea, of course, but also the Fens and Broads,
canals and rivers.
The River Nene is navigable
for 88 miles from the Northampton arm of the Grand Union Canal,
where it's known as the Nen, to the mouth of the river
on the Wash, passing through 38 locks.
I'm headed for number 38,
which rejoices in the name "the Dog In A Doublet lock".
I'm arriving at the cathedral city of Peterborough.
Lock number 38 is found in low-lying countryside,
seven miles from Peterborough.
The scale of this structure suggests a role more important
than simply aiding navigation.
Mick Wright is the keeper.
Hello, Mick. Hello, Michael. Pleased to meet you.
Very good to see you.
And this is a much bigger structure than I expected.
Totally.
It's basically because it's a tidal defence barrier
and it was also built to allow cargo
to travel up to Peterborough.
And so this river is all tidal? It is,
and it was tidal right up until
this structure was built, right
the way through Peterborough
to what we called Orton Staunch.
I guess that created a few problems for the city of Peterborough.
Well, it did, because there was no tidal barrier
so every, either big spring tide
or if there was a lot of floodwater
coming down from Northampton area,
the eastern side of Peterborough
tended to flood. Built on this scale because the tide is a mighty force.
Well, it is, yes.
It was started in 1935
and they completed it
and commissioned it in 1937.
Why would building this barrier help the navigation?
Well, because the boats used to
run out of water on the tide.
Because it's such a long way from the estuary,
and it's not a particularly deep river anyway,
they used to moor round about here -
because there was obviously a pub across the road -
so when this was constructed
and came into commission,
they could lock through here
and make it in one journey
all the way up to Peterborough with plenty of depth of water.
I assume it's powered electrically? Yes, it is.
Yes, but there is a facility for hand-winding.
Have you ever had to do that? Yes, we did, a few years back.
It took six of us three quarters
of an hour to raise the lock gate
just enough to get a boat
underneath it.
They're big gates. They're big gates, but they're very low-geared
so you've got a lot of turns
before you get anywhere.
Could I see your wonderful sluice gate in operation?
Yes, certainly. Thank you.
No need for hand-turning today.
We have power!
OK, Mick. Take her away!
Wow! Instant.
The moment the gate started to raise,
the water level began to fall.
The lock is now clearing out.
Engineering on a big scale.
Well, I wouldn't want to raise that by hand, I don't think!
And daylight appears under the sluice gate.
It's the last day of my journey through eastern England,
and I'm bound for Grantham in Lincolnshire.
And it's the latest type of train - a Class 800 Azuma.
Introduced to the East Coast Main Line in May 2019,
Azuma is the Japanese word for east.
With a top speed of 125mph,
this high-speed train follows a
route with a rich railway heritage.
We are passing over hallowed track.
on July 3rd, 1938,
Mallard - the most superb locomotive ever built -
Nigel Gresley's wedge-shaped Art Deco-inspired engineering miracle -
sped down Stoke Bank near Grantham, the furnace spitting out red hot
coals like bullets, the crockery on board smashing, to beat the speed
set by its rival in Nazi Germany to claim the record
for a steam locomotive of 126mph,
which has never been beaten, for Britain!
It was quite exciting, really.
APPLAUSE
At Grantham, I'm changing to a community rail service
known as the Poacher Line.
Next stop, Skegness, which Bradshaw's tells me
is a very popular seaside resort
with its North, South and Grand Parades,
its pier and its expanse of firm sands
on which motor speed trials are held.
Holiday-making was transformed here at the time of my guidebook
by Billy Butlin.
It may be time for me to turn my coat from green to red.
Skegness first developed as a seaside resort
in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
In 1935, Billy Butlin began clearing 200 acres of turnip fields
north of the beach-side town to build his first
self-contained holiday camp.
It opened at Easter in 1936.
Eve Reid manages the Butlin's archive.
Eve, this looks like a piece of history to me.
Tell me about this.
Yeah, this is one of the original 1936 Elizabethan-style chalets,
which were actually designed by Billy Butlin himself.
Would this have stood as part of a terrace, a row? Yes.
Yeah, there would have been a long row, and they would all
have been, sort of, very slightly different,
just to give it a bit more of an individual feel.
Who was Billy Butlin?
Well, he was actually born in South Africa
but to English parents, and his mother actually came
from a family of travelling showmen.
Starting in 1927, he actually began a chain of amusement parks
all around the country, and he had about ten by 1936,
so he was quite well established.
How did Billy Butlin hit on the idea of a new sort of holiday?
It came from this time when he went for a holiday himself as a young man
in the early 1920s to Barry Island,
and he kind of...sort of watched what was going on and saw
that families were often thrown out of their seaside lodgings
after breakfast and they had to kind of wander around
looking for entertainment.
So he thought, "Wouldn't it be a good idea if there was a centre
"where there was the entertainment facilities,"
which were all-weather, of course, as well.
Would it be possible to take a look inside the chalet?
Yes, of course. Thank you.
Billy Butlin's Skegness holiday camp was an instant success.
By the time the camp opened its doors on Easter Sunday, 1936,
it was already booked up for the season.
Butlin's offered an all-inclusive deal for a week's holiday
for a week's wages, which proved appealing to middle-class families
who wanted to be in control of their spending.
A boost came with the 1938 Holidays With Pay Act, which ensured
that, for the first time, millions of workers were entitled
to a week's paid holiday.
A-ha!
Well, this is a period piece, isn't it?
So you've got a basic wardrobe,
three beds.
What sort of activities was he offering at the beginning?
So there were lots of indoor activities.
There was billiards, you could play cards.
There were also outdoor activities.
There was bowling and there was a very large outdoor swimming pool
as well, which we've got a picture of here.
That is a magnificent picture, actually.
The buildings strike me as so wonderfully modern.
Now, I suppose that the thing that is most famous
about these holiday camps is the Redcoats.
Tell me how they originated.
Well, they started a few days after the resort actually opened.
Billy Butlin was on site and he noticed that people
didn't seem to be enjoying themselves as much as he expected,
or taking advantage of all the wonderful facilities
and attractions that he'd laid on.
They were kind of sticking to their family groups and not mixing,
so he asked one of his trusted staff members -
a manager called Norman Bradford, who was very outgoing -
he asked him to go up on stage after dinner one night
and to warm things up a bit.
So Norman got up on stage and did a bit of a comedy routine,
and he got people to introduce themselves to their neighbours,
perhaps for the first time.
And, before they knew it, people were kind of laughing and joking.
It had broken the ice.
Billy, a man after my own heart, instructed Norman to buy
a brightly coloured blazer to stand out in the crowd.
Hello, everyone!
Today, Redcoats continue to help and to entertain guests.
I'm keen to see whether I've got what it takes.
Redcoats, Ellie-Mae Leybourne and Nicky Lee Tomlinson
await me on stage.
You look great! Ta-ra!
I feel really good wearing it, actually.
I love the piping on the jacket,
the crease in the trousers,
the white shoes, and of course, the badge.
I can see why you feel good wearing it.
It definitely makes you feel good, doesn't it? It does. It does.
And the last thing you need is your name badge.
So we're going to pop it up here on the top of your pocket,
just like this. There we go.
Shall we set out, then? Yeah, I think we should go and make some
memories with all of our guests. Let's do that. Let's go!
Hello! Hello.
Hello. How are you?
Who's got painted up like a tiger?
Ooh!
Was that fun? You look wonderful.
Would you like a little doggie to go with your...? Yes. Yes!
You would like a little doggie.
Thank you.
So are you guys enjoying your time here?
ALL: Yes.
First time? No, second. Second time.
We came last year. To Skegness?
Yes. Ah. And what do you do while you're here?
Just... What we don't do! ..it's all for this one.
Yes? Such a great family place.
Hello! Hello. Hiya.
What smart young men these are
in their bow ties and matching
shirts and beautiful coats.
How do you entertain three children when you're here?
What do they do? Well, we've been swimming. Swimming.
We've been to lots of the shows.
Did you like it here? Yeah. Are you having fun? Yes?
I like swimming. You like swimming. Ah.
Are you...? Are you trying out to be a Redcoat yourself?
Yeah. I'm auditioning this week. Yeah!
Inland from Skegness is an aerodrome,
which was conceived in 1937.
Today, RAF Coningsby is one of the Royal Air Force's main
operating bases in the United Kingdom.
Coningsby is also home to the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight,
whose mission is to maintain the country's priceless heritage
aircraft in an airworthy condition.
I'm meeting the commander of the base, Group Captain Mark Flewin.
Mark. This, I think, is a Lancaster bomber.
Tell me about this particular aircraft. Yeah. So, Lancaster
bomber, an iconic aircraft for the country in what was a fight for
national survival. This aircraft is, interestingly,
one of only two flying Lancasters in the world.
So it's great to have it here at Royal Air Force Coningsby.
What's really interesting for this particular Lancaster is
Lancasters operated from RAF Coningsby,
so we started building this particular base in 1937,
and indeed, Lancasters operated out of here in five squadrons
that were launching between 30 and 50 operational missions every night.
Why was the Lancaster such a successful bomber?
It was at the leading edge of its development and very much
the leading edge of world-class bomber that could carry
up to 20,000 lbs of bombs at long range and deliver on its mission.
The Lancaster actually strikes me as bigger than I had expected,
but it was notoriously cramped inside, wasn't it?
Is it possible to go inside? Absolutely. We'll see that in a second.
We actually call it the inverse TARDIS. So it's enormous on the
outside but tiny on the inside, and that's because of the phenomenal
bomb bay that you can see here.
The Avro Lancaster was the most successful RAF heavy bomber
of the Second World War.
Entering combat in 1942 and powered by four Merlin engines,
the Lancaster took part in the audacious bombing raid
to destroy three dams in the Ruhr valley in May 1943,
delivering the RAF's secret weapon, the bouncing bomb.
The average age of the aircrew was just 22 years.
My goodness, Mark, that is a squeeze.
What on Earth were conditions like
for the crew when they're in flight?
I think you've just experienced it - very cramped, in very testing
conditions, against an enemy that was brutal at the time.
But it wasn't pressurised, it wasn't heated.
So presumably they were dressed in furs,
they were battling against the cold. Absolutely.
And, indeed, the hatches were open so they could have the best
chance of defending themselves, both from the top turret and indeed,
when we go to the rear turret
and look at what was the most dangerous position
to be in during the Second World War
and during those bombing raids over Germany.
All right. To the rear gunner's position.
Ah!
My goodness, Mark,
this is tight, and I'm into the rear gunner's seat.
Absolutely. A humbling position to sit in, the most dangerous position
of the aircraft by far.
You can imagine enemy aircraft trying to attack you and trying
to defend the aircraft so you can deliver your mission. Made even
more dangerous because often they'd have to take their parachutes
off to get into this position.
I feel lonely just being here, knowing that the rest of the crew
is towards the front and the middle of the aircraft,
and I'm...I'm on my own at the back here. Absolutely.
You're on comms, but it was a lonely position, but an absolutely
essential position,
mainly given how fighter aircraft would attack the Lancaster
to be able to shoot it down.
You know, it really is, erm...
It's an honour just to sit in the seat where those men sat.
Amazing.
On March 5th, 1936, the year of my guidebook, the prototype
of a new fighter aircraft made its maiden flight over Hampshire.
It was called the Vickers-Supermarine Type 300,
registration K5054,
more commonly known as the Spitfire.
Mark - Spitfire and Typhoon - have you flown either one of them?
Yes. I'm very fortunate as station commander at Coningsby to fly both.
I fly and instruct on the Typhoon.
I have over 1,300 hours on the Typhoon and I'm very, very lucky
and indeed humbled to be able to display the Hurricane and Spitfire
as part of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
This particular Spitfire, does it have a history?
Yeah, it's very special. Actually, if you look at the ingenuity
that we had at the time, 24 different variants of Spitfire
between 1938 and 1948.
But what's very special about P7 is it's the last airworthy Spitfire
in the world that actually fought in the battle.
What was it that the Spitfire
had that made it so special in battle?
It was world-beating. It was actually a new way of designing
and delivering an aircraft.
So, using the torsion of the skin as strength of the aircraft,
which meant the aircraft was very light.
And when you add that to the power that the Merlin delivered
through the aircraft, you had a world-beating aircraft. It was
absolutely essential to our success through World War II,
and indeed the Battle of Britain.
So, to the modern day, to Typhoon. I've seen
these Typhoons go vertically. Absolutely.
I mean, the aircraft can accelerate phenomenally from surface
to 35,000 feet at Mach 1.5 in just under two minutes.
So it's a phenomenal platform to be able to defend the UK.
RAF Coningsby is one of two Quick Reaction Alert stations
which protect United Kingdom airspace, as well as a training
place for Typhoon pilots.
Today, they are putting the aircraft through its paces.
It's started its journey along the runway,
within a few seconds it is airborne,
coming past the control tower with a tremendous roar of the engines...
DROWNED BY ENGINE NOISE
..and disappears into a cloudy sky.
It has been a long journey from the Spitfire to the Typhoon,
but the spirit and the courage of the Royal Air Force is unchanged.
Since I started my journey in Canterbury, I've found
that the 1930s, apart from being a decade of unemployment,
also saw great progress in arts, architecture,
house-building and car production.
But that generation that was determined to remember
but not to repeat the slaughter of the Great War
saw Spain fall to fascism and lived in fear of Germany.
Fortunately, it was also a period of great distinction in British
engineering and science.
And when war resumed in 1940,
radar, Hurricane and Spitfire enabled Britain to fight on alone.