Terminates Here | 01: Beginnings

Duration: 13'31''

Synopsis

Lemn boards the Caledonian Sleeper, leaving London at the same time as Auden's Down Special mail train would have departed.

Further Information

More episodes from this series

Terminates Here | 01: Beginnings

Terminates Here | 01: Beginnings

2007 | 13'31''

Lemn boards the Caledonian Sleeper, leaving London at the same time as Auden's Down Special mail train would have departed.

Terminates Here | 02: Memories

Terminates Here | 02: Memories

2007 | 13'29''

Lemn meets a man who spent 30 years working on the travelling post offices, on which the freezing conditions and the long hours were not as po...

Terminates Here | 03: Alone

Terminates Here | 03: Alone

2007 | 13'14''

Arriving at the busy interchange at Crewe, Lemn talks to the people who catch and dispatch the trains. Some are in love, some are in therapy and ...

Terminates Here | 04: Love

Terminates Here | 04: Love

2007 | 13'42''

In the GPO's Night Mail film, the train picks up mail at Carnforth Station in Lancashire. Ten years later, the same station provided the backdrop ...

Terminates Here | 05: Endings

Terminates Here | 05: Endings

2007 | 13'37''

Lemn's journey is complete, but will a dawn arrival at Glasgow help him finish his poem?
Other Archive resources
Night Mail | BBC Four | 2015

Alan Johnson: The Post Office and Me | WH Auden's "Night Mail"

Alan Johnson MP (and former postman) takes a ride on a Travelling Post Office - one of the mail-sorting trains that used to criss-cross the nation through the night and that were immortalised in the film Night Mail.
Night Mail | BBC Radio 4 | 2012

Thinking Allowed | Work identity on the railway

Tim Strangleman discusses his study into work identity and 'loss': how older railway workers have reacted to change in their industry.