Terminates Here | 02: Memories

Duration: 13'29''

Synopsis

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 poetic as Auden suggests.

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.