This is the definitive story of the men who built the railways - the unknown Victorian labourers who blasted, tunnelled, drank and brawled their way across nineteenth-century England. Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside an industrial-age architecture unparalleled in grandeur and audacity since the building of the cathedrals.

Olivier is an unexpected portrait of the twentieth century's greatest actor. His was a fairytale story - the clergyman's son who, on the strength of one season at the Old Vic, became a great Shakespearean actor and went on to conquer Hollywood - yet Olivier struggled with the dark side of his genius. Abandoning his first wife, he married Vivien Leigh; a manic depressive, she dominated his life for twenty years. When he finally wrenched himself away, he was plagued by a guilt that only incessant work could expiate. He married Joan Plowright, had a new young family, and was the founding...