Rebecca and Bradshaw’s Railway Guide
Since 2010 Michael Portillo has appeared regularly on early evening BBC television with his programme Great British Railway Journeys, in which he travels through the British Isles by railway, referring to George Bradshaw’s Victorian travel guide and describing how the places he visits have changed since Victorian times.
But did you know this? In chapter two of Rebecca, in which the second Mrs de Winter recalls their life at Manderley and describes the mundanity of their day-to-day life in exile, she says:
‘some people have a vice of reading Bradshaws. They plan innumerable journeys across country for the fun of linking up impossible connections’.
Rebecca was published in August 1938 and has never been out of print.