This is the story of the men who built the railways, the unknown labourers of the nineteenth century who blasted, tunnelled, drank and randied their way across Christian England. Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside a new iron-age architecture unparalleled in grandeur and audacity since the building of the cathedrals.'A sensitive historian can do something to piece together a forgotten way of life. Mr Coleman's vivid and perceptive study of Victorian railway navvies is modest in scale but something of a landmark.' Guardian'Mr Coleman matches them in industry. He has unearthed the full story of their lives and achievements in all its absorbing detail and presented it so readably that no one with a spark of imagination and a twinge of interest in people could fail to find this book a pleasure.' Evening Standard