Mallard

'It ought to be a film, of course, pitched somewhere between The Right Stuff and Chariots of Fire. Meanwhile, Don Hale's well-ordered, compelling book will do nicely' Andrew Martin, Daily Express

Seventy years ago, on 3 July 1938, on the East Coast main line, the streamlined A4 Pacific locomotive Mallard reached a top speed of 126mph - a world record for steam locomotives which still stands. Since then, millions have seen this famous locomotive, resplendent in her blue livery, on display at the National Railway Museum in York. Reissued for the 75th anniversary of the speed record, Don Hale tells the full story of how the record was broken, from the nineteenth century rivalry to be fastest between London and Scotland, and, surprisingly, traces Mallard's futuristic design to the Bugatti car and Germany's nascent Third Reich, which elevated the train into an instrument of national prestige. And he celebrates the singular figure of Mallard's designer, Sir Nigel Gresley, one of Britain's most gifted engineers. Mallard is a wonderfully nostalgic evocation of one of British technology's finest hours. Don Hale is the author of Town without Pity, about his investigation of the wrongful conviction of Stephen Downing for murder, for which Hale was awarded the OBE.

DON HALE became nationally famous for his tireless a??and ultimately successful- campaign, while editor of the Matlock Mercury newspaper, to clear the name of Stephen Downing, imprisoned for 27 years for the murder of a Derbyshire woman. It won him the OBE and was acknowledged to have righted a major miscarriage of justice. He subsequently told the story of his campaign in his best-selling book Town Without Pity, which became a popular two-part BBC TV drama starring Stephen Tomkinson and Carolyn Katz, and has since been involved in several other successful campaigns. He is also the author of the best selling The Final Dive detailing the mysterious disappearance of the navy frogman spy Buster Crabb. Formerly a professional footballer for Bury and Blackburn, and a journalist for the Manchester Evening News, he lives in the North West of England.