A most enjoyable read! Loaded with the history of the famous train line along with tales of international intrigue, famous personalities, popularizations, snow storms, etc. It reads more like a travel log with adventures around each corner. Recommended for anyone who enjoys trains, travel, history or just looking or a good adventure. ( )

A very good book, a straightforward historical account of this most famous train, written in a clear prose and well researched. In structuring his chapter headings author Cookridge encapsulates the ’life and times’ of this fabulous train, leading us through the original concept, a biography of its creator, the “maiden voyage” in 1893 and the glorious adventures, misadventures of both the train and some of the notorious, celebrated passengers to the sad demise and final auctioning-off of its remains in Monte Carlo in 1977.
Whilst the author explores the invented outlines, plots and sub-plots of the famous fictional accounts – James Bond, Agatha Christie and Hollywood – these pale in comparison to the true-life adventures of robbery, banditti, kidnapping, near-starvation and frost-bite in the “ice-age” winter of 1929 and derailments into snow and German station restaurants. Wonderfully illustrated with over 50 period photographs and impressions, this work brings the entire, wonderful story sharply into focus, causing his many of his readers to probably regret the loss of this marvelous service and life-style.

One amusing misstep by Cookridge brought forth a rueful grin – in just the second paragraph of his opening chapter the author expresses his intent to ”to record for a more mundane generation” the glamour and drama of this famous train. Well, after all, in comparison to those travelling generations, perhaps our modern world is a little more mundane and without the original Orient Express around it is certainly less glamorous.