- [introduction to each episode]
- Michael Portillo: I'm embarking on a new railway adventure that will take me across the heart of Europe. I'll be using this - my Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide, dated 1913 - which opened up an exotic world of foreign travel for the British tourist. It told travellers where to go, what to see, and how to navigate the thousands of miles of tracks criss-crossing the Continent. Now, a century later, I'm using my copy to reveal an era of great optimism and energy, where technology, industry, science and the arts were flourishing. I want to rediscover that lost Europe that, in 1913, couldn't know that its way of life would shortly be swept aside by the advent of war.