Our t.v is on, and I am currently watching a truly bizarre program. Michael Portillo presenting a program about the role trains played in the First World War strikes me as very odd indeed. I was fine with his previous shows about the various systems of Europe, but this program just seems like Portillo trying to shoehorn his personal hobby into an unrelated subject. Granted, trains were important in that era, but no more than any other mode of transport, and certainly not as vital as Portillo seems to be claiming. The result seems crass: the BBC indulging the hobby of a trainspotter pretending to be a historian, ending up with something I might just dismiss as odd, or an insult to real history, depending on my mood. These stories can certainly be told in a far better way, without the self-important Portillo trying to relate everything to trains. Indeed, the entire premise seems laughable given that the war was a famously stagnant one, fought between trenches.