Isle Of Wight Author’s New Railway Book Reaches Number One On Amazon

An Isle of Wight-based author and broadcaster is celebrating the publication of a new book exploring 200 years of British railway maps — and it has already reached number one in multiple Amazon categories.

Mark Ovenden, who was raised on the Island and attended Cowes High School from the age of 13, has co-written Mapping Britain’s Railways: The Design History of a Nation on Track with National Rail mapmaker Andrew Smithers.

Published this month by British Library Publishing, the book charts the evolution of railway maps and diagrams from the early days of Britain’s railways through to the present day.

It features more than 300 maps and railway schematics, exploring how designs developed from relatively simple line drawings into increasingly sophisticated ways of helping passengers navigate the network.

The book also includes references to the Isle of Wight and its railway routes.

For Mark, the project has a particularly strong connection to the Island, where teachers at Cowes High School helped spark his lifelong interest in maps and design.

He says some of his former art teachers were “so insightful in spotting a spark of interest in mapping and transport”.

Mark left the Isle of Wight in 1980 to pursue a career in design, music and broadcasting, going on to work for BBC Radio Solent, PowerFM, BBC Radio 1, Kiss102 and MTV.

His first book, Metro Maps of the World, was published by Penguin in New York in 2003 and became an international bestseller.

He has since written books on the Paris Metro and London Underground, with his works selling around a quarter of a million copies worldwide and being translated into several languages.

After almost four decades away, Mark returned to the Isle of Wight in 2019 to look after his mother and has remained living on the Island ever since.

He now also presents a weekly radio programme about transport and design on Vectis Radio, which is available as a podcast and has attracted an international audience.

His latest book continues his long-standing fascination with cartography, looking at how railway maps have not only provided practical information for passengers but have also developed into distinctive pieces of graphic design and cultural iconography.

The book examines the development of railway mapping before and after the creation of the now-famous London Underground diagram, while also considering how transport maps have become recognisable brands in their own right.

Co-author Andrew Smithers has been responsible for designing Britain's National Rail map in its various forms since 2009 and has also produced maps for Network Rail.

For Mark, however, the book's publication by the British Library provides a particularly satisfying link back to where his interest in maps first began.

And with the book currently topping several Amazon bestseller categories, his Isle of Wight story has now become part of a much bigger journey through Britain's railway history.