While Traffic in Towns predicted the end of transport cycling the cycle touring Ernest Marples – who had done so much to encourage motoring and therefore knew what it takes to boost a transport mode – said in 1968: “There is a great future for the bicycle if you make the conditions right.

However in the late 80s with the rail union’s neutered, British Rail operated with the lowest subsidy per passenger mile of any national railway system in the 1st world.Before becoming Transport Minister he was chairman of Marples Ridgway, a construction company engaged in road building amongst other activities. Marples would only be liable for Capital Gains Tax at 30 per cent on the transfer to Vin which, as an offshore company, would only be liable for stamp duty at 2 per cent.

By today’s standards, Marples was a wholly inappropriate choice as Minister of Transport, with his interests in road construction convincing his critics that a modern electrified rail network had little chance of being realised.

When Heath formed his government in 1970, there was no place for Ernest Marples and he was relegated to the backbenches. He held various junior ministerial posts in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, 1951-4, and the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, 1954-5, before becoming Postmaster-General, 1957-9, and Minister of Transport, 1959-64.

The Minister of Housing, Harold Macmillan, later attributed his ascent to the premiership as being greatly facilitated by Ernest Marples. At the time of Marples' appointment as Transport Minister, railways, canals and road freight transport were all overseen by a single body, the British Transport Commission (BTC).

Was a railway network really necessary in the post-war world when newer technology such as the internal combustion engine offered a viable alternative? Perhaps Marples is most infamous for appointing Dr Beeching to British Railways with a brief of devising a profitable railway network. Any discussion of the report can arouse strong emotions: was Beeching a villain who took away the train-set (that nobody used) or a hero who forced British Rail to think about profitability?

Shortly after he became a junior minister in November 1951, Marples resigned as managing director of Marples Ridgway but continued to hold some 80% of the firm's shares. You had Jeremy Corbyn stirring things up, but he was seen as very unlikely PM material and doomed to fail, t he did come close to winning the 2017 election. It was in these posts that Marples revealed a penchant for self-publicity, but he was also seen by his colleagues as a man of action. I dare say that elements of the Beeching plan needed to be carried out, but many parts of it didn’t.The only reason why I have the temerity to stand on my feet now as an Englishman is that I was a regimental sergeant major in the London Scottish. The book does not sensationalise his connection with civil engineering company, Marples Ridgeway, but follows his time at Housing the Post Office, then Transport, as the railways seem to have taken a back seat to roads. Like it or not, car ownership boomed when Marples was Transport Secretary and buses were also posing a threat to the railways, as they were cheaper to run and able to serve more areas than a railway line. People who had voted Labour in the hope of stopping the railway closure programme were soon disappointed.