After her retirement in 2007, Susan Major completed a PhD with the University of York, researching railway excursion crowds in the early Victorian period, leading to a book on this theme: Early Victorian Railway Excursions (Pen & Sword, 2015). This has now been translated for a Japanese edition (Hara Shobo, 2024).
Susan has featured in a number of TV programmes about Victorian railways: "Railways: the Making of a Nation" (BBC), Tony Robinson’s "History of Britain" (Channel 5), and "Secrets of the Railways" (UKTV). Her second book, Female Railway Workers in World War II (2018), drew upon interviews in the National Archive of Railway Oral History at the National Railway Museum.
Over the last ten years Susan has researched the history of her local area for the Clements Hall Local History Group in York, resulting in a series of five books to date, about Bishy Road, South Bank, Nunnery Lane, Clementhorpe and Bishophill. She is now leading a group of colleagues researching Micklegate for the next book. Over the last two years she has also been exploring the distinctive bricks used in local back alleys in York, and written a paper on this for the York Historian. Susan is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Created 4 February 2025