London-Yorkshire Motorway
London to Hook Moor
The M1 is Britain's first full-length motorway and possibly its most iconic. It is also one of the most important, forming the main road north from London, serving the industrial East Midlands and the most populous areas of Yorkshire before handing the north-south baton to the A1(M) near Leeds.
Fancy a stroll? In 1972, the City of Leeds was about to open its new South East Urban Motorway and proudly showed off the achievement with a "walkabout" event.
Pictures taken as the first section of the M1 was being built in 1958-9, with all its unique architecture still under construction.
Nobody likes a concrete road. Promises have been made time and again to get rid of them all - but perhaps there’s another solution.
It was designed to warn drivers of bad weather. And it was bad weather that finally exposed it again, after decades under wraps.
In 1968, the Minister of Transport travelled up to Yorkshire to open a long length of the brand new M1. There was just one problem. Where was the cake?
A hugely destructive but largely forgotten urban motorway scheme, celebrated here by its architects in the book that marked its opening.
An update on Highways England's new orange emergency lay-bys.
Motorways used to be really simple. Now they have electronic signals, variable speed limits, emergency lay-bys, part-time hard shoulders... Just what is so smart about Smart Motorways?
It was the UK's only single-carriageway motorway, and twenty years ago it ceased to exist. This is the story of the strange fascination it held, and of my place in history.
The second part of the story, where we learn why exactly the M4 gets narrower on the final approach to Europe’s biggest city.
The M4 into London was one of the UK's earliest and most ambitious motorway projects. It was bold, pioneering... and almost instantly regretted.
We'd be lost without them, but there is nothing straightforward about the seemingly simple business of giving roads a number.
