When the fabled Orient-Express train, which had carried the rich and the famous across Europe in superb style for nearly a century, was taken out of service in 1977, James B. Sherwood bought two of its 1920s luxury sleeping cars at auction.

He then spent $31 million meticulously restoring the 'world's most celebrated train', which was relaunched in 1982 running along the original route of the Simplon-Orient-Express from London and Paris to Venice.

Sherwood, known as 'the father of container leasing', made his first fortune from the Sea Containers company that he started in 1965. The purchase of the Hotel Cipriani in 1976 and the Orient-Express carriages a year later marked his entry into an entirely new business which became Orient-Express Hotels with fifty exceptional properties in twenty-four countries.

Product Information:
• ISBN: 9781849541879
• Author: James B. Sherwood
• Publisher: The Robson Press
• Format: Hardback
• Pages: 388
• Dimensions: 24 x 17 x 4cm