by James Mottram
Jenny Agutter remembers precisely when she knew 1970’s The Railway Children had not been lost in the mists of time. Four years after shooting it, when she was 21, the British actress moved to Hollywood, during which time she made her mark in films like Logan’s Run and An American Werewolf in London. But it was only when she moved back to the UK after 17 years, just as she married her Swedish hotelier husband Johan Tham, that she realised this family film had become “an absolute classic”.
Based on E. Nesbitt’s book about the adventures of an Edwardian-era family, Agutter had starred in the 1968 BBC four-part TV adaptation before she was offered the chance to reprise her role of eldest child Bobbie in a feature version, directed by Lionel Jeffries.
In the intervening years, love blossomed for a film as English as wet weather and crumpets. “When I did an interview, the first thing I was asked was about The Railway Children,” she recalls, as we sit in London’s Savoy Hotel over tea.
Back when it was first proposed, Agutter had already shot Nicolas Roeg’s Australian classic drama Walkabout, playing a young girl traumatised in the Outback, in August 1969, and was uncertain about revisiting the role of Bobbie. “I nearly didn’t do The Railway Children. I said, ‘Well, I played that when I was 14. And I’ve just turned 17. And do I really want to be doing that?’”
Then she bumped into Jeffries in a restaurant, who introduced her to Dinah Sheridan – all set to play Bobbie’s mother Mrs Waterbury. “It was fait accompli.”
While The Railway Children was shot and released quickly in 1970 – six months before Walkabout finally premiered at the Cannes Film Festival – it was far from Agutter’s last association with Nesbit’s book.
In 2000, she played the mother role in a British TV remake, which also starred the legendary Sir Richard Attenborough. Again, affection remained strong for the story. “It has a quality about it that people love,” she reflects.
Which may account for why Agutter is now promoting The Railway Children Return, a sequel that sees her back as Bobbie, some 52 years on from when she played her last.
Directed by Morgan Matthews (x+y) and scripted by Danny Brocklehurst, The Railway Children Return brings audiences back to the Yorkshire village where the original took place.
The time is now 1944, amid the Second World War, and children are being evacuated, arriving at Oakworth – and the very same railway station where the Waterbury kids’ adventures took place all those years earlier. Agutter’s Bobbie, now with a daughter and grandson of her own, still lives there, as she welcomes in three young children into her home.
“I liked the link to The Railway Children because it did give it that sense of history,” says Agutter. “You could have done a story about railway children anywhere in the UK, about an adventure and kids in the Second World War. But doing that actually placed it, and made people think about what that original story did and was about – children, their adventures and wanting the world to be a better place. And here we are in the Second World War and these children wanting the world to be a better place. But they’re evacuees.”
Parallels to the first film abound, from Game of Thrones star John Bradley as the grandson of Bernard Cribbins’ beloved station porter Mr. Perks, to the evacuees’ plight reflecting Bobbie’s own childhood displacement. In the original, the Waterburys move to Yorkshire after their father is arrested on suspicion of being a spy; the children also meet an exiled Russian writer in search of his family. This time, the kids Lily (Beau Gadsdon), Pattie (Eden Hamilton) and Ted (Zac Cudby) discover an injured American soldier (KJ Aikens) who needs help.
According to Sheridan Smith, who plays Annie, Bobbie’s grown-up daughter, there was a hush of expectation when Agutter appeared on set. “Everyone turned out when Jenny arrived. It was gorgeous… our national treasure.”
For Agutter, 69, it was hugely emotional, as she experienced an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. “It’s coming back to a moment in time, and realising that something has passed, and yet being presented with it again,” she says. “It’s lovely to have a chance to repeat things, because you can revisit them in a completely different way.”
Curiously, the film even took her back full circle by reuniting her with Sir Tom Courtenay, cast here as the kindly Uncle Walter. They last co-starred in 1971, shortly after she made The Railway Children, when she performed on stage in George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man at the Manchester 69 Theatre Company. “I was 19. And there was nothing happening after The Railway Children in film. And I knew nothing about my career… I’d been to ballet school. So, I needed to learn something… because I was actually terrified of audiences and acting.”
While she credits Courtenay for helping her back then, Agutter is now vastly experienced. But that didn’t stop her wanting to talk to Sheridan Smith beforehand about their characters’ dynamic. “It was important to work out what that relationship might be. It’s going to be different because time has moved on. And your own children are not always exactly like you. The character Sheridan plays is much less positive about the world. What was interesting was to work out that we cared enormously about each other, but we had a different perspective on life.”
How will today’s generation of youngsters react to the sequel? “Children now… I think they’ll be more able to relate to these kids in 1944, than they will to 1905 [when the original was set],” she nods. “They might find it harder to identify with Edwardian children than with kids during the Second World War.” Especially with the current news about the war in Ukraine, adds Agutter, and the displacement many children are suffering. “When this started [production] that hadn’t come up, but they still were upset about the idea of being evacuees,” she adds. “It’s very important for kids to know.”
The Railway Children Return is in cinemas September 15, 2022