ON September 15, 1830, the first purpose-built passenger railway was officially opened - and the first man was knocked down and killed by a locomotive.

That man was statesman William Huskisson. His story and that of the Liverpool-Manchester railway is told in a new book, The Last Journey of William Huskisson, currently being serialised on Radio Four.

Although Huskisson spent most of his political career as MP for Liverpool, his early years were spent in the shadow of the Malvern Hills.

William Huskisson was born in 1770 at Birtsmorton Court. Here he was brought up with his brothers, until the death of their mother led to them being removed to relatives in the Wolverhampton area.

As a teenager, he was taken to Paris for tutoring and thus became embroiled in the French Revolution, witnessing the destruction of the Bastille in 1789.

Huskisson became Tory MP for Morpeth and then Chichester, before being elected one of two MPs for Liverpool in 1823. As the local MP, he was naturally involved in the development of the Liverpool-Manchester railway and was invited to its opening.

The building of the line and its locomotives was one of the greatest engineering feats to date. So it was natural that luminaries of all sorts were invited, including the Prime Minister and the Duke of Wellington, with whom Huskisson had had a disastrous falling-out a few years previously.

The great and the good were taken in a train along the line and, when it halted part way through the journey, Huskisson stepped down to shake the hand of the Duke, who was in the next carriage, in the hope of burying the hatchet.

But George Stephenson's Rocket was approaching on the next line and Huskisson was struck and terribly wounded as the engine ran over his leg. He died later than night.

The Last Journey of William Huskisson, by Simon Garfield, is published by Faber and Faber, at £14.99.