Sean McCartney is Emeritus Professor of Accounting and Business History at Queen Mary, University of London. His research interests are mainly historical and have focused on two areas: (i) aspects of British industrial performance between the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the First World War, particularly the railway and canal sectors. His most recent paper (in Business History) is on the 'Railway Mania' of 1845-7; (ii) the performance of the rail industry in Britain since privatisation in the mid-1990s, in collaboration with John Stittle. The resulting papers form the basis of this book.

John Stittle was formerly a Senior Lecturer in Accounting at the University of Essex. He has authored a number of successful books on topics such as corporate reporting for non-accountants, financial reporting, and on improving the quality of annual corporate reports. In addition, he has written widely on financial and business issues in both academic and professional journals. In particular, he has written extensively on the privatised railway industry, which forms his main research interest. He is currently accounting columnist for Governance and Compliance, the journal of the Chartered Governance Institute.