Boook 53 - Christian Wolmar "The Subterranean Railway"

[jazzy_dave]

Christian Wolmar "The Subterranean Railway" (Atlantic Book)





I was looking for a book about the London Underground, which would give me a broad overview of its history and development. This book fitted the bill.

Wolmar does a good job of describing the early years of the Underground, carefully charting how it developed and the history behind it. It succeeds in conjuring up a strong sense of what it would have been like in those days and the obstacles the developers had to overcome in order to get the system built.

Unfortunately, all of the last sixty years, the post-war period, is condensed into the last chapter. The author makes the point that not a huge amount happened in this period, but it definitely feels that the author had had enough and just wanted to get the book finished. There's a lot of history to fit in, in just over 300 pages, but I think a little bit more could have been spent on the more recent period.


If you're looking for a readable introduction to the history of the London Underground, then I'm sure you could do much worse than this book.