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With around a billion passengers a year, more than 250 miles of track, literally hundreds of stations and a history stretching back nearly 150 years, the world’s oldest underground railway is a familiar place to those who use it daily - but actually how well do they know it?
Did you know, for example, that regular Tube commuters can experience greater levels of stress than a police officer facing a rioting mob or a jet pilot going into a dogfight?
Did you know that feral pigeons frequently travel by train into central London because they know the pickings are richer ‘up west’ than in the suburbs?
Do you know how many babies have been born on the Underground, that William Gladstone and Dr Barnardo are the only two dead people ever granted permission to travel on its trains, or what happened when someone got off the train leaving behind 250 lbs of sultanas?
Can you name 10 celebrity buskers, or 65 stations immortalised in song - and another 22 on film - or indeed identify the name of the station the layout of which provided the location for a key scene in Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans?
Whether you’re a commuter or a train buff, a first-time visitor or a live-in London junkie – or just a friend of someone who is and once again you’re stuck for ideas as to what to buy them for Christmas – THE LITTLE BOOK OF THE LONDON UNDERGROUND is David Long’s fourth volume on the capital and as rich a compendium of essential trivia, bizarre facts and irresistible lists of nonsense as has been published this year.
FIND OUT:
- Why mosquitoes on the Underground never socialise.
- How to avoid the stations with the rudest staff.
- Where to stand to improve your chances of getting a seat.
- What not to do to annoy your fellow passengers.
- Who it is telling you to ‘Mind the Gap’ and
- When it’s best not to let the train take the strain
DISCOVER WHAT HAPPENED WHEN:
- Someone attempted to ski down the escalator at Angel.
- The lift at Hampstead plummeted 180’ to the bottom of the shaft.
- The great engineer Brunel started fiddling about with worms.
- Bankers tried to outrun the trains instead of just running them, and
- Somebody bought four disused carriages and stuck them on his roof.