Travel under the streets of London with this lavishly illustrated exploration of abandoned, modified, and reused Underground tunnels, stations, and architecture.

This book is a timely assessment of a unique hybrid public body with a system of governance that once made London transport domestically popular and internationally admired: the London Passenger Transport Board.

Why is the Victoria Line so hot? What is an Electrical Multiple Unit? Is it really possible to ride from King's Cross to King's Cross on the Circle line? The London Underground is the oldest, most sprawling and illogical metropolitan transport system in the world, the result of a series of botch-jobs and improvisations.Yet it transports over one billion passengers every year - and this figure is rising. It is iconic, recognised the world over, and loved and despised by Londoners in equal measure. Blending reportage, humour and personal encounters, Andrew Martin embarks on a wonderfully engaging social history of London's underground railway system (which despite its name, is in fact fifty-five per cent overground). Underground, Overground is a highly enjoyable, witty and informative history of everything you need to know about the Tube.

Published in conjunction with TFL, this is a comprehensive guide to the London Underground, combining a historical overview, illustrations and newly commissioned photography.

Since its establishment 150 years ago as the world's first urban subway, the London Underground has continuously set a benchmark for design that many transit systems around the world - from New York to Tokyo to Moscow and beyond - have followed. London Underground by Design is the first meticulous study of every aspect of that feat. Beginning in the pioneering Victorian age, Mark Ovenden charts the evolution of architecture, branding, typeface, map design, interior and textile styles, posters, signage and graphic design and how all these came together to shape not just the identity of the Underground, but the character of London itself. This is the story of some of the most celebrated figures in design history - from Frank Pick, the guru who conceptualised the design of the modern Tube with his idea of 'design fit for purpose', to Harry Beck, the creator of the Tube map, and from Marion Dorn, one of the leading textile designers of the 20th Century, to Edward Johnston, creator of the distinctive font that bears his name. Rich with stunning illustrations, London Underground by Design shows that design is about more than aesthetic pleasure, but is crucial to how we get around.