Londons Country Buses

John Anthony Gray

ISBN 10: 0711009635 / ISBN 13: 9780711009639

Edité par Ian Allan, 1980

London?s Country Buses (1980) ? John Anthony Gray Ian Allan ? ISBN: 0711009635 ? Condition: Good ? Offered by Crappy Old Books Welcome to the green bits beyond the red map?where London politely ends, hedgerows begin, and buses wear country colours because camo for timetables is a thing. In London?s Country Buses , John Anthony Gray guides you through the post-war provinces of London Transport?s Country Area with the calm assurance of a conductor who?s already punched your ticket and knows exactly where the pub stop is. This is the story of the other London: the one of A-roads with opinions, bus stops named after inns that closed in 1952, and routes that flirt with counties as if boundaries were merely suggestions. Expect RTs that handled lanes like ballroom floors, RFs that tucked into villages with a wink, and Green Line coaches gliding through suburbia with the smugness of punctual upholstery. Destination blinds roll like epic poetry: Reigate, Amersham, Gravesend, Epping ?each a chapter heading in the great saga of ?We?ll get you there, eventually, via somewhere picturesque.? Gray writes with measured affection and an archivist?s knack for making allocation tables feel like gossip. He dishes on depots that smelt of oil and elderflower, schedules that feared neither drizzle nor Sunday roast, and the quiet heroism of fare stages that always arrived two stops after you?d started doubting them. Maps unfold like treasure; photographs show buses posing rakishly against flint churches and baffled geese; captions dry enough to be served with tonic water. There?s design talk (moquette that implies restraint), engineering chat (gearboxes that preferred gentle persuasion to brute force), and the sort of operational minutiae that turns a casual reader into someone who mutters ?406 to Epsom? the way others recite poetry. You?ll meet inspectors with pocket watches and expressions carved from timetable stone; conductors who could make change in a gale; drivers who knew which hawthorn snagged mirrors and which vicar waved you through. There are terminus lay-bys with theatrical ambitions, request stops with existential crises, and country lanes that demanded second gear, patience, and occasional negotiation with livestock. It?s transport history as pastoral noir : all soft horizons, decisive bells, and the occasional moral quandary about whether that field is, in fact, a turning circle. Condition: Good , which here translates to ?ready for service without needing a full overhaul.? The binding is straight as a driver?s back on test, pages are clean with a respectable fleck of patina, and the cover shows the sort of light shelfwear you?d expect from a volume that has done more gentle mileage than a Green Line on a bank holiday. If a dust jacket is present, it?s earned its scuffs honestly; if not, the boards retain the unembarrassed dignity of a bus in depot, sans adverts. At Crappy Old Books , we have not resprayed it in heritage livery. No laminating. No faux-vintage bookmarks. Just a straightforward Good copy of a wonderfully specific obsession. Read a chapter and you?ll find yourself planning a pilgrimage to a bus garage that is now, tragically, luxury flats with ironic signage. Read two and you?ll begin rating country corners by their RT-turnability . By the final page, you will have opinions on blind layout spacing and a sudden, fierce need to say ?ding-ding? before standing up. File under: rural choreography , metropolitan edges , the geometry of timeliness . Park it next to your maps, your thermos, and your belief that civilisation is defined by whether the last bus still runs after dusk. Then tell your friends what Gray quietly proves: in the green belt between memory and mileage, London is at its most London. N° de réf. du vendeur 4747

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Londons Country Buses
Éditeur : Ian Allan
Date d'édition : 1980
Reliure : Hardback
Etat : Good
Etat de la jaquette : Jaquette