Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter One The Kingdom of Shadows: the infernal underground of George Gissing
- Chapter Two The Utopian Underground of H. G. Wells
- Chapter Three ‘The Roar of the Underground Railway’: the making of the Tube in the interwar years
- Chapter Four The Kingdom of Individuals: safety and security on the Tube in the Second World War
- Conclusion From Beck's Tube map to Becks on the Tube
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter Four - The Kingdom of Individuals: safety and security on the Tube in the Second World War
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter One The Kingdom of Shadows: the infernal underground of George Gissing
- Chapter Two The Utopian Underground of H. G. Wells
- Chapter Three ‘The Roar of the Underground Railway’: the making of the Tube in the interwar years
- Chapter Four The Kingdom of Individuals: safety and security on the Tube in the Second World War
- Conclusion From Beck's Tube map to Becks on the Tube
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Still the walls do not fall,
I do not know why;
H. D., ‘The Walls Do Not Fall’When Henry Moore completed his Shelter Sketchbooks in 1940–41, he had created a vision of the capital—unparalleled in underground writing—that unified the subterranean world and the streets. His work echoes the prints and photographs of the building of the Metropolitan Railway in the Victorian period by showing people on Tube platforms, but now the people of the city are no longer just spectators. The trains have disappeared completely from Moore's drawings, leaving the people centre stage. Moore was not alone in his creation of what has been called an ‘abiding city’ in wartime. Many of the parallels of wartime London are expressed through its Tube system: first, the underground continued to provide London with a functioning transit system which was less subject to the disruptions caused by bombing that often disabled both public and private transport systems at street level. It acted as a unifier of the metropolis during the various phases of the Blitz, linking the city together in a way that offered continuity and stability to a population under siege. Secondly, the underground played a key role as shelter for around four per cent of London's population with up to 177,000 people sheltering during the worst phases of the Blitz.
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- Information
- Underground WritingThe London Tube from George Gissing to Virginia Woolf, pp. 221 - 267Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2010