Are Trams Socialist?
Are Trams Socialist?

Author: Christian Wolmar

Publisher: London Publishing Partnership

Published: 2016-05-20

Total Pages: 127

ISBN-13: 1907994580

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Transport is key to our daily lives. The transport system is essential to ensure the movement of people and goods, and most of us will use the roads or public transport every day. Vast sums are tied up in it and are spent on trying to resolve the problems of congestion and delays. And yet it is a most neglected field of politics. Britain has never had a coherent transport policy. Transport ministers are regarded as minnows compared with their ‘big beast’ colleagues in other ministries. Successive governments have barely attempted to get to grips with the challenge of getting people around efficiently and safely while limiting the environmental damage caused by transport. In this entertaining polemic, Christian Wolmar, an author and journalist who has written about transport for over two decades, explains why politicians have not addressed the crucial issue of balancing transport needs with environmental considerations. Instead, they have been seduced by the popularity of the car and pressure from the car lobby, and they have been sidetracked by dogma. Solutions are at hand – and successful examples can be seen elsewhere in Europe – but courage and clear thinking are needed if they are to be implemented.

Estates
Estates

Author: Lynsey Hanley

Publisher: Granta Books

Published: 2012-11-01

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1847088023

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Lynsey Hanley was born and raised just outside of Birmingham on what was then the largest council estate in Europe, and she has lived for years on an estate in London's East End. Writing with passion, humour and a sense of history, she recounts the rise of social housing a century ago, its adoption as a fundamental right by leaders of the social welfare state in the mid-century and its decline - as both idea and reality - in the 1960s and '70s. Throughout, Hanley focuses on how shifting trends in urban planning and changing government policies - from Homes Fit for Heroes to Le Corbusier's concrete tower blocks, to the Right to Buy - affected those so often left out of the argument over council estates: the millions of people who live on them. What emerges is a vivid mix of memoir and social history, an engaging and illuminating book about a corner of society that the rest of Britain has left in the dark.

A Visitor's Guide to Victorian England
A Visitor's Guide to Victorian England

Author: Michelle Higgs

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2014-02-12

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1473834465

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An “utterly brilliant” and deeply researched guide to the sights, smells, endless wonders, and profound changes of nineteenth century British history (Books Monthly, UK). Step into the past and experience the world of Victorian England, from clothing to cuisine, toilet arrangements to transport—and everything in between. A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England is “a brilliant guided tour of Charles Dickens’s and other eminent Victorian Englishmen’s England, with insights into where and where not to go, what type of people you’re likely to meet, and what sights and sounds to watch out for . . . Utterly brilliant!” (Books Monthly, UK). Like going back in time, Higgs’s book shows armchair travelers how to find the best seat on an omnibus, fasten a corset, deal with unwanted insects and vermin, get in and out of a vehicle while wearing a crinoline, and avoid catching an infectious disease. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book blends accurate historical details with compelling stories to bring alive the fascinating details of Victorian daily life. It is a must-read for seasoned social history fans, costume drama lovers, history students, and anyone with an interest in the nineteenth century.

Hidden London
Hidden London

Author: David Bownes

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0300245793

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

Railways, Urban Development and Town Planning in Britain: 1948–2008
Railways, Urban Development and Town Planning in Britain: 1948–2008

Author: Russell Haywood

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-23

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1317071646

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This book provides a critical overview of the relationships between planning and railway management and development during the key period in the 20th Century when the railway was in public ownership: 1948-94. It assesses the strength of the relationships when working in collaboration with the private sector. The book then focuses on the interplay between planning and railway since privatization in 1994 and points to best practice for the future in institutional structures and policy development to secure improved outcomes.

The Impact of the Railway on Society in Britain
The Impact of the Railway on Society in Britain

Author: A. K. B. Evans

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1351887831

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Jack Simmons, perhaps more than any other single scholar, is responsible for the advancement of the academic study of transport history. As well as being a co-founder of the Journal of Transport History, he wrote extensively on a variety of transport-related topics and was instrumental in developing the London Transport and the National Railway museums. Whilst his death in September 2000 at the age of 85 was a sad loss to the world of transport history, the achievements of his life, celebrated in this festschrift, remain a lasting legacy to succeeding generations of scholars in many fields. Concentrating on the theme of the railways, and how they dramatically affected the development of Britain and her society, this collection touches on numerous issues first highlighted by Professor Simmons which are now central to academic study. These include the men who built the railways, those who financed the enterprise, how the railways affected such everyday issues as tourism, the arts, and politics, as well as the lasting legacy of the railways in a country now dominated by the private car. This volume written by former friends, students and colleagues of Professor Simmons reflects these interests, and provides a fitting tribute to one of the truly great British historians of the twentieth century.

Respectable
Respectable

Author: Lynsey Hanley

Publisher:

Published: 2017-02-23

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780141040615

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"Society is often talked about as a ladder, from which you can climb from bottom to top. The walls are less talked about. This book is about how people try to get over them, whether they manage to or not. In autumn 1992, growing up on a vast Birmingham estate, the sixteen-year-old Lynsey Hanley went to sixth-form college. She knew that it would change her life, but was entirely unprepared for the price she would have to pay- to leave behind her working-class world and become middle class. In this empathic, wry and passionate exploration of class in Britain today, Lynsey Hanley looks at how people are kept apart, and keep themselves apart - and the costs involved in the journey from 'there' to 'here'."

The Railwaymen
The Railwaymen

Author: Philip S. Bagwell

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-30

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1000818217

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Originally published in 1982, The Railwaymen examines the impact of the transformation which took place in the British Railways in the second half of the 20th Century on the people who maintained British railway services and reveals the change which took place in the union to which most of them belonged: the National Union of Railwaymen (now part of the National Union of Rail and Maritime Transport Workers: RMT). The union’s reaction to the Beeching closures of the 1960s and the Industrial Relations Act of 1971, its policies on the closed shop, inter-union rivalries, representation in Parliament and the constitution of the Labour Party are treated authoritatively by the author who had access to all the union’s records.

Roads Were Not Built for Cars
Roads Were Not Built for Cars

Author: Carlton Reid

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2015-04-09

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1610916891

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In Roads Were Not Built for Cars, Carlton Reid reveals the pivotal—and largely unrecognized—role that bicyclists played in the development of modern roadways. Reid introduces readers to cycling personalities, such as Henry Ford, and the cycling advocacy groups that influenced early road improvements, literally paving the way for the motor car. When the bicycle morphed from the vehicle of rich transport progressives in the 1890s to the “poor man’s transport” in the 1920s, some cyclists became ardent motorists and were all too happy to forget their cycling roots. But, Reid explains, many motor pioneers continued cycling, celebrating the shared links between transport modes that are now seen as worlds apart. In this engaging and meticulously researched book, Carlton Reid encourages us all to celebrate those links once again.