The Art of the London Underground
- Episode aired Mar 1, 1987
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Melvyn Bragg: Hello. Tonight's South Bank Show is set entirely on, or in, the London Underground Railway. The Underground's a real place, it's got 250 stations, and 250 miles of track. But it's not an everyday means of transport we're going to look at tonight. Instead, our film explores a labyrinth of tunnels and lost tube stations. This one, Wood Lane, the BBC's over the road, was closed in 1947. The Underground of the imagination is what tonight's film is about. From the age of steam, when Sherlock Holmes solved a murder on the Metropolitan Line, through to the present day poetry of Seamus Heaney. Writers, painters, poets and musicians have used the Underground as a setting. Each age has it's own perspective. Victorians were impressed with the power of electricity. In the 20's and 30's, the artists who designed posters saw it as a people's picture gallery. During the war, it was a symbol of resistance. It's through this subterranean world, a place of mystery and surprise, that we're going to travel in Tony Knox's film.
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