A lot of waffling, on and on about "Metro-land", and what the Metropolitan line means; this could have been great, but unfortunately, I crave other things. Maybe not my cup of tea at all, or maybe this book was just immensely tedious and pretentious in the worst sense of the word. ( )

A Good Parcel of English Soil is the first of the Penguin Lines series that I’ve actually read on a train. I can now understand how easy it is to read these small, light books when you’re on a train carrying the football and concert crowd. (You can also read it at intermission as it fits nicely in your handbag and is much cheaper than lining up at the bar). This was a lovely novella about the interaction of nature and transport, focusing on the Metroland promotion of the twentieth century to link the Metropolitan line with a rural life.

Richard Mabey is an excellent choice for this subject, given both his knowledge of nature and that he grew up very close to the ecotone – where the city meets the country. He reminisces about the field he grew up playing in between two housing estates in the area designated Metroland. This was an advertising campaign for the Metropolitan Railway who had shrewdly bought properties in the north west of London and then expanded the train route to there. This was so families could have the benefit of living in a rural, nature filled area with the convenience of being able to commute to London for work. Beautiful expanses of park land, birds, flowers, golf courses…Metroland had it all. It was also a way the poor could explore the countryside cheaply on the weekends. For Mabey’s family, it was a smart move that took them out of the path of the Blitz.

Mabey discusses the way that nature has absorbed the changes (the M25’s columns have ivy trailing over them) and how nature is returning to the city in the case of the red kite reintroduction to Metroland and beyond. It’s beautifully written and clearly demonstrates Mabey’s detailed eye for nature. I enjoyed this brief foray into Metroland which conjured images of an idyllic countryside rather than cramped train travel.

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This charming and informative little book is another in the Penguin series issued to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the opening of the London Underground. This particular volume covers the Metropolitan Line (the purplish/claretish one – I’m a simple country boy and am not very strong on my intermediates shades!) which stretches out from the city centre out into Buckinghamshire and the Chilterns.
Like a few others in the series, it does not confine itself to simple regurgitation of basic facts about the line. Indeed, the line itself plays a relatively small part in the book. Instead Mabey concentrates on the impact that the development of the line had on the area that was to become known as Metroland: after all, Mabey has made a notable career out of writing and broadcasting about the symbiotic relationship between society and nature. He offers and informed, though never overwhelming, depiction of the changes that settlement brought, and an intriguing insight into the consequences of encroachment by residential and industrial estates into scrubland.
I first encountered the term “Metroland” when reading Julian Barnes’s marvellous novel of that name, and was naïve enough to imagine that he had coined the term. Then I discovered the television programme that Sir John Betjeman made under that title for the BBC back in the early 1970s (coming shortly after his appointment as Poet Laureate). However, the term predates even that, and was used by the railway company itself to conjure up an Elysian image that awaited would-be dwellers in the hinterlands that the line would open up for commuters who chose to move to the outer reaches of Middlesex and beyond.
Mabey describes his own boyhood in those suburban areas, and his forays into the unkempt lands just beyond the newly settled areas. Surprisingly, when revisiting them several decades later, there is much that remained unchanged, though one positive development is the resurgence in the area of the red kite, reintroduced into the area by the RSPB and now soundly re-established as a regular part of the local fauna.
I have never really used the metropolitan line much apart from the occasional jaunt to a concert at Wembley, but I now feel tempted to strike out to Amersham or Rickmansworth (“Ricky” as Metrolanders apparently call it) over the weekend. ( )

Richard Mabey, one of England's most respected nature writers, was commissioned by Penguin to write this book for its Underground Lines series, in celebration of the London Underground's 150th anniversary in 2013. Mabey spent his childhood in Metro-land, a suburban area northwest of central London that was a creation of the Metropolitan Railway in the early 20th century. It was designed to attract city workers and their families to the benefits of pastoral life while making them dependent on the extended Metropolitan Line and the land the company purchased in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex.

Mabey provides a history of the Metropolitan Line, which began in 1863 as a link for city workers arriving at London's major railway terminals at Paddington, Euston and King's Cross stations, then spread outward after the company's owners realized that the poor and middle class residents of the city sought refuge out of the city to nearby villages and towns on weekends and holidays. Mabey aptly recalls his childhood in one of the Metro-land towns, and provides rich descriptions of the flora and fauna found there. Although the Metropolitan Railway bought the suburban land and created the towns of Metro-land for its own profit, most of those who relocated there did benefit from the move, as Mabey's family did when they escaped the London Blitz during World War II.

A Parcel of English Soil is a beautifully written and evocative book, which is easily one of the best of the Penguin Underground Lines series and one which would be appreciated by residents of suburban London as well as the casual reader. ( )

All about Metroland and how the Metropolitan Line destroyed countryside to enable Londoners to live in the country. Many references to John Betjeman's Metroland film and really interesting about the space which borders the town and the country - that in-between space. Pity some of the text was regurgitated in the April 2013 issue of BBC Wildlife. ( )