Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #208467 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 210 pages

Review

• Revised to include the Routemaster's Last Run on 9 December 2005
• A London best-seller- over 12,000 copies sold in hardback
• 'Elborough's book will please bus lovers... as well as cultural historians' Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Telegraph
• 'A charming account of the capital's enduring affair with its favourite piece of transport' Daily Mail
• 'This quirky book looks at the Routemaster in a completely different way to other publications relating to this iconic bus... a light-hearted read that will amuse as well as tell the story of one of London's best loved buses' Bus Fayre
• 'Elborough's love for the Routemaster bus and all who travel in her is unbounded' Magnus Mills, The Times

Bus Fayre
‘Quirky ...a light hearted read...that will amuse as well as tell the story of one of London’s best loved buses’

TLS
‘This well-told story is one that was worth telling’

Customer Reviews

Nostalgia Is Not What It Used To Be
This is not just a charming book, detailing in depth, the history of the Routemaster bus and all its forerunners (I'm an RLH and RF man myself), but it captures a piece of British history that is unique. Travis Elborough writes with biting humour and deep knowledge about most things important. Books, Music and Buses (of course). Even if you have no interest in the London Bus, this is a wonderful read. My first book of 2006; it may still be the best one by the end of the year.

One for the enthusiast
This was a very enjoyable read. At first I thought I was going to be disappointed with the lack of pictures and photos. There is not a lot of detail of route specifics but that is not what this book is about.
It is an in-depth look at how the Routemaster came about and provides a very good history of London's bus history which led to the Routemaster's birth and existance.
As one who grew up bus spotting in the 50's I can vouch for the accuracy of the details in the book and it bought back many happy memories.
The only fact I found missing was how London Transport developed the 8 foot wide RTW so that they could see if the soon-to-be Routemaster would be able to safely drive on London's narrow streets. All buses before had been seven and a half feet wide.

not even room upstairs for anoraks...
If anorak-clad notepad, pen and camera-sporting people huddled together at the end of a railway station platform are labeled train-spotters, I'd guess that similarly attired folk hanging around the local bus terminus should be labeled bus-spotters. Whatever, both groups are slightly suspect, shunned mildly by a society that's not sure if they're afflicted, dangerous, or simply just not normal. Whatever normal may be. Some accept them, some think they should be neutered to prevent reproduction, most just mock them openly...

I'm stereotyping, I think, but they really do all wear hand-knitted tank-tops, polyester trousers two inches too short over white socks and cheap grey shoes, National Health specs and have their annual hair cut at a seedy `anything for the weekend sir' gentleman's barber. And if they don't live at home with an elderly mother, they have a bride purchased from Asia, or maybe Russia or Poland...

Imagine then my fear when after taking the offered chance to drive a Routemaster bus I developed this irrepressible longing to learn more, a lot more, about what was to London what the Gondola is to Venice. I started out surfing the internet late at night, but remembering what happened to poor old Pete Townsend, and fearing that my activities could be being scrutinized in some way, Big Brother-style somewhere, stopped.

Plan B was to buy a book to satisfy my craving, and this is it, The Bus We Loved, published by Granta and written by Travis Elborough. Described by one reviewer as `what could be the first moorish bus book' and with the author himself almost apologetically (for fear of reprisal?) pointing out early on that it's not an anorak's book, it's not full of chassis and engine numbers, production dates and all that sort of stuff the spotters drool over. It's a little more cultural, it's almost social commentary, it's a taste of the times as much it is a history of this London icon.

So to a real spotter this book would probably be Nicorette not nicotine, methadone not heroine, and that's why I felt safe buying it. Although for fear of ridicule read it (10 minutes each morning) in the bathroom at home... It's great, it's a witty and light-hearted read that I'd whole-heartedly recommend to anybody even remotely interested in this iconic piece of road transport history. It probably isn't for anoraks, in fact I suspect they'd be a little disappointed at the almost total lack of anoraky stuff in its 192 pages.

As a negative, I did find the almost non-stop (express...) leap from 1968 (the year the last Routemaster rolled of the production line) to 2004 a bit of a surprise, but what bothered me most of all was when I'd finished the read I felt short-changed. I wanted to know more, I actually wanted some of those facts and figures, some of those anoraky things... Oh dear, as is so often the case, the Nicorette, the methadone, the substitute, no matter how good it may be, just didn't work. Help me somebody... Please...