Metro-Land (1973)

Directed by

Edward Mirzoeff

Genre

documentary film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

50 min

Rating

8.0 of 10 from 2 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A poet laureate visits suburban areas northwest of London that grew around a railway line. He travels with an old guidebook and reflects on the history and charm of these communities.

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What happens

Metro-land is a BBC documentary film written and narrated by the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Sir John Betjeman. The film was directed by Edward Mirzoeff, and first broadcast on 26 February 1973. The film celebrates suburban life in the area to the northwest of London that grew up in the early 20th century around the Metropolitan Railway (MR), later the Metropolitan line of the London Underground. "Live in Metro-land" was a slogan coined by the MR for promotional purposes in about 1915 and used for about twenty years until shortly after the incorporation of the MR into the railways division of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933. As Betjeman puts it at the beginning of Metro-land, it was a "Child of the First War, forgotten by the Second". Betjeman carries with him, as he travels, the pamphlet guide to Metro-land from the 1920s. The film was critically acclaimed and is fondly remembered. A DVD was released in 2006 to coincide with the centenary of Betjeman's birth. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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