Penguin Underground Lines – review

You don’t have to live in London to be faintly obsessed by the Tube, but it probably helps. At this point I should state my bona fides: born in Great Ormond Street Hospital (nearest station: Russell Square), babyhood in Marylebone (Bakerloo line, originally to be called ‘Lisson Grove’), grew up in Hampstead (deepest station on the network with 320 steps down to the platform), and now live on the scabby side of Highgate, yards away from the disused overground line that once went to Finsbury Park. I am not a train-spotter as such, or even at all, but I do know to sit in the final carriage if I am getting out at Warren Street (that’s where the exit is) and that ‘Pimlico’ is the only station name that contains no letters from the word ‘badger’. You don’t want to be inside my head. I’m not sure I want to be.