Overview

Metro-land is a BBC documentary film written and narrated by the then Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman. It was directed by Edward Mirzoeff and first broadcast on 26 February 1973. The film celebrates suburban life in the area to the north-west of London that grew up in the early 20th century around the Metropolitan Railway. "Metro-land" was the slogan coined by the railway for promotional purposes in about 1915 and used as such for about twenty years, until shortly after the incorporation of the Metropolitan into the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933. As Betjeman himself put it at the beginning of Metro-land, "Child of the First War, forgotten by the Second". Betjeman carries a pamphlet "Metro-land" from the 1920s proudly with him as he travels. The film was critically acclaimed and is fondly remembered today. A DVD was released in 2006 to coincide with the centenary of Betjeman's birth.