London And Its Buses Then And Now

If you’ve ever stood at a bus stop and thought, “This is all fine, but I’d like to compare this exact scene to how it looked decades ago, preferably while feeling faintly superior about the past,” then London and Its Buses Then and Now (1994) by Ian Cowley is basically your carefully validated personality trait in book form.

This is the irresistible “then-and-now” formula applied to one of London’s greatest constants: the bus. Because while buildings rise and fall, streets get widened, landmarks get wrapped in scaffolding for ten years straight, and entire neighbourhoods reinvent themselves as “vibrant quarters,” the bus just keeps turning up, sighing at the kerb, and carrying on. Cowley’s book lets you watch that stubborn continuity play out across time — paired images and comparisons that show what London looked like, what changed, and what somehow refused to budge.

The joy here isn’t only the vehicles (though yes, they’re excellent). It’s the setting. London is a famously restless city, forever renovating itself, and this book captures the strange emotional punch of seeing a familiar place as it used to be: a junction before the tower block, a street before the glass frontage, a stop before the “temporary diversion” that becomes permanent. Add buses to the mix and you get something even better — the sense of everyday life preserved in motion. Not grand history with trumpets, but ordinary Londoners going somewhere, doing things, being late, being damp, being London.

And of course, this is Ian Allan, which means the bus content is not merely decorative. The photos aren’t just “look, a bus!” but “look, a bus, in context, doing what it did, wearing the livery of its time, with the sort of detail that makes transport enthusiasts quietly beam.” Even if you’re not the kind of person who knows models and fleet numbers, you’ll still feel the pull. It’s hard not to. There’s something deeply satisfying about watching the evolution — the shapes, the signage, the city itself — like a slow documentary you can hold in your hands.

This book is also a gentle reminder that nostalgia is sneaky. You might start flipping through out of mild curiosity and end up thinking things like, “They don’t make street corners like that anymore,” or “That shopfront had more character,” or “I bet that bus was warmer in winter.” (It wasn’t. But nostalgia doesn’t care.)

Condition: Good — perfect for a book that’s meant to be dipped into, shown to friends, used as a conversation starter, and revisited when you want ten minutes of effortless time travel without leaving the sofa. It’s sturdy, browseable, and ready for another round of “Oh wow, look at that” followed by an unnecessary deep sigh about modern life.

Sold by Crappy Old Books, because we know the truth: you don’t have to be a transport obsessive to love this. You just have to be the kind of person who enjoys watching London change — and secretly likes the idea that, through it all, a bus was still there, patiently waiting at the stop like it always has.

Keep browsing: See more Transport books Other books by Ian Cowley