The London Tube's Cultural Moment

London’s subway system is getting a rare moment in the cultural spotlight. As the 150th anniversary of the sprawling, antique and often criticized London Underground rolls on, Penguin is publishing a set of 12 new books, each one explicitly connected to a different line of the system. From John Lanchester exploring the secrets of the Victorian District Line, to men's fashion magazine Fantastic Man examining the East London Line's (tenuous) connection with buttoned-up shirts, the new series is an eclectic mix that reflects Londoners' love/hate relationship with the network.

For someone like me with a lifelong, nerdish love of what British people call the Tube, the celebration is overdue. Bar a few wonderful exceptions, the arts have rather ignored the Tube (as John Lanchester himself pointed out this weekend), while the few exceptions –the odd Sherlock Holmes story featuring murder on the line or punk hit about subterranean muggings – generally paint it in rather gothic terms