And, under the aegis of Frank Pick (1878-1941), the Lord Reith of the railways, they pulled out all the stops.
Today, 58 of the stations they built are listed. David Lawrence, a 33- year old illustrator and “workroom manager for a clothing manufacturer in the West End” has spent the past five years recording this overlooked heritage in all its rich variety and understated glory.Underground Architecture, the fruit of his diligence, is a book that deserves an audience much broader than that of transport buffs who will, nevertheless, find it as gripping as church crawlers do John Betjeman’s Guide to English Parish Churches.Lawrence’s story, not that he says so, ranks with the development of the Georgian terraced house or the formation of Fighter Command: from modest beginnings to a greatness admired worldwide. Arnos Grove station represents an England that produced Bloomsbury squares and the Spitfire as well as the world’s first underground railway in 1863.What extraordinary people those Underground men were. Leslie Green, who designed the distinctive ox-blood Art Nouveau stations at, for example, South Kensington, died in 1908; he was just 33, yet had built no fewer than 40 stations in a truly meteoric career.In 1900, Sidney Smith (architect of the Tate Gallery) shoehorned a concourse for the City & South London Railway’s Bank station into the crypt of Hawksmoor’s St Mary Woolnoth (1727), ingeniously saving this Baroque masterpiece from demolition.Charles Holden gave us nothing less than pure genius in his Piccadilly Line stations. He accepted no honours for his achievement, but nor, of course did Frank Pick.

Pick – lawyer, businessman, public servant and visionary – refused all handles to his blunt, two-syllable name, yet was the greatest patron of art and design in Britain this century. When he left London Transport in 1940 to run the Ministry of Information under Duff Cooper, he refused Churchill’s insistence that public information films should tell lies. “Can you tell me that you have never lied, Mr Pick?”, asked the Prime Minister. “Frank Pick”, relates Duff Cooper, “was the one man who could honestly say that he hadn’t.” When Pick left Number 10, Churchill turned to Cooper, saying “who will rid me of this impeccable busman?”Pick ran the buses too; his job was to integrate London’s public transport network, not to break it into pieces as petulant politicians have done in recent years. The bus station he commissioned from Oliver Hill at Newbury Park (completed 1949) remains quite unforgettable, perhaps even to motorists snarling nose-to-tail along the adjacent A12.Pick and Holden brought together artists, designers, typographers and engineers to create an urban architecture of great refinement throughout the capital. No artwork was ever applied like wallpaper, no material used crudely: just look at the brickwork of Holden’s Piccadilly Line stations, a clear legacy of the Arts & Crafts.

The trains and buses that met them were all designed to match the look set by the stations.In later years, Underground design, as Lawrence’s encyclopaedic, yet non-judgemental book shows, has owed more to wallpaper than to fundamental considerations of space, light and purpose.Most recently – and despite risible budgets – London Underground design has improved after years in the doldrums; a little slick, perhaps, but the new station at Angel (London Transport architects, 1992) is clear in concept and free from slapstick decorative detritus. The bold stations commissioned from architects as diverse as Sir Norman Foster & Partners, Alsop & Stormer and MacCormac Jamieson Prichard for the Jubilee Line extension from Charing Cross to Stratford represent a confident – and even bravura – leap into a future where public transport has begun to regain its place in a public imagination clouded by thoughts of pollution and cities grinding to a halt.From mid-19th century Baroque, through the creative peaks of the Thirties and on to the airport-lounge style design of recent years, Underground architecture maps and mirrors our changing attitude not just to civic architecture, but to the value of public transport.`Underground Architecture’ (Capital Transport, £25). “it’s a shame we’re going to miss Beavis and Butthead,” says a girl standing in the queue for the security check Oh, the ingratitude of it. There you are, a mere 45 minutes away from being an audience member of The Word, the show that people have snogged 71-year-old grannies to appear on, and your mind is on other programmes. If you find yourself queuing outside Teddington Studios on a cold February night then you should thank your lucky stars. Many call, or write, or fill in questionnaires, but few – so the story goes – are chosen.

From the first edition in August 1990 to the 100th tonight, there has always been a certain mystique surrounding the Word audience. If the programme was immediately derided as live TV at its schlockiest, then it was its rough assemblage of yoof, dressed up and jostling for the cameras, that was partly to blame.
And if the viewing figures subsequently made the critics eat their proverbials, then it was partly thanks to said yoof’s penchant for shouting at the guests. The Word crowd is a minor celebrity in its own right, but where do the producers dig it up?”There is so much focus on the audience, that we have to be selective,” Julie Dunne, The Word’s audience co-ordinator, confessed prior to show No 99. Every week she scours clubs and venues looking for Word types. Of a total audience of 350, 150 will comprise followers of the week’s three bands – either from fan clubs or hand-picked at gigs. Then there are 50 who are coached in from a randomly-selected town.