Down the tube - The battle for London's Underground

Christian Wolmar, Aurum Press, 246 pages, paperback, £9.99

Many books on transport would only appeal to a specialist (some might even say "anorak-wearing") audience. But Down the tube is of interest to the millions of London Underground users, its workers and anyone wanting to try and understand why the public private partnership (PPP) was chosen for its future, despite the evidence against it from rail privatisation.

Wolmar, a writer and broadcaster, uses an entertaining style to take the reader from the origins of the tube as separate lines funded by private and public money, to its takeover as a public corporation in the 1930s, through decades of under-investment, and on to the political intrigue around the choice of the PPP.

In one chapter he attempts to explain what the PPP actually is and clearly demonstrates the nightmarish complexity of a set-up whose documentation is 135 volumes and 2,800 pages long.

Initially open to persuasion over the PPP, Wolmar ends up with grave reservations over whether it will work. Among the many points against the scheme he shows that it will cost the taxpayer £1 billion annually; it has not been tried anywhere else in the world; and it has been opposed by virtually all independent experts who have examined it.