Liverpool Street Station (6)

In honour of the incipient campaign to preserve Liverpool Street Station, I bought Simon Jenkins’s excellent guide to Britain’s 100 Best Railway Stations, published in 2017 and still easily available. Liverpool Street is up there with five stars, equal to Paddington, King’s Cross and St. Pancras (and Bristol and Wemyss Bay). He gives a fascinating account of the 1970s campaign to save it, Betjeman to the fore, and the way it was restored and developed in the 1980s with sensitivity to its history. We seem to have to re-learn these lessons each generation, particularly now there are so many good environmental reasons for preservation instead of more new office development. Jenkins is unusual in having lived through these battles in the 1970s, apparently as Betjeman’s chauffeur, and still influential. It looks like there will be another battle.

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