The London Ringways were a set of urban motorways planned for London in the 1960s and 1970s. They would have been the largest civil engineering project since the war - and cost between 60,000 and 100,000 people their homes. They would have devastated the environment and turned London into a car dominated city. This is the first full-length history of the Ringways; what they were, where they would have gone - and how Londoners fought them off. Wayne Asher is a former journalist turned IT manager. His first book - A Very Political Railway - examined the near death and rebirth of the North London Line.

The North London Line from Richmond to Broad Street, and later, to Stratford was the capital's Cinderella railway for many years. An official report in 2006 called it 'shabby, unsafe, unreliable and overcrowded.' It was threatened with closure under the Beeching Axe in the 1960s and again in the 1970s, escaping on both occasions due to organised and effective protest groups. Today it thrives as a key part of Transport for London's Overground network, and the story of how it survived closure threats and lack of investment is essential to an understanding of the politics of public transport in London over the past half century