Following their companion volume on the Streets and Lanes of Midland Red, authors Malcolm Keeley and Roger Torode turn their attention to the operating area of Birmingham City Transport in this carefully compiled album of images of the city and its surroundings in the middle of the-20th Century.

These two well-known transport authors are on home territory, working together to review the highly varied routes of Midland Red - arguably the most innovative bus company in the UK and famous for designing and building its own fascinating buses for nearly fifty years. This new book is an album with detailed captions to around 200 quality photos of the vehicles that ran with the operator during its history up to absorption by the National Bus Company.

The bus service we now have in London results from the momentous events described in this book. Many people consider these events to have been a necessary series of steps to get to where we are today. London Transport changed from a monolithic state owned bus operator to a tendering authority with competing operators owning buses and employing front-line staff to run a public service. It is a very political story. The early stages were at a time when a radical Conservative government was determined to bring great change. Privatisation became one of their key policies, and what happened in London has been unique, as deregulation of buses in the rest of the country has brought a very different set of experiences.