In Popular Culture
The BBC TV comedy series Oh, Doctor Beeching!, which ran from 1995–1997, was set in a small fictional branch line railway station threatened with closure under the Beeching Axe.
Flanders and Swann, writers and performers of satirical songs, wrote a lament for lines closed by the Beeching Axe entitled "Slow Train". Michael Williams' book On the slow train takes its name from the Flanders and Swann song. It celebrates 12 of the most beautiful and historic journeys in Britain some of which were saved from the Beeching axe. It did however perpetuate the myth that the Beeching Cuts were concerned solely with sleepy rural branch lines. The truth was that many Beeching Cuts concerned well-used "industrial" and commuter lines.
In the satirical magazine Private Eye, the column on railway issues, "Signal Failures", is written under the pseudonym "Dr. B. Ching" as a reference to the report.
The lyrics of the I Like Trains song "The Beeching Report" are a criticism of Dr Beeching and the Beeching Axe.
Read more about this topic: Beeching Cuts
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)