The Station in Popular Culture
- In the Neil Gaiman novel Neverwhere the main character, Richard Mayhew, a Londoner, protests that there is no British Museum Station - only to be proved wrong when the train he is on stops there.
- The station was mentioned in the 1972 horror film Death Line, but contrary to popular belief, it is not the station portrayed in the film as being the home of a community of cannibals descended from Victorian railway workers. The cannibals venture out at night to snatch travellers from the platforms of operating stations and take them back to their gruesome 'pantry' at an incomplete station. Donald Pleasence stars as the investigating police inspector, and when finally cornered, one of the cannibals screams a corrupted form of "Mind the doors!", obviously having picked it up parrot-fashion from the guards on the Underground trains. The station in question is named simply 'Museum' and is clearly stated as being 'between' Holborn and British Museum stations in a conversation between Pleasance's character and a colleague. It is supposedly part of a completely separate line that was not completed owing to the construction company going bankrupt. Signs in the abandoned station also only state 'Museum' as the name.
- The station did feature in the Bulldog Drummond spin-off film Bulldog Jack (not a Sherlock Holmes film, as some sources claim), as the location reached by a secret tunnel leading from the inside of a sarcophagus in the British Museum. The villain (Ralph Richardson) was finally cornered and forced into a sword duel on the disused platforms, which were a studio set. The station was renamed 'Bloomsbury' in the film.
- The station briefly featured in the computer game Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror, in which Nico Collard escapes from the British Museum and finds the station. She then manages to stop the passing trains. The station in the game, however, is depicted as having its exit actually inside the British Museum itself. A station named 'Museum' also features in the earlier game Beneath a Steel Sky, by the same company, but the apparent Australian setting for the latter game, as well as its proximity to a station named 'St James' suggests this is actually Museum railway station, Sydney.
- The station is mentioned in the novel Tunnel Vision by Keith Lowe. It mentions that a restaurant is on the site of the old station, of which there is nothing left.
- The station appears in 'Pornography' by Simon Stephens. A brother takes his sister there saying, 'It's for the British Museum. It's not been used for sixty years. They closed it because there was no need of it any more. With Holborn and Tottenham Court Road.' The sister says, 'You can imagine the people... Standing there.'
- The station is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh called Amen-Ra which would appear and scream so loudly that the noise would carry down the tunnels to adjourning stations.
Read more about this topic: British Museum Tube Station
Famous quotes containing the words station, popular and/or culture:
“Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of Man what see we, but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Thro’ worlds unnumber’d tho’ the God be known,
‘Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“The best of us would rather be popular than right.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)