1940 An original Vintage LONDON UNDERGROUND LINES Folding Pocket Map published by Johnson, Riddle & Co Ltd, London on behalf of London Transport. Size approx 23cm x 15.5cm with 2 folds as issued. Condition is excellent.

This edition of the Underground map is by Hans Schleger (who went under the pseudoynm of "Zero"). The lines are all shown in the same colour. Highgate Station is noted as 'from summer 1940 only'. The map continues to show as under construction the "New Works Plan" (Northern Heights project) to take over the ex-GNR line between Finsbury Park and Edgware and High Barnet, including the Alexandra Palace branch. These were to be incorporated into the Northern Line with a new connection with the Northern City line at Finsbury Park, and an extension from Edgware to Bushey Heath. The project was abandoned at the onset of World War 2 and never restarted, though these lines continued to be shown as under construction until 1950. The Central Line extension to the west is shown as being under construction as far as Denham (though it eventually was only completed as far as West Ruislip), and to Ongar in the east. The map includes the "Middle Circle", an underground train line using the West London Railway between Latimer Road and Earls Court, passing through Uxbridge Road and Addison Road. The line closed in 1940 following bomb damage. It was not reopened until 2008 as part of the Overground network.

Hans Schleger (1898-1976). In 1932, he moved to England, continuing to work for Crawford's. He became an integral part of London's early 1930s avant-garde design community, and helped spread the aesthetics and philosophy of modernism in Britain. Among his most well known work is the London Transport bus-stop sign, which was commissioned in 1935 by Frank Pick, and is still in use today, largely unchanged from the original. In 1939 he became a naturalized British citizen, and during World War II designed posters for the War Office and Ministry for Food, and for the London Passenger Transport Board, including posters for the Dig for Victori campaign. His work was included in the Britain Can Make It exhibition held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 1946.