Wikipedia
Metro-land (or Metroland) is a name given to the suburban areas that were built to the north west of London in the counties of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex in the early part of the 20th century that were served by the Metropolitan Railway (the Met). The Railway was in a privileged position allowing it to retain surplus land; from 1919 this was developed for housing by the nominally independent Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited. The term "Metro-land" was coined by the Met's marketing department in 1915 when the Guide to the Extension Line became the Metro-land guide. It promoted a dream of a modern home in beautiful countryside with a fast railway service to central London until the Met was absorbed into the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933.
Metro-Land is a BBC documentary film written and narrated by the then UK Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman. It was directed by Edward Mirzoeff and first broadcast on 26 February 1973. The film celebrates suburban life in the area to the Northwest of London that grew up in the early 20th century around the Metropolitan Railway (later the Metropolitan line of the Underground).
" Metro-land" was the slogan coined by the railway for promotional purposes in about 1915 and used for about twenty years, until shortly after the incorporation of the Metropolitan into the railways division of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933. As Betjeman himself put it at the beginning of Metro-land, it was a "Child of the First War, forgotten by the Second". Betjeman carries the pamphlet guide to Metro-land from the 1920s with him as he travels.
The film was critically acclaimed and is fondly remembered today. A DVD was released in 2006 to coincide with the centenary of Betjeman's birth.