Twenty Turbulent Years

by Peter Rowlands and Stewart J Brown

I’ve always had a keen interest in passenger transport, and Twenty Turbulent Years stems from that interest. It’s my first ever book in this field, and was published in 2022. It’s a collaboration with a noted writer on the subject, Stewart J Brown, and for once my primary role was one of photographer rather than author; I took the pictures in it myself (over 275 of them), and did the photo editing. Quite an ego trip! I wrote some of the text too, but Stewart wrote the lion’s share of it, bringing his encyclopaedic knowledge and instinctive wit to bear.

The subject is the massive transformation seen in Britain’s bus industry between 1980 and 2000. Public ownership of buses, common in one guise or another at the start of the period, had almost disappeared by the end of it. Privatisation had swept it away.

It was a troubled time, marked by the closure of many bus manufacturers, but it was also a spectacularly colourful one, reflecting the creation of new bus operators and bright, imaginative fleet liveries. Not all stayed the course, and the visual exuberance didn’t survive the emergence of big new bus groups, but for a while it brought an exhilarating new feel to the industry.

About this book – and how to buy it

Twenty Tubulent Years is a 144-page hardback book printed on high-quality paper and published by Fawndoon Publishing, a small specialist publishing business. It is available from selected UK booksellers, or can be ordered direct from the publisher. 

It measures 250mm x 215mm, its ISBN is 978-0-9934831-5-8, and it is priced at £30.

Click here to go to the book page on the Fawndoon web site, where you can buy it.

My life in transport photography

Over the years I’ve been paid to photograph trucks and freighting as well as write about these things. Bus photography is an unpaid sideline that grew out of that work and blossomed into a lifelong interest. My most active period was from 1980 to 2000, and for me Twenty Turbulent Years is a celebration of the pictures I took back then, and an opportunity to share them with the world. But for readers I hope it’s much more. Stewart Brown’s well-judged narrative, with occasional interpolations from me, brings life to the images, giving perspective to the UK’s bus industry story and reflecting the extraordinary changes that were going on at that time.

Where are the buses in my novels?

If you’re wondering where to look for buses in my mystery novels, the answer is that you won’t find many. I’ve drawn heavily on my experience of logistics in my books, but I thought I should keep my interest in buses separate. However, a fictitious former bus company does make an appearance in my second novel, Deficit of Diligence. The leading character finds a photograph of one of its vehicles in an imaginary book – a half-cab AEC Regal single-decker from the late 1940s. But who was the bodybuilder? Suggestions please!

An explosion of new liveries and activities

Second lives for London buses

The growth of the new industry giants