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One man's view
Page 46
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About 20 years ago John Birch took a coach party from Wood Green, London, to Lourdes and San Sebastian. When the engine seized up many miles from the destination he had to hire a French operator to complete the job and then salvage his own coach. That convinced him that Britain was best and was his one and only excursion into Europe.
This was a small contribution to the history of road passenger transport which John described with sly wit in the first Frederick Speight memorial lecture.
Nobody who knew John would have expected a prosaic lecture. It was a delightfully intimate performance, salted with epigrams and delivered with the .offhand hesitation of one who was still revising the paper even as he read it.
It was certainly well researched. John had discovered in the Boy's Book of Marvels of 1911 the statement that there was probably no organisation in the world more efficient than the British Post Office. With second-class mail now frequently taking a week to travel no more than 50 miles, history is unlikely to repeat itself. The Birch family business carried mail from about 1 800 until 1926, so John is not unfamiliar with the vagaries of a once-fine postal service.
He was speaking on the 45th anniversary of the cessation of London bus operation by his former company, which began in 1846 — 10 years before the defunct London General Omnibus Co.