In 1934, route 19 operated from Finsbury Park to Tooting Bec station with a Sundays only extension to Streatham Common.

[6] Upon being re-tendered, route 19 passed to London General’s Stockwell Garage on 31 March 2012 with new Wright Eclipse Gemini 2 bodied Volvo B5LHs and B9TLs.

In Graham Greene's novel The Ministry of Fear (1943), which he classified as an "entertainment", the protagonist, Arthur Rowe, catches "a number 19 bus from Piccadilly" to Battersea in the London of the Blitz and observes how the bombs have struck some areas and spared others: "After the ruins of St James's Church, one passed at that early date into peaceful country.

Only the number 19 bus to Cambridge Circus past Soho porn houses, girl’s gray breast great calling from photo behind glass, fellow in a booth selling tickets.

And the bookshops..."[15]The 1978 Dire Straits song Wild West End (about the London area of the same name) contains the line "And my conductress on the number 19...".

In November 2007, the route was featured in Vogue as "one of the 14 most stylish locations in Britain" [16] The opening pages of Linda Grant's novel The Dark Circle (published in 2016) describe the hero, Lenny, riding on a 19 bus from Finsbury Park to Cambridge Circus in 1949.

Along with the British Museum cafe and the bandstand in Battersea Park, the number 19 bus is one of the covert meeting places for the main characters in Good Omens.

[17] Mention of the bus introduces the hero in one of John Gardner's Detective Sergeant Suzie Mountford novels The streets of town (2003); "Another three minutes or so and Woman Detective Sergeant Suzie Mountford would not have been able to see Porky Pine from the top of her Number 19 bus as it came blustering down from Cambridge Circus as the day turned dark.

"[18]A bomb explosion on a number 19 bus, just outside Fortnum & Mason in Piccadilly, is the first of the terrorist acts depicted in the 2021 novel State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny.