Product Description

What is visible to the naked eye has been exhaustively raked over; in UNDERGROUND LONDON, acclaimed travel writer Stephen Smith provides an alternative guide and history of the capital. It's a journey through the passages and tunnels of the city, the bunkers and tunnels, crypts and shadows. As well as being a contemporary tour of underground London, it's also an exploration through time: Queen Boudicca lies beneath Platform 10 at King's Cross (legend has it); Dick Turpin fled the Bow Street Runners along secret passages leading from the cellar of the Spaniards pub in North London; the remains of a pre-Christian Mithraic temple have been found near the Bank of England; on the platforms of the now defunct King William Street Underground, posters still warn that 'Careless talk costs lives'. Stephen Smith uncovers the secrets of the city by walking through sewers, tunnels under such places as Hampton Court, ghost tube stations, and long lost rivers such as the Fleet and the Tyburn. This is 'alternative' history at its best.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16071 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 393 pages

Review
'A notable portrait of London... By becoming a proper witness to the unseen, covert and little-known, [Smith] rescues reportage and makes of it a kind of poetry' Iain Sinclair, Evening Standard '[Smith] offers an enjoyable guide to the subterranean parts of a great city. His anecdotes are fun, and his sense of the envelopingly mysterious is spot-on.' Observer 'Smith's cast of fluffers (Tube cleaners), flushers (sewermen) and toshers (scavengers) make engaging company' Sunday Telegraph

Observer
'(Smith) offers an enjoyable guide to the subterranean parts of a great city...his sense of the enveloping mysterious is spot-on.'

New Statesman
'Full of revelations.'

Customer Reviews

Layers of London
This is the first book for a very long time that I simply haven't been able to put down. This should be compulsive reading for every Londoner! Stephen Smith has managed to bring to vibrant life the world beneath our concrete and glass city. History has never been so vivid with the sights and sounds of London gone by echoing in every page. The only down side is that it has made me aware of a whole world I am not allowed to be part of existing just a few metres beneath my feet (that and peering into every little door and window on the tube).

Mind the plague pit!
News reporter and author Stephen Smith goes below pavement level in London, allowing the reader to vicariously explore burial crypts, dug-up plague pits, sewers, excavated Roman walls, remnants of Henry VIII's tennis courts, poncy wine cellars, secret government bunkers, the bowels of Parliament, and forgotten corners of the Tube.

For me, the the most intriguing chapter dealt with that subterranean environment most obviously accessible to the tourist, the London Underground ("Mind the Gap!"). Did you know that the most prevalent litter in the system, cleaned up during routine housekeeping between 1:00 and 5:00 AM, is human hair blown from the heads of thousands and thousands of train riders every day? Then, there are all those wallets plundered and discarded by pickpockets. And, though it won't be on my Must-Do short list for my next visit to the city, Smith's slog down the northern outflow sewer was gratifyingly informative.

However, UNDERGROUND LONDON is an uneven read. In the chapter dedicated to Anglo-Saxon artifacts, the author first describes a modern day ceremonial ritual involving holding a small schoolboy by his heels over the Thames while he beats the water's surface with a stick, and then goes on to describe the confiscated oddities to be found in the cellars of Her Majesty's Custom House. The connection between these and Anglo-Saxon period seemed forced. And the chapter in which Smith visits an underground vault of safe deposit boxes could just as well have been penned in the above-ground strong room at my local bank. No revelations there.

Perhaps the narrative's best features are the brief lessons in London history, past and recent, that Smith provides as background to the central theme: the evolution of city sanitation, the medieval plague epidemics, the theory and practice of the Thames Barrier, Henry VIII's obsession with tennis, the use of Tube stations as bomb shelters during the Blitz, and the British government's renewed interest in secure bolt holes after 9/11.

A criticism of UNDERGROUND LONDON has been that it includes no photos. Normally, I'd agree. But, in this instance, I'm not sure that the majority of Smith's subjects would've provided opportunity for interesting or instructive visuals. Somehow, a shot of the now-buried Fleet River churning along at the bottom of a well in Clerkenwell, or that of a disintegrating coffin in Kensal Green cemetery, doesn't seem necessary.

For those who love London, UNDERGROUND LONDON will be an occasionally rewarding ... um, travel essay. I'm awarding four stars simply because London is where my heart is. Otherwise, it would rate three, or less.

Fascinating and Highly Enjoyable
I picked this book up on the spur of the moment, and was pleasantly surprised by what I found to be a fascinating and highly enjoyable tour around some of the capital's unheralded subterranean features. Smith is an interesting and likeable guide, treating the subject with a deft, personal touch that makes the book stand out from drier 'straight' histories. This, combined with the diversity of the information he provides, makes this an excellent and accessible overview for general readers, and one that I'd highly recommend to anyone with an interest in London and its history.