Underground London – Travels beneath the City Streets

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  • Author: Stephen Smith
  • Publisher: Abacus
  • Catalogue: 131383
  • Size: 13x20cm
Magnificent and renowned, London's attractions have also been minutely documented. But scratch the surface of the city and a more mysterious, murky world is revealed. A world to which we are introduced by writer and traveller Stephen Smith as he plumbs the hidden depths of the metropolis, wandering (and sometimes wading) through buried treasures from Roman times to the present day.

As Smith's literally ventures beneath London's surface, the book provides a contemporary tour of the capital and an alternative exploration of its past, which includes anecdotes about Dick Turpin's subterranean escape from the Bow Street Runners, Boudicca's supposed burial place under King's Cross station, the city's lost river and the sewers, and the Tube tunnels that sheltered so many during the Blitz.

Exploding corpses in catacombs, the bowels of the Palace of Westminster, the culverts of Hampton Court and the miniature Mail Rail that once distributed 12 million letters a day. Smith's eclectic journey covers the bizarre, the arcane and, always, the intoxicating (including the wines in the hallowed cellars of Berry Brothers).

From the 25 mile-long Cold War bunkers to the astonishing 12th-century water main, he reveals labyrinthine delights that span centuries.