London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets

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London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets

3.34 of 5 stars 3.34 · rating details · 835 ratings · 214 reviews

London Under is a wonderful, atmospheric, imaginative, oozing short study of everything that goes on under London, from original springs and streams and Roman amphitheaters to Victorian sewers, gang hideouts, and modern tube stations. The depths below are hot, warmer than the surface, and this book tunnels down through the geological layers, meeting the creatures, real an...more

ebook, 208 pages

Published November 1st 2011 by Anchor (first published April 7th 2011)

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Aug 19, 2012 Amy Sturgis rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-century, british-history, first-reads

I received this novel as part of the Goodreads First Reads program.

I really, truly wanted to love this book. The subject is utterly fascinating: underground London, from Roman ruins to present-day tube stations, complete with crypts and buried temples and outlaw hideouts and a unique (and creepy) breed of mosquito. As much as I love the gothic in general, and British history in particular, this subject is made for me.

Unfortunately, Peter Ackroyd's writing reads like a procrastinating student's...more I received this novel as part of the Goodreads First Reads program.

I really, truly wanted to love this book. The subject is utterly fascinating: underground London, from Roman ruins to present-day tube stations, complete with crypts and buried temples and outlaw hideouts and a unique (and creepy) breed of mosquito. As much as I love the gothic in general, and British history in particular, this subject is made for me.

Unfortunately, Peter Ackroyd's writing reads like a procrastinating student's first rough draft. Here are some of the problems I had with the text that prevented me from enjoying it:

1. Padding. This isn't book-length; it's essay-length. To make it book-length, fully 20-25% of the sentences are bloated, self-important, overreaching statements that say absolutely nothing (along the lines of "Every since the dawn of time, history has been happening"). Why? There's so much fat and very little meat.

2. Organization. Ackroyd flits from topic to topic, even within the same paragraph, apparently without any sense of obligation to tell the reader why. So underground London's a labyrinth. And in Greek mythology, there's a legend about a labyrinth. Okay, so what's the connection? Is there an urban legend about a Minotaur in underground London, or a street named Minotaur Lane? Or is Ackroyd saying London's labyrinths represent an intentional effort to mirror the legend? Or does the Greek legend represent some worldwide pattern in mythology about labyrinths that informs our experience of London? No, there's no connection at all. He just happened to know about the legend, seemingly, and so he included the tidbit to pad out the paragraph. This happens continually. Information isn't marshaled to make an argument: it's flung in all directions haphazardly.

3. Sources. I understand this isn't a scholarly tome, and therefore it shouldn't be packed with footnotes on every page. Nevertheless, the majority of direct quotes have no sources given at all, not even within the lines where they are featured. If a quote is worth producing, then its origin is worth knowing, to give it credibility and power. This not only makes his every assertion suspect, but it also makes it impossible for the interested reader to follow up on a specific point.

Despite the writing, I did learn interesting things; this simply makes me want to find a well-organized, well-written book on the subject to read. That's a shame. This could've been that well-organized, well-written book. It's not. (less)

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Apr 20, 2013 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010s, london

“Tread carefully over the pavements of London for you are treading on skin, a skein of stone that covers rivers and labyrinths, tunnels and chambers, streams and caverns, pipes and cables, springs and passages, crypts and sewers, creeping things that will never see the light of day.... May this book be considered a votive offering to the gods who lie beneath London.”

Tap the waterphone and strike a match! Peter Ackroyd’s London Under (2011) begs for a foggy night and flickering lights as it sets...more “Tread carefully over the pavements of London for you are treading on skin, a skein of stone that covers rivers and labyrinths, tunnels and chambers, streams and caverns, pipes and cables, springs and passages, crypts and sewers, creeping things that will never see the light of day.... May this book be considered a votive offering to the gods who lie beneath London.”

Tap the waterphone and strike a match! Peter Ackroyd’s London Under (2011) begs for a foggy night and flickering lights as it sets out to reveal secrets hidden beneath the city’s skin. London underground undeniably can be spooky. Anyone who has ever found himself alone on a Tube platform on a rainy evening has experienced an undeniable frisson. But Ackroyd plays up the underworld’s chill with such spongy logic and stagy language that you may read this small companion piece to his London The Biography and Thames Sacred River as an alluring but slightly cloying amuse bouche. The chapter titles - Darkness Visible, Old Man River, The Heart of Darkness, The Mole Men, and Deep Fantasies - hint that either Ackroyd’s Muse has dried up ... or he regards the book as a farce; a pity he didn’t organize his material in terms of a dissection. In the first chapter you won’t have to listen hard to hear Ackroyd channeling the voice of Vincent Price to introduce this collection of essays on London’s nether regions. This tone makes parts of the book a pretty corny; Ackroyd’s overplayed the “psycho” in psychogeography.

Horror, even campy horror, succeeds best when it slowly removes the familiar and pries open our grip on reality, replacing it with what was once not only unacceptable, but inconceivable. London Under does the exact opposite of this. From the beginning it’s rich with precise detail and tangible tidbits dredged up from the past. The past becomes present, a well-lit display inviting our inspection. Ackroyd’s reveling in well documented detail costs him his uncanny atmosphere. The lights go one in the middle of the seance, and we’re all left smirking at one another. The mystery dissolves. Hundreds of books have told how Bazalgette’s sewers eradicated cholera. Thousands of people have inspected the altar of Mithras, Roman pavements, and dinosaur bones found under the city’s streets. And millions of commuters have shuttled through the dark under the Thames by foot or by rail. There’s nothing surprising or mysterious or even secret in this book for them.

The book’s true worth is found as it uncovers a handful of odd men who have been forgotten to our myopic popular culture like William Lyttle of Hackney, who dug a network of tunnels, some over 60 feet long, radiating from his basement, or investigative reporter Duncan Campbell, who probed the city’s bowels on a bicycle 30 years ago, riding some 20 miles underground through secret government tunnels. I’d never read before that during the Blitz the Underground provided Londoners with 52 lending libraries to help pass the time as they waited for the all clear. Notes like these save this quick, one-day read.

Ackroyd claims that the “whole history of the city is compressed to little less than 30 feet.” What he gives us is a slice of that, a little stale, but not too dense, and nicely seasoned with curious facts. There’s nothing groundbreaking, and his attempts to conjure up the occult conk out. Perhaps he should have packaged a DVD of Quartermass and the Pit with it. Still, London Under is a fun read. It takes the stance of pop history - rambling, flashy, fairly wobbly on its logical legs - and enriches it with the author’s extraordinary knowledge of the city and his exquisite verbal facility. To his everlasting credit, ancient aliens are never invoked as an explanation. Four stars for the bibliography, which will tempt you to undertake more serious research of life under London.

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Dec 10, 2012 Mel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-century-non-fiction, british-history, library, london

Without a doubt this is the shortest Peter Ackroyd book I've read. It was also not one of the best. He really tried to make the London Underground seem mysterious and exciting, as if it was something people never think about, instead of something that millions of commuters use each year! While there are a lot of cities where no one things of what happens underground, London just really isn't one of them. The first and last chapters that tried to give off an atmosphere of danger and novelty just...more

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May 05, 2013 Janice Windle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book has faults, highlighted by other reviewers: it does not achieve the status of an academically rigorous work; it is constructed using parameters looser than the chronological; the author is prone to excited romantic statements about darkness and mystery that put it into the "pop" category of non-fiction, rather on the lines of some TV programmes that popularise interest in history or science. (Its subtitle alone should alert the reader to its genre.)

But I enjoyed "London Under" and read...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is not a work of history, though it relies on history. It is not scholarly, not footnoted to the point of immobility, skewering reality on a butterfly pin, so that what we see is a lifeless visage of something beautiful and great. No, it is a piece of poetry in prose form. And perhaps that was the only way to really write a book such as this and in some way capture the fascination that led to its creation. London Under is a panoramic look at what lies beneath the modern city of London. It l...more

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Jun 12, 2012 Caroline rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book wasn't quite what I was expecting. I'd expected something in the more traditional vein of history, something exploring the history of London beneath the surface, the Underground, the sewers, the buried layers of prehistoric, Roman, Saxon, medieval relics. What it really is is a much more poetical exploration of how we respond to the concept of 'underground', the fears and horrors, the way we have both shunned and sought life beneath the surface.

Ackroyd writes about the sewers of London...more

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Jan 02, 2012 Jan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: travel

I will put this book on my travel shelf because reading it made me conjure up all sorts of stops and rides and platforms and stations on the London Underground.....and because I have marked many places I want to check out on our next visit to London.
I am amazed at what Ackroyd tells about the literal underbelly of the city. There are not only remnants and ruins from centuries gone by, but treasures and amazing places now.
I never pictured the Underground being a hangout for the people of the city...more

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Dec 04, 2011 Tony rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction-general

83. LONDON UNDER: The Secret History beneath the Streets. (2011). Peter Ackroyd. **.
The author is an excellent writer and has produced a number of fine books. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of them. This is more of a compilation of notes for a book yet to be written. Mr. Ackroyd takes us on a hopscotch journey through the various sections of the city and has us peek under the various manholes to see what is there. There is no continuous story line or line of inquiry. There are only collections o...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ackroyd, london, history-english

This is a wonderful companion book to Ackroyd's two other books, history books, focusing on Loncon (London: The Biography and The Thames: Sacred River). The book is short and can easily be read in one sitting. It also is a good companion to Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets.

Ackroyd's book actually does follow a sense of the development of the underground moving from water to trains. It is a more of an overview than a in-depth history (the length of say two or three chapters in...more

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Jul 04, 2011 Nesa Sivagnanam rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

London Under is a wonderful, atmospheric, imaginative, oozing short study of everything that goes on under London, from original springs and streams and Roman amphitheatres to Victorian sewers, gang hideouts and modern Tube stations. The depth below is hot, warmer than the surface, and tunnels down through the geological layers, meeting the creatures that dwell in darkness, real and fictional – rats and eels, monsters and ghosts.

There is a Bronze Age trackway under the Isle of Dogs, Anglo-Saxon...more

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May 15, 2011 Tim Pendry rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: five-star, british, cultural-studies, eighteenth-century, history, london-guides, medieval, nineteenth-century, twentieth-century

This short and well written book is an annexe to Ackroyd’s ‘biography’ of London, a history of the city that treats it as if it has a personality. It is also part of the psycho-geographical cast of mind that now defines part of the modern London literary community.

What does he cover? - archaeology, ancient springs, underground rivers, the Fleet, the water conduits, the sewers, the underground railways (at length), the wartime and cold war secret cities and the life of Londoners who went undergro...more This short and well written book is an annexe to Ackroyd’s ‘biography’ of London, a history of the city that treats it as if it has a personality. It is also part of the psycho-geographical cast of mind that now defines part of the modern London literary community.

What does he cover? - archaeology, ancient springs, underground rivers, the Fleet, the water conduits, the sewers, the underground railways (at length), the wartime and cold war secret cities and the life of Londoners who went underground in times of danger.

Older and older Londons lie beneath today’s London. We have dug tunnels through all of them. He writes with a fine sense of what it is to be grounded in the city and to partake of its literary and cultural heritage.

My own test was whether he mentioned ‘Quatermass and the Pit’, the classic Hammer horror – he did. But there is not much to review here. It is 180 pages of ‘buried treasure’ and of further reading. I shall be returning to it for just that purpose. I am even considering a Subterranean Britain Facebook Group.

One thought occurs, however. The underground has many symbolic meanings but Ackroyd perhaps does not emphasise one enough, perhaps because it is one for the future. It is a place of resistance as well as a place of secret control. There is a symbolic struggle under the streets.

The organisation of East Enders in war time at 'Mickey's Shelter' by organised crime under a neglectful Government counters the State’s refusal to let any of us take Duncan Campbell’s illicit cycle ride across London through a 20 foot tunnel built for ‘their’ convenience and not ours.

One popular cultural icon Ackroyd does not mention. He should have done so. Dr. Who. In the original ‘Dr Who and the Daleks’, the English resistance (a coded reference back to the sewers of Warsaw, with the Daleks as a remembrance of Nazi storm-troopers) takes place in the London Underground.

Until this book, I had thought resistance underground was no more feasible than the existence of the Daleks. Now I know better. No wonder the State, having built or overseen this massive interconnected warren, is determined to seal off what it can against ‘terrorists’, perhaps against us one day.
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Apr 16, 2013 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bought-in-2013, british-fiction, contemporary, fiction-in-english, in-my-library, non-fiction, favourites, favourites-2013, read-2013

Det enda jag tidigare läst av Peter Ackroyd är förord till andras böcker. Jag vet att han själv skrivit flera böcker, bland annat om London och om författare som T.S. Eliot och Charles Dickens, men jag har inte läst någonting innan London Under. Boken handlar om de människor, sjukdomar, tunnlar och vattendrag som finns begravda under Londons gator. Det är med andra ord en slags historieskildring under marknivå med fokus främst på byggnationen av Londons tunnelbana och de tidigare transportsystem...more Det enda jag tidigare läst av Peter Ackroyd är förord till andras böcker. Jag vet att han själv skrivit flera böcker, bland annat om London och om författare som T.S. Eliot och Charles Dickens, men jag har inte läst någonting innan London Under. Boken handlar om de människor, sjukdomar, tunnlar och vattendrag som finns begravda under Londons gator. Det är med andra ord en slags historieskildring under marknivå med fokus främst på byggnationen av Londons tunnelbana och de tidigare transportsystemen. Det är en fascinerande och välskriven kort bok om London ända från 1500-talet fram till modern tid. Trots att jag var genuint intresserad av boken så var den mer intressant än vad jag kunnat föreställa mig. En stor del av det tror jag har att göra med Ackroyds sätt att förmedla en historia oavsett om den är verklig eller påhittad. Det är tydligt att han har gjort ordentliga efterforskningar och vet vad kan skriver om. Hans egna intresse i Londons dolda liv är också tydligt mellan raderna. Inledningen är oerhört kusligt och samtidigt gripande:

Tread carefully over the pavements of London for you are treading on skin, a skein of stone that covers rivers and labyrinths, tunnels and chambers, streams and caverns, creeping things that will never see the light of day. A vast concourse of people, buried deep within the clay of the Eocene period, move beneth your feet in underground trains.

Ackroyd är grym på att skapa rätt stämning och hålla läsarens intresse vid liv oavsett ämne. Jag gillar hans beskrivning av London och den roll som tunnlarna och senare tunnelbanan haft för Londonborna. Han beskriver de möjligheter som transportsystemet erbjöd 1800-talsmänniskan men även den rädsla som associerades med att färdas tillsammans långt under markytan. Ackroyd tar även in fiktion i London Under och beskriver hur inte bara Dickens men även författare som H.G. Wells såg på Londons tunnelbana och underjord. Det är intressant hur avgörande tunnelbanebygget verkar ha varit för flera författares karriärer under 1800-talet. H.G. Wells verkar åtmistone ha baserat stora delar av sitt författarskap på människors klaustrofobi och rädsla för underjorden.

The Underground is in many respects a symbol of collective will. It is both solitary and communal, representing the paradox embedded in any society or culture. It eases the passage of individual lives, but it is also a communal force with its own public codes and demands. It can therefore be seen as an oppressive system, part of the worktime nexus og contemporary capitalism. It is an ideological, as well as sociological, construct.

Det blev inte en särskilt lång recension men jag har egentligen inget annat att säga än att jag är såld på Peter Ackroyd och ska absolut läsa mer av honom i framtiden(less)

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Mar 20, 2012 K.C. Shaw rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

The subject is fascinating, but the book itself is poorly written and doesn't go in-depth about the subject. It's all surface (ironically, considering the subject matter). Many quotes are unattributed and there is not a notes section in the back of the book. And the constant portentious statements hammering in the theme of "the underworld is primal!" detracted considerably from the various interesting facts.

For example, here's a long paragraph from pp. 133-4 of my edition of the book, talking ab...more

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Nov 22, 2012 Juana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Interesting, but repetitive. Intriguing and yet too often dreamy. Towards the end, especially in the last two chapters, it looks like on writing Ackroyd fell in love with the bowels of London.

Maybe I lived in that city too short a time, but before reading this book - mind you, I still think it's rather intriguing in its genre - I would never have dreamt of seeing Tube's conducts the way the author sees them. I really never bothered. I jumped on my train and took for granted that it'd be dark and...more Interesting, but repetitive. Intriguing and yet too often dreamy. Towards the end, especially in the last two chapters, it looks like on writing Ackroyd fell in love with the bowels of London.

Maybe I lived in that city too short a time, but before reading this book - mind you, I still think it's rather intriguing in its genre - I would never have dreamt of seeing Tube's conducts the way the author sees them. I really never bothered. I jumped on my train and took for granted that it'd be dark and stinky and oppressive and dirty. What actually gave me a fright was the thought that London underground often runs straight below the river Thames, and if it isn't that close still it has conducts from there connecting to conducts that have been excavated far from there. It'd take nothing for them to get flooded. This is the apocalyptic view Ackroyd presents in his book. Realistic and very frightening indeed.

It's astonishing to discover how modern London lies on layers of history. The most common souvenirs diggers found in the deepness of the earth went back to Romans. Romans gave the city the shape it still shows from time to time nowadays. Romans were barbaric, but their engineers were genius. It doesn't come as a surprise that many Roman architectures are still in use today - SPAs, waterworks, basins, etc.
Yet in late 19th Century they weren't that bothered to preserve their own past. I was shocked when I read that, digging in the City to build the ground of a new building, workers found a Roman baptistery with water still running in the pool. It was thought to be built around 200AC and it was still in perfect conditions, yet it was demolished to carry on with the construction of the new building. Eough to be ashamed of men's ignorance.

Where London does not lay on layers of history, it lays on layers of unspeakeable rubbish. Reading about sewers and subterranean channels and about what use they made of it was disgusting. Still, that's the way things went back then. The Thames a brown melt of shit. The river Fleet a pool of rotten blood from butchers and slaughterhouses located in the middle of its course. The Walbrook a grave for forgotten skulls and murdered bodies. No one cared of what they were throwing in the water of the rivers. All ended under ground, filling the tunnels, rottening the air. Enough to be disgusted.

Ackroyd's idea of the subterranean world and of how people tend to see it made me think a lot. In the past few years I wrote a book set 90% of time in a building buried deep into the earth and I couldn't help thinking how I too have been fascinated by the idea of the under ground.
So yes, Ackroyd might be right with that, but I don't really think so many people give a monkey to Hades and under ground ghosts while reading their copy of the Metro comfortably squeezed into a carriage of the Central line.
Not bad, but indeed I did expect more from this book. Three entire chapters gone talking of the lost/hidden rivers of London. Two chapters and a half on the Tube. Three chapters on the exploration of the subterranean world - more or less, same concepts put in different words: a bit too much.
Not exactly a 3 stars, but not a full 4 stars either. Still, I loved Ackroyd's style, so simple and yet full of details. The book might have been repetitive sometimes, but somehow it was never boring. There was passion in it. At the end of the day, it's all that matters.(less)

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Sep 05, 2012 Maren rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm the daughter of archaeologists, I love London, I enjoy history and I'm fascinated by catacombs, graveyards, caves, and all things underground. I secretly want Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" to be true. So this book should have been right up my alley.

It was so dumb! I thought this would be the story of London, told from the unique perspective of things underground. What it turned out to be was a list of loosely grouped facts that Peter Ackroyd had apparently discovered while researching another...more

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Feb 21, 2013 Becky B rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

If Peter Ackroyd were your uncle, and if he told you stories and facts he'd heard and learned about the world beneath London, it might go something like this book. While the chapters cover general topics related to what you can find under the pavement and buildings in London, once you're into the topic it just flows in whatever rambling pattern it happened to come to Ackroyd's mind. It isn't necessarily chronological or anything. It isn't necessarily a bad style, but there were some moments when...more

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Nov 16, 2012 Anne-Marie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, ebooks, nonfiction

Since I just finished reading Pratchett's "Dodger," featuring a young man who knows the tunnels of London like the back of his hand, this was a great find. Ackroyd's book is a collection of the weird and wonderful facts on the "underworld" below London: its train tunnels, crypts, water and waste pipes. The tale is fascinating, full of visionary thinkers who built a dark twin to the London above ground.

It's a Londoner's book, though. Ackroyd talks about all the subway stations and London neighbo...more

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Dec 30, 2011 Candy Wood added it · review of another edition

This little book provided a good balance after I had just finished Norman Davies's vast The Isles. Ackroyd also takes in the sweep of time from prehistory to now but focuses more narrowly on everything under the streets of London: rivers, temples, sewers, tunnels for trains, pipes, cables, and pedestrians, shelters. There's plenty of opportunity for him to indulge his fascination with the creepy and weird, sometimes attributing terrors to readers who may not actually feel them (but might the nex...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Ashley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, non-fiction

3 stars is a little low, but I couldn't quite give it 4. I really enjoyed the book, and appreciated the tone of it; as far as a historical study goes, it's a very fast and fluid writing style. My biggest issue, that I never quite got over, was the lack of footnotes. Quotes and seemingly bizarre facts all over the place and no way of knowing where it had come from unless its source was stated in the paragraph (which was rare).

Beyond the lack of notation, it was a hard book to put down. This book...more

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Jan 16, 2013 Stacy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads-and-arcs, non-fiction

I don't read non-fiction books very often, so when I do it has to be something I am interested in. I'm a big fan of any sort of literature set in the UK. I love to read books set in England that include some historical background even more. I've read a couple of books that this book brought back to memory, such as Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and King Rat by China Meiville, since they had a little something to do with 'secret places', tunnels, etc.

I enjoyed the dark, gothic macabre feel to this bo...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Sam Sattler rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, travel

For several years during the nineties, I spent a minimum of two hours every workday using London’s Metro to make my way from Richmond to Uxbridge. Although there was almost no underground travel on that route, I did use the underground portions of the system on weekends to explore the city – and always found it hard to believe that the earliest portion of the Underground (the Metropolitan Line) opened in 1863, just as America’s Civil War reached its mid-point. All those travel-hours left me pass...more For several years during the nineties, I spent a minimum of two hours every workday using London’s Metro to make my way from Richmond to Uxbridge. Although there was almost no underground travel on that route, I did use the underground portions of the system on weekends to explore the city – and always found it hard to believe that the earliest portion of the Underground (the Metropolitan Line) opened in 1863, just as America’s Civil War reached its mid-point. All those travel-hours left me passively curious about the history of the Underground and the visionaries who dared build it.

Recently, that curiosity was reawakened by Peter Ackroyd’s London Under: The Secret History beneath the Streets. Although the book is not entirely devoted to the underground train system, the two or three chapters dedicated to the Underground will serve as a good primer for anyone interested in its history. Ackroyd also offers a three-page bibliography that will be helpful to those readers wanting a more detailed understanding of the underground rail system.

There is a hidden world, one with a long history, beneath the streets of London. Amongst all the cables carrying gas, water, telephone, and electricity are natural springs and rivers that still flow as they always have. Catacombs beneath cemeteries and church graveyards house the ancient, and not so ancient, remains of London citizens. The remnants of Roman amphitheaters and gang hideouts are as out of sight down there as the massive sewer system that carries the waste products of London’s millions. Most fascinating to me, the London Underground still includes a number of “dead stations” that have been closed down over the decades – many of which still display the same posters and signs that were current on the day the stations were first bypassed.

The tunnels beneath London are home to a small animal kingdom, as well. Most prominent, as regular Tube passengers can attest, are countless Russian brown rats and mice, but there are also large populations of frogs, eels, mosquitoes, and cockroaches in the wetter portions of this vast underworld. I also remember seeing a stray dog or two and numerous pigeons that appeared to be hopping rides from one station to the next in search of their next meals.

Because of the catastrophic damage that would result if the tunnels were sabotaged, the London underworld is a “forbidden zone” to which entrance is limited strictly to those with legitimate need of access. As a result, it is almost impossible for any one individual to study the whole of what lies beneath London’s streets. Ackroyd does, however, manage to explain in concise terms the magnitude of what is buried here beneath one of the world’s greatest cities.

The book includes chapters on the London Underground, rivers beneath the surface, the sewer system, animals and insects, pipes and cables, and how the underworld can affect the psyche of people. There is much of interest in this little book of 228 pages (a page count that includes the bibliography and index) but Ackroyd’s style can make for tedious reading at times. This is particularly the case in those chapters devoted to the underground waterways, chapters in which the author traces, almost block by block, the paths of the rivers and streams. Patient readers, however, will come away with a solid, if basic, understanding of just how amazing the London underworld is – and will be left wishing that someone would further explore it to learn what more it can tell us about the city’s past.

Rated at: 3.5(less)

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Apr 09, 2012 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is the perfect birthday present for any Anglophile. Ackroyd takes us beneath the streets of London, and while some of it is familiar (the chapter on the Underground), much of it is not. For example, did you know that London is sinking much like Venice, and requires that 15 million gallons of water be pumped out of its substratum every day just to keep it from going under? Or that London is built on top of many rivers, in addition to the Thames, most of which have simply been filled in...more

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Dec 27, 2011 Jeanne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

A little book on a deep topic. Very interesting overview (underview?) of the life beneath London's streets. Each chapter deals with a slightly different topic. I like the arrangement, starting with the oldest, though not necessarily deepest, aspects. Ackroyd starts with the natural world and then follows the changes made by man, weaving in an almost folkloric/psychological view throughout.

The book was accessible. The chapters are short. This is the kind of book you can pick up and enjoy in bits...more

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May 20, 2012 Kam rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, mythology-and-folklore, non-fiction, travel

I hate admitting this, but the first and last time I was in London, I didn't get to see the city properly. It was simply an entry-and-exit point for the European tour my parents had given me as a combination eighteenth birthday and graduation gift, something I'd asked for when I was sixteen. So I never truly got to see the palaces, the museums the churches - and don't think my heart still doesn't ache that I didn't get to see those last two. Considering that so many literary greats lived, or con...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Douglas Summers.Stay rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A couple of images really struck me from this book.
I was haunted by the story of a man who disembarked by accident when the train stopped at a closed station because of maintenance issues, and because subsequent trains just roared on through, he wasn't able to get out. It was only a week later that he was able to draw attention to himself by starting a fire with old posters torn from the walls.
I was impressed by the tunnel under the Thames built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The scope and beauty...more

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Dec 02, 2011 Artur Coelho rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Um mergulho na história subterrânea de Londres - não os subterrâneos ocultos das lendas, mas os intricados túneis, sistemas de esgotos, canais, eixos de comunicação e vestígios ocultos sob o subsolo londrino. Apesar de olhar detalhadamente para a história do metropolitano, primeiro do mundo, Ackroyd deixa-se ficar pela narração de histórias leves sob o que está debaixo das terras da grande cidade, numa prosa tantalizante que nos deixa a imaginar mais do que o que o autor nos conta. As descrições...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Steven Brown rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I picked this book up because of my fascination with Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" and found it an undemanding, curious, brief, and enjoyable book. It is an entertainment in the form of several essays on different aspects of the actual world buried beneath London. Much of the information put forward was intriguing - I particularly recommend the chapter on the use of the London Underground as air raid shelter during the world wars; it gives interesting background to the development of that well-know...more

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Feb 09, 2012 traci rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book had a subject so fascinating, it could've written itself. And maybe it should have, because the author didn't do a very good job of it. Perhaps my expectations, per always, were too high -- it was, after all, one of the last books Christopher Hitchens read on his death bed, according to that New York Times op-ed by Ian McEwan. (Look at how many pretentious things I fit into one sentence!)Yet, it was truly dull and redundant. Yes, it's dark underground. Thanks for carrying on about it f...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Gemini Adams rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: london, history, british

Having recently moved back to England after 7 years as an expat, I was excited to read this and reconnect with the history of our capital. Ackroyd did a great job of conjuring powerful images of the deep, dark, mysterious and oftentimes disturbing underworld that exists beneath the great city that is London. The breadth of the subterranean expanse is far greater and more sinister than I previously imagined; I have, as a result of reading London Under, acquired new fears of traveling on the Under...more

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May 09, 2011 Reader, I Read It rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Highly acclaimed historian and writer Peter Ackroyd delves into the depths of London in his latest exploration of what lies beneath one of the most fascinating cities in the world.

The book gives an extraordinary insight into the history that has been discovered under the pavements we walk on every day. We aren’t talking about a few old coins and trinkets here but monasteries, plague pits, roman baths, pagan temples, wells and waterways long forgotten. It’s also easy to forget the labyrinth of t...more

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About Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.

Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age...more

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