Subterranean reading: "London Under" by Peter Ackroyd

The Great Serendipity Bookshop has struck again! I have had cause to mention the Foyles in St. Pancras railway station before as a reliable source of unexpected in-between books: this one and this one being the examples, and now it's happened again. On this occasion, in contrast to the two previous occasions, I had actually heard of this book before I entered the shop, but only semi-consciously, which is perhaps why this book even more egregiously leapt off the bookshelf at me.


It has to be said, it has a lot going for it before you even start. The author, for one. Peter Ackroyd has cornered the market in the you-can-feel-it-in-the-stones histories and evocations of London, both fictionally (Hawksmoor, The House of Doctor Dee, The Clerkenwell Tales) and in non-fiction (Dickens' London, London: The Biography, Shakespeare: The Biography). London in his hands is mysterious, alive, multi-millenial, often somewhat disturbing, threatening. The theme of this new book taps into the fascination so many of us have for the concealed - real or imagined - subterranean world: in London, improbable layers of history, buried rivers, pipes, tunnels of all sorts, bunkers and ill-defined government installations.

The third thing this book has going for it is that it is short, light, unintimidating - something which cannot be said of all Ackroyd's books - so you can slip it in your pocket and read it swiftly while supposedly in the middle of something else.

As for the book itself, it tells the story of London Under with typical panache, revealing many a surprising fact and relating many a fascinating antidote: of the strange subterranean class who made it their business to scour the Victorian sewers for treasure; of the River Fleet, navigable for centuries, but ultimately choked with a mix of human effluent and the noisome by-products of the Spitalfield meat markets and buried out of sight, except when it (still) floods basements of houses after storms; of driven Victorian engineers, determined to tunnel under the Thames though their work cost innumerable lives and their accomplishments were ultimately disdained by the public; of dozens of abandoned Underground Stations and miles of closed-down tunnel lurking silently under the city; of official fears of a panicked population assuming an entirely subterranean, morlock-like lifestyle during the Blitz (one remedy for a while was to carry on charging for platform tickets to access the Underground even during air raids); of an intrepid journalist who cycled around the maze of government tunnels for a day unapprehended, but whose article on the subject caused the entrances to the system to be better secured; of anonymous doors, gratings and other portals to the underworld dotted all over London, unnoticed by thousands of passers-by every day.

This is great stuff, but I also have to be honest: it left me wanting more. Ackroyd does this: he evokes, he does not so much describe. Perhaps it's hyper-rationalist me, but I wanted more illustrations (there is an idiosyncratic selections of old prints in the book), maps, plans, cross-sections... But maybe it wasn't allowed. Indeed, he tells us that plans of London's hundreds of miles of service tunnels carrying cabling, water pipes, gas pipes, etc., not to mention all those government installations, are secret, too sensitive to let fall into the hands of those who would wish London ill.

But to say I wanted more is also to say I loved this book. If you have any sort of fascination for the hidden world beneath our feet, any sort of race-memory of evil spirits from the underworld, or just an interest in one of humanity's oldest and most remarkable cities, you'll love it too.

There is a whole subculture of people interested in the urban underworld. These pictures of the underground River Fleet are typical of what you find on hundreds of blogs of people who explore the world under our feet. (Not for me, methinks)