Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets, by Stephen Smith

Retrieved from: the library
(0316861340), 2004
Suggested by: me, when I cataloged it
My Ratings: 6 Merit, 7 Interest, 8 Fun

It sounds interesting, doesn't it, going underneath a city and finding out what is down there? We all know that what's on the surface isn't the whole story. To a certain extent this book does answer some of those questions, but I did find the organization a bit wacky. Smith seems to be attempting to arrange things by period, like an archaological dig. But because London has been around for so long, and there has been digging going on most of its existence, it's a little hard to separate the Roman London from Victorian London in some cases. This is quite evident in the frequent mismatches of stories in each "historical layer" chapter.

However, taken as a whole, the book is lots of fun. Of course he examines the Tube: the dead stations, its use as a bomb shelter in WWII, its historical beginnings. He naturally also deals with the reality that is water and sewage, although he only describes one of those trips as being "whiffy" in the sense that we would all expect. Mostly, one of the trips to the sewage department smells like laundry detergent. Definitely a case of looking worse than it smells.

There are also explanations of the Thames Barrier (to prevent flooding), Black Death pits (where it is theoretically possible to be exposed to the plague), underground churches and crypts, and safe deposit boxes. I had a flash of Gringotts when he got to this, and the few stories he related about people there were particularly heart-wrenching.

All in all, a fun read, but in need of an editor to smooth things out a bit.