London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets
- ISBN-10
- 0385531516
- ISBN-13
- 9780385531511
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 208
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2011-11-01
- Publisher
- Anchor
- Author
- Peter Ackroyd
Description
In this vividly descriptive short study, Peter Ackroyd tunnels down through the geological layers of London, meeting the creatures that dwell in darkness and excavating the lore and mythology beneath the surface. There is a Bronze Age trackway below the Isle of Dogs, Anglo-Saxon graves rest under St. Pauls, and the monastery of Whitefriars lies beneath Fleet Street. To go under London is to penetrate history, and Ackroyd's book is filled with the stories unique to this underworld: the hydraulic device used to lower bodies into the catacombs in Kensal Green cemetery; the door in the plinth of the statue of Boadicea on Westminster Bridge that leads to a huge tunnel packed with cables for gas, water, and telephone; the sulphurous fumes on the Underground's Metropolitan Line. Highly imaginative and delightfully entertaining, London Under is Ackroyd at his best.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky: A London Trilogy
By Patrick HamiltonPatrick Hamilton may be best known now for the plays Rope and Gaslight and for the classic Alfred Hitchcock and George Cukor movies they inspired, but in his heyday he was no less famous for his brooding tales of London life.
-
London Under Snow
By Jordi LlavinaSix fragments of different lives in six different moments. In this beautifully written collection, the characters come face to face with their different lives and pasts, all of which are full of ghosts and memories.
-
Whispers Under Ground
By Ben AaronovitchAt least he won’t be alone. No, the FBI has sent over a crack agent to help. She’s young, ambitious, beautiful . . . and a born-again Christian apt to view any magic as the work of the devil. Oh yeah—that’s going to go well.
-
London Under Attack: From Caesar to Hitler
By Michael FoleyThe most recent attacks in London have been carried out by militant Muslim groups, leading to deaths on the London Underground and on the capital's buses. Also, the number of stabbings of young people on London's streets has increased ...
-
London Under Snow
By Jordi Llavina... LONDON. UNDER. SNOW. HAND. &. RACQUET. I first arrived in London on a February day in 2009. I was thirty years old. Among other personal effects, I had a black leather notebook like those that Le Corbusier once used to sketch out ...
-
Royalty Restored; Or, London Under Charles II: In Large Print
By Joseph Fitzgerald Molloy... with their lovers at Spring Garden, which seemed to be "contrived to all the advantages of gallantry." From which evidences it may be gathered, that London under the Commonwealth was little less vicious than under the merry monarch. The ...
-
Court Life Below Stairs. Or, London Under the First Georges, 1714-1760: Vol. III
By Joseph Fitzgerald Molloy... having secured , as he says , his gold snuff - box in his waistcoat pocket upon seeing black gowns in the room . ' so many END OF THE THIRD VOLUME . OR LONDON UNDER THE LAST GEORGES 1760-1830 BY ΤΟ JOSEPH GENTEEL OFFENDERS . 399.
-
Hidden London: Discovering the Forgotten Underground
By David Bownes, Chris Nix, Siddy HollowayTravel under the streets of London with this lavishly illustrated exploration of abandoned, modified, and reused Underground tunnels, stations, and architecture.
-
A Mighty Capital under Threat: The Environmental History of London, 1800-2000
By Peter Thorsheim, Bill Luckin2015): 70–88; Bill Luckin, Death and Survival in Urban Britain: Disease, Pollution and Environment, 1850–1950 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), 149–54; Jim Clifford, West Ham and the River Lea: A Social and Environmental History of London's ...
-
Four Feet Under: Untold stories of homelessness in London
By Tamsen Courtenay‘Touching, insightful and human – this book demands a social and, above all, a political response’ Jon Snow Tamsen Courtenay spent two months speaking to people who live on London’s streets, the homeless and the destitute – people ...