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London Under: The Secret History Beneath The Streets (2011)

by Peter Ackroyd(Favorite Author)

3.38 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0385531508 (ISBN13: 9780385531504)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (NY et al.)

review 1: What lies beneath? Quite a lot as it happens when Peter Ackroyd delves deep into the clay underlying the streets of London. "...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." Literally the story of the London Underworld. If you always wondered what lies behind the seemingly innocent doorway at number 39 Furnival Street; why Lamb's Conduit Street is so called; where the entrance to the three story underground electricity station at Leicester Square can be found (just to the left of the half-price ticket booth as it happens) then this is the book. The Tube, the buried rivers and the plague pits. The festering ... morepre-Bazalgette sewerage system that caused London to stink all summer and the dangers of exploding gases. This book would provide the answers to a quizmaster's dream. How many unused Underground stations are there? Unbelievably there are 44. How many tunnels beneath the Thames. We don't exactly know and there are probably at least 2 secret ones - hoho! This is mine of information, and literature to boot.
review 2: This book is fascinating. Or, at least, it should be. The material is interesting. The book is poorly written. It was hard to put my finger on exactly what is so wrong about the writing, but several of reviewers have illustrated my thoughts nicely. (It reads like a first draft - just information. He pads the material with lots of pointless sentences. He tries to be dramatic about things that aren't. He jumps around a lot. Etc...) So if you pick this book up, don't expect well-presented material. less

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