Underground London - Stephen Smith

Travel writer Stephen Smith provides an alternative guide and history of the capital. It's a journey through the passages and tunnels of the city, the bunkers and tunnels, crypts and shadows. As well as being a contemporary tour of underground London, it's also an exploration through time: Queen Boudicca lies beneath Platform 10 at King's Cross (legend has it); Dick Turpin fled the Bow Street Runners along secret passages leading from the cellar of the Spaniards pub in North London; the remains of a pre-Christian Mithraic temple have been found near the Bank of England; on the platforms of the now defunct King William Street Underground, posters still warn that 'Careless talk costs lives'. Stephen Smith uncovers the secrets of the city by walking through sewers, tunnels under such places as Hampton Court, ghost tube stations, and long lost rivers such as the Fleet and the Tyburn.


This book took me a while to get through, and although fascinating in parts was full of irrelevant or boring fluff.  The idea of talking about an underground london - a world beneath our feet that we rarely think about or even know about, its a fantastic idea. However Smith writes from an observational point of view as oppose to a historical one. This gives it more of an experience type book and he seems to see and notice very similar things.  Another issue is that he gets into writing about something and you want to hear more then he changes tack and goes off on a tangent about something that feel totally irrelevant. Making this book feel a little bit disjointed.

His writing style can get a bit monotonous so it can be quite a difficult read, the words don't flow very well and you feel like your loosing him in some places and you have to really work to get back on track. The context of the book, if you get past the waffling or the irrelevant information their are interesting sections to this novel that are fascinating. If their was more of this information and less of the irrelevance this would make a better novel.