Underground London by Stephen Smith

There were rivers, streams, creeks, buried wharves, conduits, culverts, cellars, shelters, basements, eaves, lower ground floors, walk-downs, disappearing staircases, grottoes, dungeons, graves, tombs, crypts, a disused morgue at the foot of Tower Bridge, catafalques, sepulchres, catacombs, brick arches at Waterloo station where cabbies sat and chatted in each other's taxis, tunnels, subways, lost terraces, warrens, mazes, kitchens, lock-ups where supermarkets stored their goods, shunting yards and railway turntables, wrecks, ruins, dregs, the Elephant Man's hat in the archives of the Royal London Hospital, precious relics, forgotten booty, buried treasure. I wanted to know more about this subterranean landscape. It was going to be an escape from the city above, but an escape in another sense, too, an adventure to make me forget my inner-city blues.

-Underground London

I will fully admit that Underground London is one of the more peculiar reading choices I have made since having started this blog. As much of an Anglophile as I am, I really don't know that much about above-ground London. Starting underground seems to be a bit of a backwards way of going at it.

Of course, London and what lies beneath it are inextricably intertwined, so in learning about one, one can't help but find out a bit more about the other. It turns out to be quite a vast subject. Stephen Smith approaches the underground from a variety of angles. He explores the sewers, the Tube, and the system governing the Thames. He looks at parts of London that date from the Roman era all the way up to Cold War bunkers. One cannot fault his thoroughness, but it is rather disappointing to discover that not all of these places or eras are equally fascinating.

I was quite interested in his exploration of the Tube - dead stations are particularly compelling, though I can't quite explain why. Perhaps because they're left just as they were, and give the impression of being frozen in the moment of time when they were closed. (City Hall station in New York is a beautiful example.) Or perhaps I just watched Ghostbusters II too often as a child.

I also enjoyed the oldest areas Smith explored, such as the section of Roman wall he found in a carpark, or the remaining bits of one of Henry VIII's tennis courts. With the exception of the Tube, I found the more modern sections to be considerably drier. I guess I am just not terribly interested in how one keeps the Thames from flooding London. If that sounds like it's up your alley, well, you should find the last chapter to be spellbinding. Otherwise, like me, you'll find that the book ends on a rather dull note.

Nonetheless, I do feel as though I learned a lot. In fact, Smith used enough particularly British vocabulary and references that I took to jotting notes on my bookmark so that I could look things up at my convenience. And this is how I learned that a reference to the noise of rhubarb coming from Parliament had nothing to do with the plant. Fun fact!

Up next: Planning on taking a bit of a two-pronged approach. I checked a book out of the library a couple of weeks back on the differences between British and American English. I've read the beginning, but I have a sense that I may skim it more than read it, particularly when it hits lists of terms that I don't find terribly exciting. So, I plan to do bits and pieces of that along with the 5th Sookie Stackhouse for more of a proper read.