Description

London Under is an excellent, atmospheric, imagina­tive, oozing brief research of exactly what continues under London, from springs and channels and Roman amphitheaters to team hideouts, Victorian sewers, and contemporary tv channels. The depths here are warm, warmer-than the top, and this guide channels along through the geological levels, achieving the animals, imaginary and real, that live in eels and darkness—rats, mon­sters and spirits. The guards asked for authorization to develop beards to safeguard themselves from the sulfurous gases, once the Underground’s Downtown Point was opened in 1864, and called their motors after tyrants—Czar, Kaiser, Mogul—and actually Pluto, lord of the underworld. Togo under Birmingham would be to penetrate background, to enter a hid­den globe.