Londoners also preserve their history with the subway tunnels they often follow ancient roads to avoid disturbing archaeological remains. Many of the road names refer to things that aren’t there anymore, many of them supposedly healing wells. Names are curiously long lived in England. But that leads me to another thing that I like about this book. If you’re not familiar with London’s geography, you may want to have a map handy as Ackroyd follows the path of a now buried river using water-related street names and wandering urban pathways. There is another challenge to some readers. Of course, this lack of “order” makes it look like Ackroyd’s brain overflowed onto the page after all his research. London has been around for so long and people have been digging underneath it for so long it only makes sense that the layers of history are out of order. This may annoy some readers, but I think it makes sense for the book. Nothing is presented in chronological order. I’m glad Ackroyd wrote it, because this stuff is too good not to share.Įach chapter focuses on a different category of things Londoners have found or made while digging under their streets: burial grounds, shrines, old wells, sewers, subway tunnels, etc. London Under was written after Ackroyd’s London: The Biography, presumably using information and trivia that didn’t make the cut in the larger work. Peter Ackroyd’s brief London Under is the kind of history I adore.
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