In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with silver title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

What is visible to the naked eye has been exhaustively raked over; In UNDERGROUND LONDON, acclaimed 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 is ‘alternative’ history at its best.

Reviews:

• Brilliant… so much more than just another city ramble. (MAIL ON SUNDAY)

• (Smith) offers an enjoyable guide to the subterranean parts of a great city…his sense of the enveloping mystery is spot-on. (OBSERVER)

• A notable portrait of London… By becoming a proper witness to the unseen, covert and little-known, [Smith] rescues reportage and makes of it a kind of poetry (Iain Sinclair, EVENING STANDARD)

• Smith’s cast of fluffers (Tube cleaners), flushers (sewermen) and toshers (scavengers) make engaging company (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

• Fresh, funny and impeccably researched, UNDERGROUND LONDON is ‘alternative’ history at its best – an illuminating glimpse into the hidden world beneath our feet.

• This is so far from the usual boring list of dates and places that so many of these books tend to be that it really should be in a category of its own. The author takes us with him as he researches the book and visits places hidden from the public eye, or just overlooked by the casual passerby. The story of his visits to these places, and his descriptions of the people he meets who work in, or look after them is far more entertaining than a bare presentation of the facts themselves. This is a little gem on a very well trodden path.

The Author, Stephen Smith works for Channel 4 news and writes regularly for the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS