London Under

London Under
Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0385531516

In this vividly descriptive short study, Peter Ackroyd tunnels down through the geological layers of London, meeting the creatures that dwell in darkness and excavating the lore and mythology beneath the surface. There is a Bronze Age trackway below the Isle of Dogs, Anglo-Saxon graves rest under St. Pauls, and the monastery of Whitefriars lies beneath Fleet Street. To go under London is to penetrate history, and Ackroyd's book is filled with the stories unique to this underworld: the hydraulic device used to lower bodies into the catacombs in Kensal Green cemetery; the door in the plinth of the statue of Boadicea on Westminster Bridge that leads to a huge tunnel packed with cables for gas, water, and telephone; the sulphurous fumes on the Underground's Metropolitan Line. Highly imaginative and delightfully entertaining, London Under is Ackroyd at his best.

London Under Snow

London Under Snow
Author: Jordi Llavina
Publisher: Fum d'Estampa Press
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9781916293960

Six stories about Christmas and winter from award-winning writer, Jordi Llavina. Llavina's stories conjure up ghosts from the past, old loves and distant memories in six hauntingly written tales that focus on our relationships with our loved ones and ourselves over the Christmas period.

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
Author: Patrick Hamilton
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 521
Release: 2013-10-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 159017772X

NYRB Classics presents 3 darkly humorous, atmospheric novellas of love and disappointment, set in a run-down London pub after WWI—from the author of the Hitchcock classics Gaslight and Rope. “Bleak and brilliant. . . an authentic lost classic.” —The Guardian Featuring a Dickensian cast of pubcrawlers, prostitutes, lowlifes, and just plain losers who are looking for love—or just an ear to bend—Hamilton’s novels are a triumph of deft characterization, offbeat humor, unlikely compassion, and raw suspense. In recent years, Hamilton has undergone a remarkable revival, with his champions including Doris Lessing, David Lodge, Nick Hornby, and Sarah Waters. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is a tale of obsession and betrayal that centers on a seedy pub in a run-down part of London. Bob the waiter skimps and saves and fantasizes about writing a novel, until he falls for the pretty prostitute Jenny and blows it all. Kindly Ella, Bob’s co-worker, adores Bob, but is condemned to enjoy nothing more than the attentions of the insufferable Mr. Eccles; Jenny, out on the street, is out of love, hope, and money. We watch with pity and horror as these three vulnerable and yet compellingly ordinary people meet and play out bitter comedies of longing and frustration. Included: The Midnight Bell (1929) The Siege of Pleasure (1932) The Plains of Cement (1934)

Whispers Under Ground

Whispers Under Ground
Author: Ben Aaronovitch
Publisher: Del Rey
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2012-07-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345524624

A WHOLE NEW REASON TO MIND THE GAP It begins with a dead body at the far end of Baker Street tube station, all that remains of American exchange student James Gallagher—and the victim’s wealthy, politically powerful family is understandably eager to get to the bottom of the gruesome murder. The trouble is, the bottom—if it exists at all—is deeper and more unnatural than anyone suspects . . . except, that is, for London constable and sorcerer’s apprentice Peter Grant. With Inspector Nightingale, the last registered wizard in England, tied up in the hunt for the rogue magician known as “the Faceless Man,” it’s up to Peter to plumb the haunted depths of the oldest, largest, and—as of now—deadliest subway system in the world. At least he won’t be alone. No, the FBI has sent over a crack agent to help. She’s young, ambitious, beautiful . . . and a born-again Christian apt to view any magic as the work of the devil. Oh yeah—that’s going to go well.

Hidden London

Hidden London
Author: David Bownes
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0300245793

Travel under the streets of London with this lavishly illustrated exploration of abandoned, modified, and reused Underground tunnels, stations, and architecture.

London Under Snow

London Under Snow
Author: Jordi Llavina
Publisher: Fum d'Estampa Press
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1913744108

Six stories about Christmas and winter from award-winning writer, Jordi Llavina. Llavina's stories conjure up ghosts from the past, old loves and distant memories in six hauntingly written tales that focus on our relationships with our loved ones and ourselves over the Christmas period.

A Mighty Capital under Threat

A Mighty Capital under Threat
Author: Bill Luckin
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0822987449

Demographically, nineteenth-century London, or what Victorians called the “new Rome,” first equaled, then superseded its ancient ancestor. By the mid-eighteenth century, the British capital had already developed into a global city. Sustained by its enormous empire, between 1800 and the First World War London ballooned in population and land area. Nothing so vast had previously existed anywhere. A Mighty Capital under Threat investigates the environmental history of one of the world’s global cities and the largest city in the United Kingdom. Contributors cover the feeding of London, waste management, movement between the city’s numerous districts, and the making and shaping of the environmental sciences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

London Lives

London Lives
Author: Tim Hitchcock
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2015-12-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107025273

This book surveys the lives and experiences of hundreds of thousands of eighteenth-century non-elite Londoners in the evolution of the modern world.

Four Feet Under

Four Feet Under
Author: Tamsen Courtenay
Publisher: Unbound Publishing
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2018-08-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1783525703

‘Touching, insightful and human – this book demands a social and, above all, a political response’ Jon Snow Tamsen Courtenay spent two months speaking to people who live on London’s streets, the homeless and the destitute – people who feel they are invisible. With a camera and a cheap audio recorder, she listened as they chronicled their extraordinary lives, now being lived four feet below most Londoners, and she set about documenting their stories, which are transcribed in this book along with intimate photographic portraits. A builder, a soldier, a transgender woman, a child and an elderly couple are among those who describe the events that brought them to the lives they lead now. They speak of childhoods, careers and relationships; their strengths and weaknesses, dreams and regrets; all with humour and a startling honesty. Tamsen’s observations and remarkable experiences are threaded throughout. The astonishing people she met changed her for ever, as they became her heroes, people she grew to respect. You don’t have to go far to find these homegrown exiles: they’re at the bottom of your road. Have you ever wondered how they got there?

London Under Attack

London Under Attack
Author: Michael Foley
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2011-11-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 075247622X

London has been under attack for literally centuries. London Under Attack charts the military history of the capital from Roman times until the Second World War. Throughout this period London was at the centre of hostilities, not always instigated by foreign enemies, but more often from its own inhabitants or those from other parts of Britain. As well as the terrible Blitz on London during the Second World War, earlier conflicts which made an impact on the city are also documented, including the Civil Wars of twelfth and seventeenth centuries, the war between King John and the barons, uprisings against the poll tax, the uprising against Queen Mary's marriage to Philip of Spain, the Gordon Riots, the riots and deaths at the funeral of Queen Caroline in the nineteenth century and numerous other uprisings and conflicts that have mainly been forgotten in the twenty-first century. London Under Attack is a must-read for all those interested in military history as well as the turbulent history of our nation's capital.