A lyrical meditation on landscapes and cities, vivid reportage and a memoir. And also a beautifully realised and moving read.' Financial Times Seeing how popular liminal spaces have become online, was the idea of liminality somehow important to the book? The idea of secret rivers, enclosed in the sewer system across London, exerting their influence on the city unbeknownst to the residents above has a sense of the mystical about it – helped, no doubt, by my reading Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series! Love London history? If so, do join us on the day our second Stories of London event for 2023! Christian Wolmar - How the London Underground Was Built & Cathedrals of Steam However, I soon cheered up. I was in the company of an unpretentious and easy-going personality. Yes, he is a typical liberal Londoner - that type who can often drive us 'country' folk up the wall - but he is likeable and decent. Yes, dear reader, I liked him and he writes well.

Tom Chivers follows hidden pathways, explores lost islands and uncovers the geological mysteries that burst up through the pavement and bubble to the surface of our streets. From Roman ruins to a submerged playhouse, from an abandoned Tube station to underground rivers, Chivers leads us on a journey into the depths of the city he loves. Tom Chivers, with the forensic eye of an investigator, the soul of a poet, is an engaging presence; a guide we would do well to follow." It's entertaining, enlightening and deeply moving. You will learn something about London and a good deal about life." Will open readers' eyes to what is around and below them [...] Its delight in exploration is matched by a thoughtful meditation on grief."Exactly what is more or less permanent or transitory is unclear. The course of ancient rivers become shifted into sewers while more recent waste threatens to degrade imperfectly and become lodged in the geology. London at the beginning of the 2020s is as different from, say, London in the 1990s (my last residence decade) as the latter was from the London of the 1970s (when I first arrived). Its multiculturalism is now embedded, its 'different ideology' established and its detritus piling up.

The only complaint is that the maps are pretty and schematic but it is not always easy to follow the travels unless you have a street finder at hand. There are also times when the precise course of the journey appears a little unclear and does not seem to match the cast of the map.Macfarlane's book (though good) sometimes lost its way in the standard issue preachiness of the liberal intellectual. Macfarlane's poetic element can become almost a parody of itself at times, the tone portentous. Chivers has less ambition but achieves it more authentically. Tom won an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Prize in 2014. He has performed at numerous events and venues including Dasein Poetry Festival, Athens; The Eden Project, Cornwall; Ledbury Poetry Festival; London Literature Festival; Moray Walking Festival; Poetry International; The Sage Gateshead; Soho Theatre and The Thames Festival.

The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie (meaning over the river) which has witnessed over 1000 years of London history,stands at the oldest crossing-point of the River Thames, at what was for many centuries the only entrance to the City of London. One person who knows is Tom Chivers. Years ago, Chivers spread a street map over his bedroom floor and started colouring in the different strata — the silts, clays and gravels that underly our city. Initially my heart sank at the thought that I might find myself wading through the reflections on London topography of yet another psycho-geographical (or here psycho-geological) poet with a gloomy world-view (having just had to put up with that aspect of Macfarlane's 'Underland'). He's since spent years tracing London's hidden landscape armed only with his home-made geology map, a pair of well-worn shoes, and a heightened sense of curiosity. His new book, London Clay, presents his discoveries in a delicious tome of topology.The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie has witnessed over 1000 years of London history His non-fiction debut London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City will be published by Transworld/Doubleday in September 2021. He is represented by Sophie Scard at United Agents. Based on new research, it tells a tale of remarkable technological, scientific and organisational breakthroughs; but also a story of greed and complacency, high finance and low politics. Among the breakthroughs was the picturesque New River, neither new nor a river but a state of the art aqueduct completed in 1613 and still part of London's water supply: the company that built it was one of the very first modern business corporations, and also one of the most profitable. London water companies were early adopters of steam power for their pumps. And Chelsea Waterworks was the first in the world to filter the water it supplied its customers: the same technique is still used to purify two-thirds of London's drinking water. But for much of London's history water had to be rationed, and the book also chronicles our changing relationship with water and the way we use it. Westminster is now the centre of our government and establishment, but it used to be a river delta in its past. He heads down into a sewer to see the River Fleet and has to shower a long time after that experience. If you know where and how to look there are still echoes of the roads that the Romans first used, Watling Street, Stane Street as well as hints of more recent London, as he searches for the lost island of Bermondsey and sees if the Olympic Park has eradicated the ancient causeway that crossed the marshes. Time and time again, consciously or not, Chivers shows us streets, wastelands, rivers clogged with waste and pollution and 'nature' present but struggling to survive and break through despite the best efforts of its guardians and its underlying geographical reality.