| Product: |
Underground London - Stephen Smith |
| Date: |
07/11/05 (503 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: There are a few good bits and pieces
Disadvantages: The writing style is intensely annoying
I like London, in an I-live-there-and-it’s-a-nightmare-but-kind-of-cool way. I also like a good book about the place. Which is why I picked this up in a three for two offer at one of the big bookshops in the West End. It looked like it might be quite interesting, and there were an impressive array of favourable quotes on the back. Having read it, I rather wish I’d gone for something else instead.
The book is sub-titled ‘Travels Beneath the City Streets’, and it describes various subterranean bits of London that the majority of people remain blissfully unaware of – as well as some that are familiar to most. This is something that I’ve always had a vague, low-level interest in, so I was happy to see another book on the subject. The author describes his explorations of various underground bits of London, from sewers and dead Tube stations to fallout shelters and cemetery catacombs. He also throws in a fair bit of the history around them. Potentially interesting stuff, but somehow the book just ended up irritating me.
The problem is that it rapidly becomes obvious that the book isn’t really about what’s under London, it’s about how the author reacts to what’s under London. Instead of descriptions of what’s there and its history, there’s far too much about what the author thinks of it all. Obviously no worthwhile book is going to just be a rather dry list of facts – there always has to be some kind of authorial voice – but here the author seems to regard himself and his opinions as more important than what he’s actually supposed to be describing. And I really don’t like his tone. He employs an informal, slightly laddish bonhomie, randomly awarding himself an assumed intimacy with the reader that he does nothing to earn, and I found myself starting to resent him within a few pages.
He ranges between pretentious, patronising and falsely self-effacing. He frequently evokes poet and psychogeographic travel writer Iain Sinclair. (Sinclair is rather like Peter Ackroyd, but much more intelligent and with a far better prose style – he can be annoyingly pompous, but at its best his writing can make you look at London in a completely new way). Whole chunks of this book read almost like a love letter to Sinclair (who disappointingly provides a favourable cover quote), but Stephen Smith isn’t in the same league. His descriptions of his fellow subterranean explorers are presumably meant to be funny and charming, but come across as deeply patronising and unpleasant.
His attempts at making himself out to be some kind of amiable buffoon, who just happens to gain access to these amazing underground places, come across as disingenuous. For instance, he describes how he enthusiastically tells some fellow explorers about how he thinks he’s found the entrance to the secret government bunkers under London, and is comically deflated when they don’t take him seriously. The fact that the alleged entrance he’s talking about is the one by the ICA, which *everyone* with any kind of interest in the subject knows about, makes you wonder if he’s telling the truth.
There is at least one occasion when his behaviour is highly questionable. When being shown round the catacombs at Kensal Green Cemetery, the guide asks him not to write something down. He obligingly describes how he puts his notebook away, and then goes on to tell us word for word exactly what it was that the guide didn’t want him to write down. This raises questions about his journalistic ethics (and I have it on good authority that heads rolled at the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetary organisation as a result of the book).
The book is also full of little errors – for instance, the name of Sufragette Emily Davison is spelled incorrectly, and he seems to confuse Ian Fleming and John Le Carre at one point. This is probably more down to the proofreaders than the author, but it certainly adds to my dissatisfaction with the thing.
I think the main problem really is that Smith doesn’t ever bring any of it alive. Clearly he’s passionate about what’s under London’s streets – he’s spent a lot of time going round them, and has certainly put in a lot more effort than I ever would – but his passion never translates to the page when he’s describing it. London’s Victorian sewage system is one of the greatest engineering achievements of its age – he somehow reduces it to just a sewer, failing to find the poetry in it. (I’d recommend Alan Moore and Tim Perkins’ strange and brilliant concept album/prose poem The Highbury Working if you’re interested in something that *does* bring out the poetry in London’s sewage system.)
I suppose the book isn’t all bad – there is some interesting information in there. Some of what he describes (wine vaults, safety deposit boxes) is boring, but most of it is pretty exciting, even if you have to imagine the excitement for yourself because the author forgot to include it. I liked the chapter on underground mail trains beecause one used to run under an office where I worked; and Smith hears quite a spooky ghost story from a guy working late at night in the Tube. That’s why I’ve rather grudgingly given this two stars instead of one.
I guess this probably won’t be terribly interesting to people who don’t live in London – I doubt it’s as prominent in book shops outside the capital. But if the subject interests you, I’d look elsewhere. 368 pages, no pictures (there really should be – doesn’t he own a camera?). RRP £8.99, cheaper online obviously. And there will certainly be a copy in the Oxfam on Kingsland Road soon.
Summary: A pretty bad book on a pretty interesting subject
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