London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City

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It’s easy to see how the book is influenced by the author’s poetry – facts here are communicated clearly but always with an imaginative hook so that none of what could be dry information ever actually is. On a lighter note, knowing that you’ve just covered this in your book to a great extent, is there some kind of fundamental difference between London north of the Thames and south of it?

London re-enchanted. From the heart of the old city to the distant edgelands, London Clay is a wonderfully multi-layered meander through a landscape at once familiar and strange. A portrait of a haunted, mysterious city and a moving work of personal memoir.” This book is an interesting animal, as it is not a memoir, it is not a text book or a book of poetry – it is very much all of these things and has elements of social and personal history within it.

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.' Iain Sinclair

Chivers becomes Everylondoner. The outsider who thinks he knows London from visits (including commuting) or having lived there in the past gets a subtle sense of both change and permanence, the recognisable place but also its continuing transformation when you cease to be there. We are none of us here for long. Our lives matter hugely and yet in the great scheme of things not at all. This book grapples with our predicament in an entirely original way. It’s entertaining, enlightening and deeply moving. You will learn something about London and a good deal about life.”

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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 A lyrical meditation on landscapes and cities, vivid reportage and a memoir. And also a beautifully realised and moving read.' Financial Times That is the charm of the book. It shows a poet's sensibility in a way that I found more convincing than the more overt attempt at poetry by Macfarlane. Somewhere between all the facts and ruminations, intangible things are being presented with inexpressible feelings attached. London Clay is a very original book, it’s a collection of essays about parts of London beneath the surface. These are the bits you don’t see in guidebooks and on postcards. It’s very real; it includes the graffiti and the dog turds as well as the more attractive and magical parts. There’s a great mix of factual/social and personal history, with the author sharing the city’s history as well as his own reflections. This makes the book very interesting and it will appeal to a broad audience. It’s not just a factual textbook or a personal memoir but a mixture of both. It’s also written in a very poetic style, I love this line about looking out at London from a high vantage point:

Seeing how popular liminal spaces have become online, was the idea of liminality somehow important to the book? 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'). In that chapter, liquidity is used as a pun on financial liquidity. Following that particular river [the Walbrook] was exciting, because you were following this submerged stream. This hidden history for an area, which is generating huge amounts of capital now. So, there’s this strange dissonance created by that particular experience. If you have any interest in what lies below our capital city, this is definitely worth a read. Even if you have no interest in what lies below our capital city, this is still worth a read – Chivers’ clever blending of disparate elements and crafting of language is a pleasure to read. 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.I seem to have a fascination for the abandoned parts of our towns and cities – just this week I’ve been watching Secrets of the London Underground on Yesterday – so London Clay is right in my wheelhouse. Harriet Hawkins is Professor of GeoHumanities, and the founding Co-Director of the Centre for GeoHumanities at Royal Holloway, University of London. The genesis of this book is hard to pin down. Born in South London in 1983, Chivers has been fascinated since childhood with exploring the city. Throughout his twenties, he continued to chronicle London through barely-read poems, pamphlets, and books. Just as this creative impulse was petering out, arts charity Cape Farewell approached him to be their first poet-in-residence, in turn leading Chivers to produce a series of audio walking adventures along London's lost rivers. This, if anything, provided the impetus for the writing of London Clay.