A treat for rabid Anglophiles with a taste for the offbeat and off-the-beaten-path.
Highly entertaining tour of British civilization, viewed from below ground level.
Smith (The Land of Miracles, 1998) traces British history via London’s subterranean passages, tunnels, sewers, wartime bunkers and, of course, the celebrated Underground. His erudite and eccentric odyssey mixes well-documented history with rather fanciful lore. Admittedly, the lore is more fun, such as the notion that Queen Boudicca is entombed beneath Platform 10 at the King’s Cross tube station. But much of the history is remarkably engaging because it is all too human: Henry VIII farcically shuttling lovers through his underground passages at Hampton Court; soggy gunpowder foiling poor Guy Fawkes’s disastrous attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament; grumpy Samuel Pepys clomping into his cellar to discover it’s flooded once again; underground air-raid shelters being turned into post-WWII housing for Jamaican immigrants, etc. Smith has a knack for finding the most interesting and entertaining people below street level, ranging from a legendary sewer worker who killed rats with a swat of his hardhat to a group of naive Lancashire teenagers unable to disguise their giddiness while riding the Underground for the first time. Occasionally, the below-ground treasures have a bizarre way of unexpectedly surfacing; the Nazi strikes of 1941, for example, unearthed the ruins of a Roman temple dedicated to Mithras. Sometimes Smith is a bit too generous in sharing information, as with his in-depth descriptions of the woefully fetid conditions that forced Henry III to install a drainage system at Westminster Palace in the 1380s. The future of London is also very much below street level, with long-planned rail tunnels finally getting off the drawing board as a means of attracting the 2012 Olympic Games. Not unlike the city above it, underground London remains in constant flux.
A treat for rabid Anglophiles with a taste for the offbeat and off-the-beaten-path.Pub Date: June 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-316-86134-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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