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These accounts provide periodic surprises even for the most dedicated student of this subject. For instance, I lived for many years mere yards from a mysterious subterranean south London depression known to archaeologists as ‘the Rockingham Anomaly’ with no idea of its presence. Similarly, I’m sure that few people who work in the Treasury building on Horse Guards Road are aware that it is probably a hidden branch of the Tyburn which periodically floods the deepest basements.
London Clay belongs to the subgenre of books referred to now as ‘creative non-fiction’. Writing in this space is an exercise in synthesis: rather than focusing in detail on any one aspect of the subject, the trick is to unite disparate approaches into a seamless, original whole. When it comes off, the results can feel utterly fresh the combination of hawking, grief and literary history in Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk comes to mind. But if the disparate elements don’t quite meld into a singular whole, the result can be clunky and patchy, neither one thing nor another.
The latter problem besets this book. It is not a work about subterranean urban exploring, and Chivers only physically descends beneath the surface once, on page 135, as part of a press trip into the new ‘super sewer’ currently under construction. Those hoping for first-hand accounts of Bazalgette’s great sewers will be disappointed. Nor is it an expert treatise on London’s geology and archaeology, or an in-depth history of the capital’s waterways, or a comprehensive walking guide to the hidden rivers. Parts of Chivers’s own story are movingly written, such as the passages about his mother, who died young of cancer when he was in his teens. But the book does not exhibit the consummate memoirist’s gift of being able to tell which memories that are interesting and precious to the writer will also resonate with the reader.
The voluminous recollection of quotidian details encountered on his walks does at times hit the mark. The description of meeting a marvellous character called John in the Elephant and Castle shopping centre is a notable highlight. Most of the time, however, it all streams past in a similar manner to a conversation overheard on the bus or an account of someone else’s dream. Similarly, the sprinkling of references to events at the time the trips were undertaken adds little. Allusions to Jeremy Corbyn and anti-Semitism, for instance, or the progress of Brexit legislation don’t link fully to the book’s overall narrative.
Chivers’s explorations continue into the summer of 2020, when lockdown restrictions mean that he could no longer meet experts in person or visit crowded indoor places. Perhaps because of these limitations, the concluding passages shine out above the rest. The birth of his second child, the struggle to keep a toddler entertained indoors and a touchingly understated outdoor reunion with his father are woven cleverly into an account of how the River Lea winds its way through the Olympic Park to the Thames. He captures something of the strangeness of living in a city crowded with people and history at a time when everyone was forced to stay apart and inside. One phrase that he uses to sign his messages during that eerie period of isolation lingers, and speaks to something of the strange solitariness of London’s underland too: ‘From our little island to yours.’
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