Crossrail, the ` Elizabeth` line, with its spacious, light-filled stations, is simply the latest way of traversing a very old east-west route through what was once countryside to the old City core & out again. Visiting Stepney, Liverpool Street, Farringdon, Tottenham Court Road (alias St-Giles-in-the-Fields) & the route along Oxford Street (alias the Way to Oxford & also Tyburn) this richly descriptive book traces the course of many of these historical journeys across time as well as space. Archaeology disinters layers of actual matter; one may also disinter the lives that walked where many of our streets, however altered in appearance, still run today. These people spoke the names of ancient farms, manors & slums that now belong to our squares & tube stations. They endured the cycle of the seasons as we do; they ate, drank, laughed, worked, prayed, despaired & hoped in what are essentially the same spaces we occupy today. As The Tunnel Through Time expertly shows, destruction & renewal are a constant rhythm in the city`s story. ”A forensic researcher...an imaginative historical sensibility & way of revisiting the past
- as if approaching it through the back door
- that has both subtlety & poignancy”. (Financial Times).