The London Underneath

About this book

Every night for seven centuries, the Tower of London has been locked at the Ceremony of the Keys. Tonight, the key will not turn. Something knocks three times on the gate—from the inside. By morning a raven has vanished and every clock in London has lost exactly one minute. Eleanor Shaw, a conservation architect who measures buildings for a living, surveys a basement larger than the house above it. Across the city, an Underground engineer, a 999 call handler, a black-cab driver, a Thames mudlark and an irritable historian each notice the same impossible thing: London's demolished pasts have not gone anywhere. The old streets are still down there, and the boundary keeping them out of the present is failing. As lost stations, impossible staircases and familiar faces appear where nothing should be, six Londoners must ask what the city has been locking away every night—and what happens now the lock is broken.