When most people think of London, they know all the famous sights, the Tower, Parliament, the palaces and the new skyscrapers that thrust into the sky. When they consider what is below, almost everybody knows the tube, that arterial network that brings people right into the centre of London. But the streets of London hide many secrets.

In this Rule looks at the most common things that you would find if you were to remove the tarmac. There is the tube of course, but there are rivers that have not seen the light of day for decades, a Post Office railway, unused tunnels under the river, and the ghost stations that are no longer used on the underground. She also covers a fair amount on the of the underground during the war, and the bunkers that were constructed and almost never used, as well as other disasters that has befallen the service. She brings it up to date with an account of the 7/7 atrocities.

It is not a bad book, but it does suffer from being one of many books on this fascinating subject. Rule has done a reasonable job on the book, and coming at it from a more historical slant helps, but it could have really done with some more photos. Worth reading for those aficionados of London, but there are better books out there on this subject, in particular London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets by Peter Ackroyd and for a photographic record, Subterranean London: Cracking the Capital by Bradley L. Garrett. ( )