The Unhidden City
This chapter adds to the canon of secret Londons through the inscription of another layer, another arcane and invisible text in the palimpsest that is the urban landscape. Such accounts of other Londons gesture toward the irreducible survivals of past landscapes in a place that constantly unearths its own history. As stated by Prof. Timothy Morton, “the streets beneath the streets, the Roman Wall, the boarded-up houses, the unexploded bombs, are records of everything that happened to London.” London's history exists in its form. From histories of the Underground to accounts by urban explorers entering the city's sewers and crypts, from compendia of obscure folklore to catalogs of nearly forgotten ghost stories, London provokes a predilection with the hidden.