The Tunnel Through Time

Tindall has an eye for a good line. Her sources are eclectic and illuminating…The Tunnel Through Time is a book to savour. It is subtle, considered and powerfully evocative of London’s “changeful” landscape. * Daily Telegraph *
Tindall is a sure-footed, even revelatory guide to the treasures of London that Crossrail has unintentionally brought to our notice. – Jerry White * Guardian *
In this engaging book Gillian Tindall … a veteran historian with an eye for the macabre, the quirky and the absurd … deftly weaves together archaeology, social history, politics, myth, religion and philosophy – Richard Morrison * The Times *
Ms Tindall skilfully blends ancient histories, archaeological findings and contemporary context * The Economist *
These underground stories remind us that buried spaces are places of protection as well as of the fearfully unknown, of hope and of political resistance, of science as well as of persistently chthonic mythology. There’s always a quirky and sometimes a grisly journey to be had beneath our streets * Evening Standard *
[Gillian Tindall] has long been interested in resurrecting the lives of some of the hosts of the London dead who, as she says, lie “under our busy, careless feet”. By following Crossrail’s route, both below and over ground … she has found a new and rewarding way of doing so – Nick Rennison * Sunday Times *
Tindall delivers a fine, concise account of the early history of the Tube… In its research, its anecdotes and its historical imagination, The Tunnel Through Time is a readable journey across a two millennium-old route. – Edwin Heathcote * Financial Times *
[It is] enchanting. * Sunday Telegraph *
[The Tunnel Through Time is] absorbing. * Sunday Times *
The hidden tales she recounts are the distilled results of knowledge acquired over decades by a veteran historian with an eye for the macabre, the quirky and the absurd…she deftly weaves together archaeology, social history, politics, myth, religion and philosophy…expect to be constantly surprised, even if you think you know London well. * The Times *

Gillian Tindall is a master of miniaturist history, well known for the quality of her writing and the scrupulousness of her research; she makes a handful of people, a few locations or a dramatic event stand for the much larger picture, as her seminal book The Fields Beneath, approached the history of Kentish Town, London. She has also written on London’s Southbank (The House by the Thames), on southern English counties (Three Houses, Many Lives), and the Left Bank (Footprints in Paris), amongst other locations, as well as biography and prize-winning novels. She has lived in the same London house for over fifty years.

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