In this episode we visit London in 62 AD, barely twenty years after it was first established by the Romans, to traverse its lost landscape and hidden waterways.

When we think of London, we usually think of a sprawling urban metropolis: glass and steel, terraced houses, every imaginable form of transport and noise. We don’t often think about the natural landscape that lies beneath it all. And yet, our guest today argues, it is London’s geology that has been a crucial force in the shaping of the city over the last two thousand years. 

Tom Chivers is a writer, publisher and arts producer from south London. He is also an award-winning poet who has published two pamphlets and two full collections of his poetry. London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City is his non-fiction debut and it’s been described by critics as “entertaining, enlightening and deeply moving.”

As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.

Click here to order London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City.

Scene One: 62 AD. The river Walbrook.

Scene Two: 62 AD. The Westminster Delta.

Scene Three: 62 AD. The Rockingham Anomaly, in Southwark, to meet Harper Road Woman.

Memento: A shoe. “I like the idea of the wearer’s footprint being retained in the soft leather, and also to imagine what kind of ground the sole has stood on/walked across.”

People/Social

Presenter: Artemis Irvine

Guest: Tom Chivers

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Unseen Histories

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