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.
Show NotesScene 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
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
Or on Facebook
See where 62 AD fits on our Timeline
Bernard Cornwell: The Battle of Waterloo (1815)
Stephen Greenblatt: The Death of Christopher Marlowe (1593)
Season Five Trailer!
Colin Jones: The Fall of Robespierre (1794)
Alex Renton: Blood Legacy (1839)
Ellen Alpsten: The Tsarinas and Peter the Great (1709)
Alasdair Cross: The Spitfire and the Schneider Trophy (1925)
Philip Hoare: Albert and the Whale (1520)
Richard Ovenden: The fall of Glastonbury Abbey (1539)
Nicholas Crane: Latitude (1739)
Edward Rutherfurd: China and Queen Victoria (1839)
Leo Hollis: The Lost History of Mary Davies (1701)
Frances Wilson: D.H. Lawrence, Burning Man (1915)
Edmund Richardson: The Quest for the Lost City (1833)
Jane Rogoyska: The Katyń Massacre (1940)
Llewelyn Morgan: Ovid and the Augustan Age (14 AD)
Lindsey Davis: A Comedy of Terrors (89 AD)
Helen Carr: The Red Prince (1381)
Roland Philipps: Mathilde Carré, ‘La Chatte’ (1940)
Ross King: The Bookseller of Florence (1434)
Join Podbean Ads Marketplace and connect with engaged listeners.
Advertise Today
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Irish Songs with Ken Murray
History Obscura
Historycal: Words that Shaped the World
The Rest Is History
Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra