The tunnel through time - Gillian Tindall

Crossrail, the 'Elizabeth' line, with its spacious, light-filled stations, is simply the latest way of traversing a very old east-west route through what was once countryside to the old City core and out again. Visiting Stepney, Liverpool Street, Farringdon, Tottenham Court Road (alias St Giles-in-the-Fields) and the route along Oxford Street (alias the Way to Oxford and also Tyburn) this richly descriptive book traces the course of many of these historical journeys across time as well as space.

Archaeology disinters layers of actual matter; one may also disinter the lives that walked where many of our streets, however altered in appearance, still run today. These people spoke the names of ancient farms, manors and slums that now belong to our squares and tube stations. They endured the cycle of the seasons as we do; they ate, drank, laughed, worked, prayed, despaired and hoped in what are essentially the same spaces we occupy today. As The Tunnel Through Time expertly shows, destruction and renewal are a constant rhythm in the city's story.

'A forensic researcher... an imaginative historical sensibility and way of revisiting the past - as if approaching it through the back door - that has both subtlety and poignancy' Financial Times