Although I currently live in a city, I would not describe myself as a natural city-dweller. I am sure that this is due, in no small part, to the fact that one would be forgiven for thinking that this particular city is simply a large town. Forgiven, that is, by all but the local inhabitants who are fiercely proud of the status of their home. For instance, I will never forget arriving in the city for my first year at university and being sternly warned never to ask a bus driver for a ticket in to "town". Whilst I highly doubt that anyone would
actually be refused travel for such an assertion, the fact that a warning was deemed necessary, even if only in jest, is a testament to the pride that people attach to the designation of city status. Nevertheless, regardless of size and population, I simply don't share the same affinities with city-living as friends who have been raised in, or enthusiastically adopted, a city as home. That is not to suggest that I am some kind of "ruralite". On the contrary, I spent my entire childhood and the majority of my adolescence growing up in a suburban neighborhood ten minutes from the centre of a wealthy East Anglian town. However, it seems to me that the difference lies in the escalation of anonymity; it is simply easier to "know" a town as opposed to a city. And it is for this reason that I find Peter Ackroyd's
London Under such an oddly compelling read, for although he manages to shed a wealth of information about the very specific history of London as revealed under the ground, the book still manages to end with an unnerving sense of the unknown.
