Subterranean Rivers of London - in Fiction

In Fiction

The subterranean rivers of London are mentioned in several novels, including Thrones, Dominations (by Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh), where a character remarks "You can bury them deep under, sir; you can bind them in tunnels, ... but in the end where a river has been, a river will always be."

One story arc of the comic book Hellblazer features the rivers as a major plot point.

A London subterranean river, used as a sewer, is visited briefly in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Croup and Vandemar, the story's two major antagonists, dump the body of the Marquis de Carabas in the river, and lament on how the people above will never get to see the craftsmanship of the tunnel that was built over it.

The River Tyburn makes an appearance in Ironhand, the second book of the Stoneheart trilogy, by Charlie Fletcher.

The Bryant and May series of mystery novels by Christopher Fowler all deal with London history and trivia. In particular, The Water Room includes a mystery which is directly linked to the paths of London's underground rivers, culminating in a chase through the sewers and ending in a giant underground chamber, hidden since Victorian times, and filled with illegal immigrants.

These rivers play an important role in The Tiger in the Well, the last Sally Lockhart mystery in Philip Pullman's trilogy. In Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch a number of these rivers are personified as river deities of varied importance.

Daniel Defoe mentions sufferers drowning themselves "in the river which runs from the marshes by Hackney, which we generally called Ware River, or Hackney River" in his novel A Journal of the Plague Year.

The construction of the London Sewer System, which utilizes many of the lost rivers, was central to the 2006 Anne Perry novel, Dark Assassin. This is a novel in Perry's series featuring detective William Monk.

The 1966 Modesty Blaise strip cartoon story "The Head Girls" features the underground section of the River Fleet.