The Well of Shadows: Underground London: Thirteen Years in the Belly of the Beast

As it is with postmen, so it is with the uniformed gateline staff on the London Underground. Invisible to most busy commuters, unless as an object of complaint or vilification, the figure in the glass box is barely credited by passengers with having any interior life at all. Everything changes with the publication of former Customer Service Assistant Ed O’Regan’s Dante-esque memoir of over 13 years’ service in the living hell of London’s Tube network, where ghouls stalk the tunnels, passengers sometimes die, Management morph into Dad’s Army’s Captain Mainwaring and the poor bloody infantry on the front line have somehow to cope with whatever is thrown at them. Some are born mad, some achieve madness and some have madness thrust upon them. A former theatre worker and Further Education lecturer, Ed’s unlikely decision to toil beneath the city streets is prompted by an I Ching reading after experiencing a series of mid-life crises, and his account of an inglorious ‘career’ is peppered with references as diverse as Hieronymus Bosch and the Travelling Wilburys, William Hogarth and The Rolling Stones. As the wallpaper inside CSA O’Regan’s skull unfolds, no reader of ‘The Well of Shadows’ will ever see the man in the glass box in quite the same light again. “…highly enjoyable reading.” (The London Magazine) “We read it with enthusiasm and were impressed by its originality and engaging style.” (The Susijn Agency)