In the 19th century the Great Stink made much of London along the River Thames uninhabitable. Sir Joseph Bazelgette saved the city with his amazing interceptor sewer system, but since then the capital has grown exponentially and today faces a renewed threat from major waste water pollution in the river. Tackling this is the Thames Tideway Tunnel, the UK’s largest ever underground engineering project, built beneath the River Thames and truly the 21st-century inheritor of Bazelgette’s sewers.

This fascinating book describes the journey from the Great Stink to the modern-day solution designed to prevent the same disaster ever happening again.