Neverwhere

Neverwhere began as a six-part television drama written by Neil Gaiman and Lenny Henry for BBC2 in 1996, and Gaiman adapted his own scripts into a novel, published by BBC Books the same September. The book is usually read first and the series is usually described as the rougher version, but the television production came first and it determined the shape of the story, including its habit of ending an episode with somebody naming a part of London as a threat.

London Below is built entirely out of the city's own names. The Angel Islington is a person, Earl's Court is a court, the Black Friars are monks, and the shepherds of Shepherd's Bush are not shepherds. Door is the last of a family that could open doors, Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar are the two assassins sent to finish that family off, and the Marquis de Carabas is a fixer who trades on his own reputation. Richard spends the book being useless and being used, and the novel's argument is that a life lived on autopilot is the thing he needed to lose.

Gaiman has said the story was partly inspired by Gene Wolfe's Free Live Free, and it sits between his work on The Sandman comics and the novels that followed. A later edition restored material cut from the first printing, and the author's preferred text has been the standard version since. Gaiman has written a sequel, The Seven Sisters, which has been announced without a publication date, and Neverwhere has also been adapted for radio and for the stage, with the original television scripts published separately.