Thames: The Biography

This is a very interesting presentation of early (and more recent) history and geography of the Thames. I was interested to find the history at Abingdon and can believe it lives up to its billing as being the oldest continuous settled place in England.

Ah, what a joy to be reading the splendid writing of Peter Ackroyd once again. He is one of the finest living practitioners of the English language. Thames: The Biography is much like Ackroyd's other books in that you don't just read facts about the Thames. Ackroyd takes you on a journey along its length. It some places you sail briskly along the smooth surface. In others you tread carefully upon the ice of the frozen river. In still others you dive in and are fully immersed, gliding along with the current. Ackroyd has the unique ability to put the reader into a specific time and place. In reading this book, I could almost hear the river flowing by, could almost smell the water. I frequently found myself thirsty. For fans of British history or for those who find pleasure in history beautifully told, this book will prove an absolute joy.

British author Peter Ackroyd - of London: the Biography, Shakespeare: the Biography, and numerous other works - presents the most comprehensive biography ever written on the most renowned river of all time. After reading this book, it can be said that you will know all there is to know about the river Thames. Beginning with its geology and topography, Ackroyd takes you on a full tour from wellspring to its draining into the English channel, filling your head with facts and details you'd never really thought about. Then he begins a brief foray into references made about the Thames throughout history and literature. This sets the stage for a great journey, which Ackroyd starts right at the beginning with the origin of its name in various languages and how it has changed over time. With plenty of maps and pictures, along with a lengthy bibliography and index, the reader will feel confident enough to give a two-hour lecture to friends and family on the Thames, after reading this book, as well as answering any questions. Thames: the Biography will have you planning a trip to the most famous river in history in no time! Reviewed by Alex C. Telander

When I opened Ackroyd's biography of Sir Thomas More many years ago, and read the pages in which he imagines how his subject wended his way to school through late 15th century London and what he saw and encountered on his way, I was stunned by his uncanny ability to create, de facto, two characters: More and London itself. Happily for us all, he has gone on to write a series of three books that really do serve as "biographies of place", if such a phrase exists. The first was London: The Biography, the second, Albion: Origins of the English Imagination, a tour de force of what is distinctively English. The third in the series is this biography of the Thames River. However unlikely the subject, the book is easily the equal of anything else this eclectic and accomplished author has produced. As anyone who has ever flown into Heathrow airport across the span of London has seen first hand, the river twists like a silver ribbon throughout the city of London, and leads onward to the sea and up into the heart of the country. Ackroyd's narrative is as sparkling as water should be and thankfully not as sludgy as that of the Thames in London itself too often still is, and takes nearly as many twists and turns in describing its subjects. Ackroyd, for instance, delves into the symbolic meaning and physical construction of bridges across the Thames, from the earliest days, to the medieval London Bridge and on to the present. The Magna Carta -- the base document on which Anglo-American democracy was founded -- was signed in a meadow by the Thames some 800 years ago. Centuries later, the London docks helped establish London as the center of a commercial empire and were the departure point for generations of explorers, from Raleigh and Drake onwards. (Some of those vessels are still moored for visitors to explore along the banks.) From riverside pubs (although my personal London favorite, the Prospect of Whitby, doesn't rate a mention) to gardens, the river was a place of recreation. But it was also a place of death; just as Anne Boleyn rode along it in barges alongside Henry VIII, she later traveled to her execution in the Tower of London on the Thames, a route followed by her daughter, Elizabeth I, two decades later (to a happier outcome.) Traitors' heads were routinely displayed on London Bridge for all to see; the tale is that Margaret Roper, Thomas More's daughter, removed her father's head from a spike there after his beheading. It's to be hoped that the City of London and all the other towns and cities that lie along the length of the Thames are suitably grateful to Peter Ackroyd for this elegant and beautifully written book. It's impossible to imagine that it won't create a sudden spike in tourism to the Thames Valley among as many readers as it reaches. I'm already planning my spring visit to a friend there. His home? Well, it's a modern condo built within an old Bermondsey wharf building and from the balcony overhanging the river, I can hear the sound

Chapeau! Kudos! Peter Ackroyd has done a terrific job with this book. From his early novel _Hawksmoor_, Ackroyd has evolved into the chronicler par excellence of London, both through his book of the same name and by the flavour of London life in his biographies of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Sir Thomas More, Dickens, Blake, and other works (both fictional and non). This cornucopia has history, geography, geology, spirituality, sociology, literary and cultural referencing, psychology, life cycles, transport, trade, ecology, hedonism, commercialism. It's a staggeringly accomplished chronicle and a worthy tribute to the liquid heart of London. Ackroyd ranges masterfully from facts and statistics - some of them fascinating - through to dreams and legends. Although London dominates, this deals with the villages and towns along the Thames - e.g., Windsor as represented by the poet Alexander Pope. The historical thread moves from the prehistoric river, and the Thames Caesar conquered, through to the modern flood protection afforded by the Thames Barrier. Notwithstanding its erudition, the flow is ceaseless and the touch light, so that it's an easy, satisfying read. Thankfully, Ackroyd controls his trademark fascination in filth and murk aspects, balancing them judiciously with the elevated, refined and spiritual. He delightedly describes the Fleet as "merd-urinous", "wholly rank" and "the excremental centre of London's polluted life". This is tempered by the view "at twilight, a soft grey, a lacustrine light." With its buried coins and weapons, syringes, severed heads, the river is a "depository of past lives" but Ackroyd gives us a final vision of "estuarial river" rushing to the "sea's embrace." I can do no better than let the chapters speak for themselves: 1. "The Mirror of history": river as fact (statistics) and metaphor - the "museum of Englishness", symbolizing the national character. Time of the river: Hydrologic and geologic. 2. Father Thames - river deities, Thames Basin, birth/source aspects 3. Issuing Forth: tributaries, especially the Fleet. 4. Beginnings: Ice Ages, barrows, and henges; Caesar and Vikings. 5. The sacred river - saints and ruins: includes Norman palaces, Westminster Abbey, monasteries(work and education), plague and fire. 6.Elemental and Equal: riverine cycle/essence and social upheavals/revolutions. 7. The working river -: River boats, London Bridge and subways, river law and conservation; the criminal element (theft, witches); watermen, porters, weir keepers. 8. River of trade - wharves, mills, breweries, docks, modern decline - new financial districts e.g. Canary Wharf and Docklands. 9. The Natural River: fog, wind, rain, the Thames Barrier (flood protection). Sacred woods and trees, villages, swans and whales (!) 10. A stream of pleasure - pubs, sports, carnivals, Lord Mayor's pageant, physic gardens Contrasts with mortality, sewers, and typhus in the 18th-19th centuries. 11. The healing