A box of delights
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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 spring - wells, hospitals, flowers. A rhapsodic chapter....
12. The river of art - Turner, Conrad, Jerome - chroniclers (the 16th-century antiquarian John Leland), novelists (Dickens, Grahame), poets Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Shelley, Arnold.
13. Shadows and depth - Visions of Carroll and Traherne. Local history; dreams and legends.
14. The river of death - riverine findings (coins, weapons, syringes, severed heads). Mythology. Suicides, murders, drownings.
15. The river's end - the estuarial river which "rushes to the sea's embrace."
A grand achievement. Prepare to be delighted, amazed - and moved.
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Strangely compelling
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Rather like The Thames itself, this book has a mysterious beguiling quality. It draws you in and won't let you go. Ackroyd's prose, his playful mingling of history and legend, his almost overwhelming attention to detailed research combine to make this a compelling, oddly unsettling read. I learned so much.
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A book to dip in to
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This is an interesting and eclectic look at the River Thames by the author of 'London: The Biography'. The meat of the book is a series of vignettes dealing with different aspects of the river, its people, and it's environs. Also included is what the author titles 'An Alternative Topography, from source to sea' which is fascinating in its own right. This is really a book to dip into, rather than to read from end to end, and in some places it gets a little too mystical for my taste. It has it's own fascination, though, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it - especially to read in bed before you go to sleep.
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Disappointing
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As far as I can gather there are three ways one could write a book about a river. One could write about the river itself, how it has changed over time, either naturally or at the hands of man. Personally, I have not read a book of this kind, but no doubt they exist. Alternatively, one could travel up or down the river and write on the places and lands that border on it, or the people that live on its banks. Claudio Magris does this with great success in his book "Danube"; this kind of book is really a special form of the more general book that follows some sort of trace across the landscape (Colin Thubron's "Shadow of the Silk Road" comes to mind, as do books on old pilgrim roads, or even Michael Palin's "Around the World in 80 Days" or his "Pole to Pole"). The other possibility would be to write about various aspects of a river. This is the approach that Peter Ackroyd has adopted in his "Thames: Sacred River". He has written what amounts to a series of essays about the river, covering such themes as "the working river", "the river of trade", "the river of art", "the natural river", "the sacred river", and on and on.
I cannot say that Mr. Ackroyd's approach really worked for me. I do not know the Thames intimately, so I found it difficult to get a real sense of the river as Mr. Ackroyd jumped geographically up and down it, using examples from wherever he might find them to exemplify his themes. Names of many places passed in a blur, with my not knowing if they were upstream, downstream or in between. All of this was not made any easier by Mr. Ackroyd's insistence throughout the book, with great or lesser levels of intensity, on the sacral nature of the river; after a while, I found his reflections on its sacredness somewhat irritating. And of course London tends to dominate the book. Perhaps this is not surprising, because London is so central to the Thames, but Mr. Ackroyd's approach brings London even more to the fore than it might otherwise. In a book meant to be about the whole river, this is quite a handicap.
All in all, not the best of books.
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swept away
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Peter Ackroyd's bestseller London: The Biography seemed to be part of a fashion a few years ago to write 'The Biography' of any kind of inanimate object ranging from the Bible to the Moon. It was however a fascinating journey through the history of the capital and as a Londoner myself I still get a thrill walking through some of the ancient streets and passages (especially those around the river) thinking of who else has been there before me. So what of this history of the river itself?
Following a meandering course this book is divided into short thematic chapters such as 'The Working River' and 'The River of Art'. With this approach Ackroyd is able to write not only about the history of the river but what it represents. Some reviewers have complained that this way of writing is not suited to the subject but I found it refreshing and invigorating to read a writer who sees the river in similar terms to the other great rivers of the world. The Ganges is seen as sacred in India and all life in Egypt runs alongside the Nile. In Britain, the Thames has always been associated with power and industry, literally the lifeblood of the capital but its influence is also felt along its full length from Thameshead to the sea.
If there is a problem it is that Ackroyd tends to give us all of his copious research and so the myriad of facts in each short chapter, whilst thematically linked, can feel a little disorganised. It is his trademark enthusiasm which keeps the momentum going though and as we follow the river's course it is hard not to get caught up in its wake. I am sure there are better textbooks available for those who want a more serious study but just as his book on London provided a popular, accessible history of the city this companion volume is sure to do the same for its famous river.
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