Neil Armstrong
A Real Muck Raker
Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames
By Lara Maiklem
Bloomsbury 336pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
Grubbing around on your knees in cold, alluvial muck might not be everybody’s idea of a great afternoon out, but Lara Maiklem weaves her life around it. Maiklem is a ‘mudlark’. She holds a permit from the Port of London Authority that allows her to scour the Thames foreshore, the area between the high and low water marks of the tidal river, for whatever flotsam and jetsam the waters might yield. In the Victorian era, mudlarks depended on selling their finds to make a living, something documented by Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor, but for Maiklem it’s a hobby that allows her to escape the clamour of the modern city and search for items of historical interest.
In this, her first book, each chapter focuses on a stretch of the river. Maiklem begins in Teddington in the west, where the tidal Thames starts, and works her way east, towards the estuary, where the river joins the
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw