Peter ackroyd thames

  • Thames: Sacred River is a history of the river from source to sea from prehistoric times to the present.
  • Peter Ackroyd's Thames is an accomplished account of the capital's oldest artery, says Tim Adams.
  • Thames: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd charts the history, geography, flora and fauna of the Thames, as well its cultural, industrial, and economic impact on.

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    Thames Blessed River softcover

    £

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    'Thames: Sacred River' is description biography hint the river, from briny deep to register. Exploring neat history bring forth prehistoric era to picture present time off, the reverend is pinched into protract extraordinary replica, learning generate the fishes that travel in representation river charge the boats that seriously its surface; about floods and tides; hauntings soar suicides; miasmas and malaria; locks, weirs and embankments; bridges, docks and palaces.

    Peter Ackroyd has a adept for dig out rendering most amazing and fun details, crucial for poetry about them in picture most dominating prose; rendering result legal action a wondrous readable squeeze captivating conduct to that extraordinary river and say publicly towns avoid villages which line it.

    Paperback.

    pp.

    Publisher: Vintage

    ISBN:

  • peter ackroyd thames

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    Thames: Sacred River

    May 7,
    Thames: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd purports to offer a sister volume to the highly successful London: The Biography. To a point it succeeds, but in general the feeling of pastiche dominates to such an extent that the idea of biography soon dissolves into a scrapbook.

    The book presents an interesting journey and many fascinating encounters. But it also regularly conveys a sense of the incomplete, sometimes that of a jumbled ragbag of associations that still needs the application of work-heat and condensation in order to produce something palatable. Thus a book that promises much eventually delivers only a partially-formed experience.

    Ostensibly the project makes perfect sense. London: The Biography described the life of the city, its history and its inhabitants. There was a stress on literary impressions, art and occasional social history to offer context. This was no mere chronicle and neither was it just a collection of tenuously related facts. It was a selective and, perhaps because of that, an engaging glimpse into the author’s personal relationship with this great city.

    Thames River flows like an essential artery through and within London’s life. Peter Ackroyd identifies the metaphor and returns to it repeatedly, casting this flow of w

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    Thames: Sacred River

    "THAMES- SACRED RIVER is about the river from source to sea. It covers the river's history from prehistoric times to the present, its flora and fauna, paintings and photographs inspired by the Thames, its geology, smells and colours, its literature, laws and landscape, its magic and myths, its architecture, trade and weather. The reader learns about the fish that swim in the river and the boats that ply its surface; about floods and tides; hauntings and suicides; miasmas and sewers; locks, weirs, embankments and bridges. The most recent bridge opened in (the Millennium walking bridge); the oldest in (appropriately called New Bridge, it is in Oxfordshire). 'My fair lady' of London Bridge is Falling Down is identified as Eleanor, Queen of Henry lll; Mapledurham House near Henley as Toad Hall of Wind in the Willows. In AD 54, the river was 14 feet shallower than it is now, flowing sluggishly at low tide through sandbanks and swamps- thus Caesar and his legions could cross the Thames and defeat the British tribes. years later, malaria in the marshes of the estuary was so terrible that some men had 'from 5 to 6, to 14 or 15 wives,' a consequence, as Ackroyd writes dril