Thames: The Biography

512 Pages·2007·5.66 MB·English

by  Peter Ackroyd

Contents
Title Page
Dedication
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
I. The Mirror of History
1. The River as Fact
2. The River as Metaphor
3. The Time of the River
II. Father Thames
4. Baptism
5. The River of Stone
6. Birth
III. Issuing Forth
7. The Tributes
IV. Beginnings
8. In the Beginning
9. The Sacred Lines
10. The Battle of the Thames
Photo Insert One
V. The Sacred River
11. Holy River
12. Saints of the River
13. Hail Holy River, Mother of Grace
14. The Ruins
15. Liquid History
VI. Elemental and Equal
16. The Waters of Life
17. The Leveller
VII. The Working River
18. River Boat
19. The Bridges of Contentment and the Tunnels of Darkness
20. River Law
21. The Criminal Element
22. The Workers of the River
Photo Insert Two
23. The Natives
VIII. The River of Trade
24. The Trade of the World
25. The River of Immensity
26. Steam and Speed
IX. The Natural River
27. “Hey Ho, the Wind and the Rain”
28. The Ancient Trees
Photo Insert Three
29. “And After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”
X. A Stream of Pleasure
30. Drink Your Fill
31. Going Up the River
32. Gardens of Delight
33. Filthy River
34. “All Alive! Alive! Alive, O!”
XI. The Healing Spring
35. The Healing Water
36. The Light of the Thames
XII. The River of Art
37. Thames Art
38. The Words of the River
Photo Insert Four
39. The Song of the River
XIII. Shadows and Depths
40. River Dreams
41. Legends of the River
XIV. The River of Death
42. The Offerings
43. Head of the River
44. The River of Death
XV. The River’s End
45. Downriver
An Alternative Topography, from Source to Sea
Bibliography
Author’s Acknowledgements
Illustration Credits
A Note About the Author
Also by Peter Ackroyd
Copyright
For Penelope Hoare
List of Illustrations
SECTION ONE
The source of the Thames at Trewsbury Mead.
Objects found in the Thames:
the tooth of a mammoth;
dagger and scabbard, 550–450 BC
bronze bust of the Emperor Hadrian, c.AD 122.
Medieval pilgrim badges thrown in the Thames.
Ducking a Scold, 1812, etching by Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827).
Angler on the riverbank, woodcut of 1663.
The Oarsman’s and Angler’s Map, 1893.
Radcot Bridge, the oldest bridge across the Thames, photographed in the 1900s.
Nets for catching eels near London, photographed in the 1890s.
An old fisherman and weir-keeper called Harper, Oxfordshire. Photographed by
Henry Taunt, 1900.
Mapledurham mill, photographed in the 1900s.
A traveller waiting to be ferried across the Thames, woodcut of 1684.
A ferryman taking two men and a boy across the Thames at Cliveden.
Photographed by Henry Taunt, 1885.
SECTION TWO
Fifteenth-century map of Chertsey Abbey, Surrey, and its surrounding land and
farms.
Dorchester Abbey, Near Wallingford, Autumn Evening, watercolour by Newton
Bennett (1854–1914).
The Tower of London (vellum), French school, fifteenth century.
Lambeth Palace. Coloured engraving by Johannes Kip (c.1652–1722) after
Leonard Knyff (1650–1721).
Windsor Castle, from the river meadow on the Thames, c.1827–30. Colour litho,
from The Views of Windsor, Eton and Virginia Water by William Daniell (1769–
1837).
Westminster with ceremonial barge of the Ironmongers’ Company, c.1745. Oil
painting by Samuel Scott (c.1702–72).
Old London Bridge, c.1630. Oil painting by Claude de Jongh (c.1610–63).
New London Bridge, 1 August 1831, the day it was first opened. Pen, ink and
watercolour on paper, English school, nineteenth century.
The Greenwich Railway Viaduct at Deptford, 1836. Colour litho, nineteenth
century. By G. F. Bragg.
The millennium footbridge of the year 2000. St. Paul’s, London. Photographed by
Marc Atkins.
Doggett’s Coat and Badge Rowing Race, c.1820. One of the plates from Fashion
and Folly.
Henley Regatta, photographed in the 1900s.
Pleasure boats on the Thames below Whitchurch Lock, Pangbourne. From a
postcard of 1907.