ESTUARY: OUT FROM LONDON TO THE SEA PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

Rachel Lichtenstein | 336 pages | 22 Sep 2016 | Penguin Books Ltd | 9780241142882 | English | London, United Kingdom From The City To The Sea - The - A London Inheritance

And it does this most brilliantly through the eyes of those whose stories bring depth and character to what is often a bleak and desolate place. Caught by the River. Rather than impose herself on the landscape, she lets it seep into her psyche. The Guardian. Writing about [The Thames Estuary] presents a unique challenge. Opening in this way allows Lichtenstein to map the territory and set the scene. In the company of a cast of locals, Lichtenstein travels to the strange military sea forts, the sandbanks, the piers, ports and low-lying towns of this unusual landscape. What she finds among her interviewees is an overwhelming nostalgia for ways of life that are passing into history. These wounded visions of a glorious past and a barren present feel slightly sinister in the aftermath of the EU referendum. This nostalgia finds its antithesis in the futuristic London Gateway Project, a vast, largely automated deep-water container port going up on the Essex side of the river. It seems symptomatic of the modernity that has swept away the livelihoods along the estuary. When Lichtenstein finally visits the port in an epilogue, she notes that thousands of jobs will be created for locals. Aside from that, there are obvious environmental effects, as the dredging of the estuary by DP World, the global trade company developing the port, unearths old shipwrecks and disturbs marine life. Lichtenstein takes a trip to Sealand, the North Sea platform run as an independent country by the Bates family from Essex. Writing about it presents a unique challenge. How do you make such a landscape comprehensible, and how do you render it vividly for the reader? Karl Whitney. Sat, Nov 5, , First published: Sat, Nov 5, , For commercial shipping approaching the and thus London, main deep-water routes were the Princes Channel, the Queens Channel and the South Channel to the south, to a lesser extent the Kings Channel and the Swin to the north. The Swin was used by barges and leisure craft from the Essex rivers, and coasters and colliers from the north east. The shallow bottomed barges and coasters would navigate the swatchways at flood tide, and would cross the sand banks at spitways, points where the water was least shallow, and just deep enough at that point of the tide. If they missed the moment they would heave to and wait for the next tide. Recreational craft are expected use channels most suited to the size of their vessel. When navigating to or from the north they should use the Middle Deep, Swin and Warp. Barrow Deep and Warp. To cross the estuary large vessels used Fisherman's Gat , and small vessels to were expected to use Foulger's Gat. This table shows, from west to east, the principal navigation lights, buoys and other marks to the north port and south starboard of the main deep-water channels of the River Thames from Gallions Reach to the Sunk Light Float. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ramsar Wetland. Main article: Estuary English. See also: English in southern England. Greater Thames Estuary". Countryside Agency. Archived from the original on 27 February Retrieved 2 March Archived from the original PDF on 29 February Retrieved 18 March Estuary: Out from London to the Sea - Rachel Litchenstein

The Swin was used by barges and leisure craft from the Essex rivers, and coasters and colliers from the north east. The shallow bottomed barges and coasters would navigate the swatchways at flood tide, and would cross the sand banks at spitways, points where the water was least shallow, and just deep enough at that point of the tide. If they missed the moment they would heave to and wait for the next tide. Recreational craft are expected use channels most suited to the size of their vessel. When navigating to or from the north they should use the Middle Deep, Swin and Warp. Barrow Deep and Warp. To cross the estuary large vessels used Fisherman's Gat , and small vessels to were expected to use Foulger's Gat. This table shows, from west to east, the principal navigation lights, buoys and other marks to the north port and south starboard of the main deep- water channels of the River Thames from Gallions Reach to the Sunk Light Float. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ramsar Wetland. Main article: Estuary English. See also: English in southern England. Greater Thames Estuary". Countryside Agency. Archived from the original on 27 February Retrieved 2 March Archived from the original PDF on 29 February Retrieved 18 March Ramsar Sites Information Service. Retrieved 25 April Retrieved 27 June River Thames , England. Thames Head. Thames Estuary. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Wikimedia Commons. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Estuary: Out from London to the Sea. Jul 24, Dead John Williams rated it it was amazing Shelves: reviewed. I come from Essex. I really do. That has always been such a stigma laden statement. I will define Essex as being anywhere within 20 miles of the river. Beyond that it may be called Essex but that's as close as it gets. As little as 10 years ago you couldn't pay a writer to go to Essex, shit, you couldn't pay I come from Essex. As little as 10 years ago you couldn't pay a writer to go to Essex, shit, you couldn't pay anyone to go to Essex. No-one took Essex seriously except for the Armed Offenders Squad. There was no art in Essex. The only thing that was made from Thames mud was shallow graves. The place and it's people were shunned and ridiculed as nothing but a wasteland full of pikeys, thieves, and sluts. The thing about Essex was that we all knew secrets about the Thames. I was born in Grays and I knew where the ancient causeway still lay ignored, overgrown, and rubbish strewn. I used to drink in the Theobald Arms where the Press Gang once lurked. I found this in a very old book: " There is a certain Essex quality that is imperishable, stubbornness is that quality, downright cussedness that refuses to be brought into line. But there is no common purpose, no uniformity in this obstinacy, it is simply a series of unconnected statements of implacable self confidence. In a newspaper poll asking readers to mark English counties out of 10 for landscape beauty, Essex scored zero. And then it started to change. The once highly toxic waste dumps were grassed over and the birds came back along with their pathetic watchers, we broke into their cars then set fire to them but still they came. A more cynical person could claim that it was the middle class appropriation of our river but I tend to think that they too always held the river in high esteem but were simply too afraid to actually set foot in Essex. Until finally, the great Robert McFarlane walks around Essex and suddenly everyone wants to go there except Will Self who would no doubt, and deservedly, get his head punched. Believe it or not I came to it with an open mind. I originally came across this book when it was published but some of the reviews put me off. But picking it up now, within 10 pages I was committed in Essex that means something very different. So I can relate to this book in two ways, I guess the content had me emotionally committed from the get go so that's one way and it gets 5 stars from me on that score, the other is by the book itself as a piece of writing. After I had read about half I went and looked at some of the negative reviews. Someone said the photos were terrible but I thought that maybe they had never been along the Thames with its huge skyline and brooding skies, the ever present skylark song, the mournful ducks flying fast at sunset on winter days. In the photos the sky is so big that anything on the land and even the land itself seems shrunken beyond what is real but that's really how it is. While I agree it could have been edited better, there was nothing that bad that I'd be bothered to do it. There was repetition in places but it sometimes helped to get the connections between places. I found her reporting of, and interactions with, the locals to be refreshingly honest and non-judgemental. I liked her easily where I had to work at liking Robert McFarlane. I knew almost everywhere that was mentioned, had been to lots of them but more than that I knew the territory of the map that Rachel was creating with words. She has a sympathy for the places. I really like Robert McFarlane but his stuff is "drier", excellent, but definitely drier. Rachel's writing is wetter, never wet but definitely on the moister side of things. I could see why the Essex people liked her, underneath their bullet proof vests they are really just big softies, psychopathic maybe, but softies all the same. She feels the echoes of that book in her wanderings around the marshes. The Peregrine is an absolute masterpiece by which other non-fiction nature books are rightly judged. The fact that they both mention it, is all part of the rehabilitation of Essex. If The Peregrine had been set in the Scottish Highlands instead of Essex I am sure it would be on the reading list of all the schools where they teach reading, in other words anywhere outside of Essex. Overall I found it a comprehensive account of her time on the estuary and a comprehensive account of the estuary. I liked her writing style, I felt her presence on every page. I liked how she found characters everywhere she went and got their stories, leaving a more resonant memory of the place she describes. After reading it I immediately wanted to go there, even though I was born there and couldn't get away quick enough. I could feel the pull of the river even though it is grey, dirty and unforgiving. Even though it is surrounded by nutters and rubbish and just plain ugliness, as long as you face the river it all looks good. Dec 29, Penny rated it liked it Shelves: london. An interesting book about the Thames estuary, seen not only through the author's eyes but also through the lives of the people she meets on her journeys. She tells us several times that the book took 5 years to write, and I can well believe this. Lichtenstein captures the sense of a constantly changing landscape controversial dredging might be revealing archaeological wonders but many feel it is destroying the environment too. The book was marred for me for 3 reasons. Firstly there was a lot of An interesting book about the Thames estuary, seen not only through the author's eyes but also through the lives of the people she meets on her journeys. Firstly there was a lot of repetition. And lastly a lot of the black and white photographs are truly terrible. The estuary is a scenic place I used to live in Essex and know parts of it well and yet many of the photos are so bad to be almost laughable. What a shame! Dec 26, Karen Mace rated it it was amazing. Having lived next to the Estuary all my life, I found this to be a fascinating, illuminating and detailed look at the evolution of the Thames Estuary and all those who live by it or work on it. The folklore, the role it has played in history, the way that outsiders see Essex and how that differs from those who live there and just how much it has changed over the years. Being a local I found it so easy to feel connected to the stories told by the author, and the places she visited as she travelled Having lived next to the Estuary all my life, I found this to be a fascinating, illuminating and detailed look at the evolution of the Thames Estuary and all those who live by it or work on it. Being a local I found it so easy to feel connected to the stories told by the author, and the places she visited as she travelled along the Estuary. She stopped off in numerous places to meet people who have lived or worked on the Thames and it was so interesting to hear them share their stories. She travelled on boats and walked alongside the estuary and that really helped her give you a real flavour of estuary life. The use of black and white photos was also really clever as it didn't make the estuary out to be a glossy, colourful place as most of the time it isn't! There are more shipwrecks on the floor of the estuary per square foot than anywhere else along the UK coastline and I loved hearing the stories of those, especially of the London and the Montgomery and those who have dived down to see them. Having recently visited an exhibition of items from the London at the local museum I found these chapters to be most enlightening. It's a book I've learned so much from about the local area and found it to be brilliantly written and so absorbing to read. May 21, Richard Carter rated it liked it Shelves: place. In Estuary , Rachel Lichtenstein travels on and about the Thames estuary, meeting people with different connections to the place: writers, artists, singers, sailors, bargemen, mudlarkers, cocklers, historians, naturalists, Sealanders. The book provides an interesting snapshot of a time when traditional ways of life around the estuary are dying out. Oct 26, Schopflin rated it it was amazing Shelves: finished-in Atmospheric and informative, I really enjoyed reading about the people and the places. But then I love the Thames Estuary. Dec 04, Mike Newman rated it liked it Shelves: london , topography. Over the past few years, as my explorations of the Thames have taken me further and further eastwards, I've begun to appreciate the estuary in a different way. It's fair to say that, until recently, the wide expanses of flat empty land almost terrified me. The broad sweep of silver sky broken only by marching ranks of pylons seemed endlessly and bleakly awesome. But it has also always drawn me - the edges of London blurring into the post-industrial wastelands of Essex and Kent are curiously intr Over the past few years, as my explorations of the Thames have taken me further and further eastwards, I've begun to appreciate the estuary in a different way. But it has also always drawn me - the edges of London blurring into the post-industrial wastelands of Essex and Kent are curiously intriguing to me. Haunted by Joseph Conrad and Bram Stoker, and never far from the weird rural gothic of rural eastern England, these white spaces on the map of the British Isles dared me to fill them in with detail. Rachel Lichtenstein's account of her own curious relationship overlaps with mine, but her gaze is firmly eastwards. Having grown up in Southend-on-Sea where the broad mouth of the river opens into the North Sea, her fascination is strongest when considering the remote forts which stride ominously across Shivering Sands, or the treacherous muddy reaches which can strand a cockleboat for hours during slack tides. Those familiar with Lichtenstein's style will be comforted - she writes primarily about people in the context of place, and the social history of the river and shore is never far from the forefront of her prose. She finds the families who trace back their generations in Thames Barge pilots, the women who have lost husbands to the unforgiving tides, and the eccentrics who choose to live out on remote broken outposts in the river - whether for art or solitude. A theme worming through the book is the impact of the vast Thames Gateway port near TIlbury. This is variously described to her as an imposition on the delicate ecosystem of the river and a necessary evil to keep the seamen and dockers at work, even in now greatly reduced numbers. The impact on the lives of fishermen and their families, wreck-hunters and navigators of the complex estuarial sand bars is carefully catalogued. The sense is that no-one really knows how it will change the topology of the river despite mathematical modelling and careful studies, and this is echoed in the uncertain future faced by the people who live beside it. Lichtenstein is careful to tread the documentarian's path here - she hears and retells the stories, but doesn't wholly pass judgement. The estuary has changed immeasurably over the millennia - and her book is just a sliver in time, describing the latest shifts and changes. Early in the book, Lichtenstein notes that little has been written about the Estuary as an entity - perhaps because London draws the heat? She interrogates the few sources available carefully, weighing their sometimes quaint historical evidence against what she hears from those who currently live and work here. While it appears true that few factual accounts focus on the estuary, she engages with those who have woven it into their art - not least with Iain Sinclair who trails the river east in his meta-fictions Downriver and Dining on Stones. He joins her at Tilbury Riverside, the former port and railway station where immigrants from the Commonwealth and beyond would arrive in the UK and commence their journey west to London. Her work with Sinclair here - and in earlier shared projects - has been neatly complementary. His topographical and historiographical work meshing with Lichtenstein's social history - bringing his sometimes breathtaking and overwhelming occultism down to a human scale. Together here, they play off each other's interests - Sinclair considering the tide of humanity arriving on these shores, while Lichtenstein looks for eerie geographical features - the stranded masts of the SS are unpredictable, decaying fuses signifying the knife-edge on which the estuary sits: politically, culturally and environmentally. For me, and for other topographical obsessives perhaps, the book feels incomplete - the sinister reaches of the Thames between Purfleet and Greenwich largely unexplored for example. But for Lichtenstein the work is complete - bookended by two journeys: one a dangerous excursion which makes its mental and physical marks on her, the second a redemptive but still incomplete unravelling of the first some years later. In that sense Lichtenstein's broad descriptive sweep and sometimes unfocused prose style are perfect - this is a reflection on a season of life where the estuary haunted her. It is a reverie and an exorcism as much as a social history. A book focused on this very territory was always likely to draw me in - and while covering such an ambitious sweep in a personal account like this didn't feel entirely satisfying, it's certainly one of the finest books written about this weird and remarkable part of Britain. Given how the blank Essex skies often feel like an unpainted canvas, I suspect that anyone who has walked the shoreline will only ever be satisfied with their own version of the estuary. For now, this is a fine proxy. Not brilliant writing but it I was gripped by every page. I grew up on the Thames Estuary at Leigh-on-Sea and spent my childhood sailing on the estuary, so it brought back so many memories and told my a great deal I never knew as a youngster. This book may not appeal to a wider audience but I thank Rachel for her research and pulling all this information together in such an accessible form. Mar 31, Tobias rated it really liked it. There is also the story of the dangerously wreck of the SS Mongomery which sank during the Second World War with more than seven thousand tons of live bombs and chemical detonators on board; the effect of the dredging for the new ultra-mechanised Thames Gateway estuary port. Feb 27, Terry Pitts rated it liked it Shelves: non-fiction , travel. Rachel Lichtenstein's The Estuary is a multifaceted documentary about the river Thames and its estuary, from central London out to the North Sea. I read this in anticipation of a trip to London in a few months, realizing that in my previous trips I could hardly recall ever seeing the Thames. And yet, this waterway has been central to London's history for well more than a millennium. Estuary: Out From London, To The Sea Download

One cold March day, she goes out on a sailing dinghy with two male friends, one of them a photographer, and they capsize. She saves the camera, and the memory card inside her ruined voice recorder miraculously works when played back. But her left hand is broken, and requires an operation to insert a metal plate. Among the physical challenges is a trip to Sealand — the offshore fort declared as an independent principality in — which requires being winched up on to the seven-storey platform by rope. Sealand lies just outside British territorial waters. The port promises to create hundreds of jobs when it opens. Meanwhile, environmentalists claim, the dredging carried out by its owners, the Dubai-based company DP World , has destroyed much of the marine life sprats, herring, cockles and oysters on which local livelihoods depend. Lichtenstein dutifully makes room for opposing voices. Did she know a brail from a gybe, or a gaff from a sprit, when she started? Probably not. Though she never quite solves the mystery of Southend Pier, beyond noting the number of suicides and other tragedies in its vicinity, she does overcome her demons. The book culminates in a trip to explore the outer reaches of the estuary — the parts she failed to see five years before. The Thames Estuary provides an example of how power generation has changed over the last century. Initially, power stations were local to population centres. London had a number of smaller power stations, my grandfather worked in one in Camden. Further out in the Estuary is the Shivering Sands fort. This was the last fort is be completed and as Maunsell wrote at the time:. Shivering Sands lost one of its towers in when it was hit by a ship. Passing Shivering Sands fort with Red Sands in the distance. Viewed from a distance they could almost be the Martians from H. Seventy years of construction in the Thames Estuary from wartime defences to peaceful electricity generation. In London, G. Further work followed on the Westway from Paddington to White City. Guy Maunsell died in A final view of the Red Sands fort, wind farm and a ship approaching the Thames heading for its berth further upstream. The water that has flowed through London and down the Thames has now merged with the sea. Now it is time to turn round and head back to London. Another great blog. Looking forward to more of you and your dads stories and pictures. Thanks Joe. The IWM has a fascinating collection of photos. I often find myself looking for one topic but getting distracted by the wealth of photos they have online. Excellent post as usual. I grew up in Elm Park, not far from Rainham where we often went down Ferry Lane to look at the river. When we were kids an old bearded man lived on the barges. Worth seeing. And for the people who live and work on the estuary, it is a way of life unlike any other - one most would not trade for anything, despites its dangers. Rachel Lichtenstein has travelled the length and breadth of the estuary many times and in many vessels, from hardy tug boats to stately pleasure cruisers to an inflatable dinghy. And during these crossing she has gathered an extraordinary chorus of voices: mudlarkers and fishermen, radio pirates and champion racers, the men who risk their lives out on the water and the women who wait on the shore. From the acclaimed author of Brick Lane and Rodinsky's Room, Estuary is a thoughtful and intimate portrait of a profoundly British place. With a clear eye and a sharp ear, Rachel Lichtenstein captures the essence of a community and an environment, examining how each has shaped and continues to shape the other.

Launch of Estuary: Out from London to the Sea - Rachel Litchenstein

It is the habitat for an astonishing range of wildlife. And for the people who live and work there, it is a way of life unlike any other — one most would not trade for anything, despite its many dangers. Rachel Lichtenstein has travelled its length and breadth many times. Here she gathers these experiences in an extraordinary chorus of voices: mudlarkers and fishermen, radio pirates and champion racers, the men who risk their lives out on the water and the women who wait on the shore. Estuary: Out from London to the Sea. And it does this most brilliantly through the eyes of those whose stories bring depth and character to what is often a bleak and desolate place. Caught by the River. Rather than impose herself on the landscape, she lets it seep into her psyche. Other Editions 2. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Estuary , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Estuary: Out from London to the Sea. Jul 24, Dead John Williams rated it it was amazing Shelves: reviewed. I come from Essex. I really do. That has always been such a stigma laden statement. I will define Essex as being anywhere within 20 miles of the river. Beyond that it may be called Essex but that's as close as it gets. As little as 10 years ago you couldn't pay a writer to go to Essex, shit, you couldn't pay I come from Essex. As little as 10 years ago you couldn't pay a writer to go to Essex, shit, you couldn't pay anyone to go to Essex. No-one took Essex seriously except for the Armed Offenders Squad. There was no art in Essex. The only thing that was made from Thames mud was shallow graves. The place and it's people were shunned and ridiculed as nothing but a wasteland full of pikeys, thieves, and sluts. The thing about Essex was that we all knew secrets about the Thames. I was born in Grays and I knew where the ancient causeway still lay ignored, overgrown, and rubbish strewn. I used to drink in the Theobald Arms where the Press Gang once lurked. I found this in a very old book: " There is a certain Essex quality that is imperishable, stubbornness is that quality, downright cussedness that refuses to be brought into line. But there is no common purpose, no uniformity in this obstinacy, it is simply a series of unconnected statements of implacable self confidence. In a newspaper poll asking readers to mark English counties out of 10 for landscape beauty, Essex scored zero. And then it started to change. The once highly toxic waste dumps were grassed over and the birds came back along with their pathetic watchers, we broke into their cars then set fire to them but still they came. A more cynical person could claim that it was the middle class appropriation of our river but I tend to think that they too always held the river in high esteem but were simply too afraid to actually set foot in Essex. Until finally, the great Robert McFarlane walks around Essex and suddenly everyone wants to go there except Will Self who would no doubt, and deservedly, get his head punched. Believe it or not I came to it with an open mind. I originally came across this book when it was published but some of the reviews put me off. But picking it up now, within 10 pages I was committed in Essex that means something very different. So I can relate to this book in two ways, I guess the content had me emotionally committed from the get go so that's one way and it gets 5 stars from me on that score, the other is by the book itself as a piece of writing. After I had read about half I went and looked at some of the negative reviews. Someone said the photos were terrible but I thought that maybe they had never been along the Thames with its huge skyline and brooding skies, the ever present skylark song, the mournful ducks flying fast at sunset on winter days. In the photos the sky is so big that anything on the land and even the land itself seems shrunken beyond what is real but that's really how it is. While I agree it could have been edited better, there was nothing that bad that I'd be bothered to do it. There was repetition in places but it sometimes helped to get the connections between places. I found her reporting of, and interactions with, the locals to be refreshingly honest and non-judgemental. I liked her easily where I had to work at liking Robert McFarlane. I knew almost everywhere that was mentioned, had been to lots of them but more than that I knew the territory of the map that Rachel was creating with words. She has a sympathy for the places. I really like Robert McFarlane but his stuff is "drier", excellent, but definitely drier. Rachel's writing is wetter, never wet but definitely on the moister side of things. I could see why the Essex people liked her, underneath their bullet proof vests they are really just big softies, psychopathic maybe, but softies all the same. She feels the echoes of that book in her wanderings around the marshes. The Peregrine is an absolute masterpiece by which other non-fiction nature books are rightly judged. The fact that they both mention it, is all part of the rehabilitation of Essex. If The Peregrine had been set in the Scottish Highlands instead of Essex I am sure it would be on the reading list of all the schools where they teach reading, in other words anywhere outside of Essex. Overall I found it a comprehensive account of her time on the estuary and a comprehensive account of the estuary. I liked her writing style, I felt her presence on every page. I liked how she found characters everywhere she went and got their stories, leaving a more resonant memory of the place she describes. After reading it I immediately wanted to go there, even though I was born there and couldn't get away quick enough. I could feel the pull of the river even though it is grey, dirty and unforgiving. Even though it is surrounded by nutters and rubbish and just plain ugliness, as long as you face the river it all looks good. Dec 29, Penny rated it liked it Shelves: london. An interesting book about the Thames estuary, seen not only through the author's eyes but also through the lives of the people she meets on her journeys. She tells us several times that the book took 5 years to write, and I can well believe this. Lichtenstein captures the sense of a constantly changing landscape controversial dredging might be revealing archaeological wonders but many feel it is destroying the environment too. The book was marred for me for 3 reasons. Firstly there was a lot of An interesting book about the Thames estuary, seen not only through the author's eyes but also through the lives of the people she meets on her journeys. Firstly there was a lot of repetition. And lastly a lot of the black and white photographs are truly terrible. The estuary is a scenic place I used to live in Essex and know parts of it well and yet many of the photos are so bad to be almost laughable. What a shame! Dec 26, Karen Mace rated it it was amazing. Having lived next to the Estuary all my life, I found this to be a fascinating, illuminating and detailed look at the evolution of the Thames Estuary and all those who live by it or work on it. The folklore, the role it has played in history, the way that outsiders see Essex and how that differs from those who live there and just how much it has changed over the years. Being a local I found it so easy to feel connected to the stories told by the author, and the places she visited as she travelled Having lived next to the Estuary all my life, I found this to be a fascinating, illuminating and detailed look at the evolution of the Thames Estuary and all those who live by it or work on it. Being a local I found it so easy to feel connected to the stories told by the author, and the places she visited as she travelled along the Estuary. She stopped off in numerous places to meet people who have lived or worked on the Thames and it was so interesting to hear them share their stories. She travelled on boats and walked alongside the estuary and that really helped her give you a real flavour of estuary life. The use of black and white photos was also really clever as it didn't make the estuary out to be a glossy, colourful place as most of the time it isn't! There are more shipwrecks on the floor of the estuary per square foot than anywhere else along the UK coastline and I loved hearing the stories of those, especially of the London and the Montgomery and those who have dived down to see them. Having recently visited an exhibition of items from the London at the local museum I found these chapters to be most enlightening. It's a book I've learned so much from about the local area and found it to be brilliantly written and so absorbing to read. May 21, Richard Carter rated it liked it Shelves: place. In Estuary , Rachel Lichtenstein travels on and about the Thames estuary, meeting people with different connections to the place: writers, artists, singers, sailors, bargemen, mudlarkers, cocklers, historians, naturalists, Sealanders. The book provides an interesting snapshot of a time when traditional ways of life around the estuary are dying out. Oct 26, Schopflin rated it it was amazing Shelves: finished-in Atmospheric and informative, I really enjoyed reading about the people and the places. But then I love the Thames Estuary. Dec 04, Mike Newman rated it liked it Shelves: london , topography. Over the past few years, as my explorations of the Thames have taken me further and further eastwards, I've begun to appreciate the estuary in a different way. It's fair to say that, until recently, the wide expanses of flat empty land almost terrified me. The broad sweep of silver sky broken only by marching ranks of pylons seemed endlessly and bleakly awesome. But it has also always drawn me - the edges of London blurring into the post-industrial wastelands of Essex and Kent are curiously intr Over the past few years, as my explorations of the Thames have taken me further and further eastwards, I've begun to appreciate the estuary in a different way. But it has also always drawn me - the edges of London blurring into the post-industrial wastelands of Essex and Kent are curiously intriguing to me. Haunted by Joseph Conrad and Bram Stoker, and never far from the weird rural gothic of rural eastern England, these white spaces on the map of the British Isles dared me to fill them in with detail. Rachel Lichtenstein's account of her own curious relationship overlaps with mine, but her gaze is firmly eastwards. Having grown up in Southend-on-Sea where the broad mouth of the river opens into the North Sea, her fascination is strongest when considering the remote forts which stride ominously across Shivering Sands, or the treacherous muddy reaches which can strand a cockleboat for hours during slack tides. Those familiar with Lichtenstein's style will be comforted - she writes primarily about people in the context of place, and the social history of the river and shore is never far from the forefront of her prose. She finds the families who trace back their generations in Thames Barge pilots, the women who have lost husbands to the unforgiving tides, and the eccentrics who choose to live out on remote broken outposts in the river - whether for art or solitude. A theme worming through the book is the impact of the vast Thames Gateway port near TIlbury. This is variously described to her as an imposition on the delicate ecosystem of the river and a necessary evil to keep the seamen and dockers at work, even in now greatly reduced numbers. The impact on the lives of fishermen and their families, wreck-hunters and navigators of the complex estuarial sand bars is carefully catalogued. The sense is that no-one really knows how it will change the topology of the river despite mathematical modelling and careful studies, and this is echoed in the uncertain future faced by the people who live beside it. Lichtenstein is careful to tread the documentarian's path here - she hears and retells the stories, but doesn't wholly pass judgement. The estuary has changed immeasurably over the millennia - and her book is just a sliver in time, describing the latest shifts and changes. Early in the book, Lichtenstein notes that little has been written about the Estuary as an entity - perhaps because London draws the heat? She interrogates the few sources available carefully, weighing their sometimes quaint historical evidence against what she hears from those who currently live and work here. While it appears true that few factual accounts focus on the estuary, she engages with those who have woven it into their art - not least with Iain Sinclair who trails the river east in his meta-fictions Downriver and Dining on Stones. He joins her at Tilbury Riverside, the former port and railway station where immigrants from the Commonwealth and beyond would arrive in the UK and commence their journey west to London. Her work with Sinclair here - and in earlier shared projects - has been neatly complementary. His topographical and historiographical work meshing with Lichtenstein's social history - bringing his sometimes breathtaking and overwhelming occultism down to a human scale. Together here, they play off each other's interests - Sinclair considering the tide of humanity arriving on these shores, while Lichtenstein looks for eerie geographical features - the stranded masts of the SS Richard Montgomery are unpredictable, decaying fuses signifying the knife-edge on which the estuary sits: politically, culturally and environmentally. For me, and for other topographical obsessives perhaps, the book feels incomplete - the sinister reaches of the Thames between Purfleet and Greenwich largely unexplored for example. But for Lichtenstein the work is complete - bookended by two journeys: one a dangerous excursion which makes its mental and physical marks on her, the second a redemptive but still incomplete unravelling of the first some years later. In that sense Lichtenstein's broad descriptive sweep and sometimes unfocused prose style are perfect - this is a reflection on a season of life where the estuary haunted her. It is a reverie and an exorcism as much as a social history. A book focused on this very territory was always likely to draw me in - and while covering such an ambitious sweep in a personal account like this didn't feel entirely satisfying, it's certainly one of the finest books written about this weird and remarkable part of Britain. Given how the blank Essex skies often feel like an unpainted canvas, I suspect that anyone who has walked the shoreline will only ever be satisfied with their own version of the estuary. For now, this is a fine proxy. Not brilliant writing but it I was gripped by every page. I grew up on the Thames Estuary at Leigh-on-Sea and spent my childhood sailing on the estuary, so it brought back so many memories and told my a great deal I never knew as a youngster. This book may not appeal to a wider audience but I thank Rachel for her research and pulling all this information together in such an accessible form. Mar 31, Tobias rated it really liked it. There is also the story of the dangerously explosive wreck of the SS Mongomery which sank during the Second World War with more than seven thousand tons of live bombs and chemical detonators on board; the effect of the dredging for the new ultra-mechanised Thames Gateway estuary port.

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