Thames: The Biography

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Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4 reviews
Sales Rank: 11794

Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.4

ISBN: 0385526237
Dewey Decimal Number: 942.2
EAN: 9780385526234
ASIN: 0385526237

Publication Date: November 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Also Available In:

•	Kindle Edition - Thames: The Biography

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description

In this perfect companion to London: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd once again delves into the hidden byways of history, describing the river’s endless allure in a journey overflowing with characters, incidents, and wry observations.

Thames: The Biography meanders gloriously, rather like the river itself. In short, lively chapters Ackroyd writes about connections between the Thames and such historical figures as Julius Caesar and Henry the VIII, and offers memorable portraits of the ordinary men and women who depend upon the river for their livelihoods. He visits all the towns and villages along the river from Oxfordshire to London and describes the magnificent royal residences, as well as the bridges and docks, locks and weirs, found along its 215-mile run. The Thames as a source of artistic inspiration comes brilliantly to life as Ackroyd invokes Chaucer, Shakespeare, Turner, Shelley, and other writers, poets, and painters who have been enchanted by its many moods and colors.

In his signature entertaining and informative manner, Ackroyd allows the reader to dip into chapters in his own spirit, or to follow the Thames from source to sea.
Illustrated with maps and photographs, THAMES is a vivid, highly original mosaic of life by and on the water.

Customer Reviews:

3 out of 5 stars

Adrift on the Thames December 22, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

Interesting concept left me flat, and completes the trifecta of Ackroyd nonfiction about London:

Dickens' London: An Imaginative Vision
London: The Biography

all of which I rated 3 stars for similar reasons.

The fault is probably more mine than the author's. I think I came to to these books looking for straight history, and Ackroyd brought an artist's sensibility and objectives to the task, so our objectives did not match.

Writing a biography of any geographic feature, even one so well known and so historically well known and literarily revered as the Thames, is a unique concept. But what Ackroyd writes is more memoir than biography. For example, while he does provide a bibliography, he doesn't provide end notes for attribution, so I was sometimes left wondering if a statement was a historical fact, a personal observation of the river, or a literary musing by Ackroyd.

And my how those English do go on about their river! The Thames is a magnitude shorter than the mighty continental rivers like the Amazon, Mississippi, and Nile, for example, but it has been part of recorded human history for a very long time, and has played a central part in the historical and literary live of England and its melting pot of conquering (and conquered) peoples. So there is much to write about, and Ackroyd does a good job of capturing the mystical pull of the river on the heart of England.

I found the "alternative topography" at the back of the book perhaps the most interesting, as Ackroyd follows the Thames from the source to the sea identifying important place names, the root of the place names (which are freighted with historical significance in most cases, and sometimes evoke echos of times and peoples and languages before documented history), and historical and literary notes about each. Perhaps what I really wanted to read was an extended version of this chapter, with more and larger pictures (there are four picture sections in the book, but the small format left them flat on the page for me), but as the title of the section suggests that would be a different book than this one.

Perhaps this book might be rated 5 stars for English and Anglophiles, but I'll stick with 3 stars for the rest of us.

5 out of 5 stars

Forever Flowing December 11, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Ah, what a joy to be reading the splendid writing of Peter Ackroyd once again. He is one of the finest living practitioners of the English language. Thames: The Biography is much like Ackroyd's other books in that you don't just read facts about the Thames. Ackroyd takes you on a journey along its length. It some places you sail briskly along the smooth surface. In others you tread carefully upon the ice of the frozen river. In still others you dive in and are fully immersed, gliding along with the current.

Ackroyd has the unique ability to put the reader into a specific time and place. In reading this book, I could almost hear the river flowing by, could almost smell the water. I frequently found myself thirsty.

For fans of British history or for those who find pleasure in history beautifully told, this book will prove an absolute joy.

5 out of 5 stars

Who Knew A River Needed A Biography December 9, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

British author Peter Ackroyd - of London: the Biography, Shakespeare: the Biography, and numerous other works - presents the most comprehensive biography ever written on the most renowned river of all time. After reading this book, it can be said that you will know all there is to know about the river Thames. Beginning with its geology and topography, Ackroyd takes you on a full tour from wellspring to its draining into the English channel, filling your head with facts and details you'd never really thought about. Then he begins a brief foray into references made about the Thames throughout history and literature. This sets the stage for a great journey, which Ackroyd starts right at the beginning with the origin of its name in various languages and how it has changed over time.

With plenty of maps and pictures, along with a lengthy bibliography and index, the reader will feel confident enough to give a two-hour lecture to friends and family on the Thames, after reading this book, as well as answering any questions. Thames: the Biography will have you planning a trip to the most famous river in history in no time!

Reviewed by Alex C. Telander

5 out of 5 stars

A joy to read; the ultimate tribute to a city and a river November 20, 2008
16 out of 16 found this review helpful

When I opened Ackroyd's biography of Sir Thomas More many years ago, and read the pages in which he imagines how his subject wended his way to school through late 15th century London and what he saw and encountered on his way, I was stunned by his uncanny ability to create, de facto, two characters: More and London itself. Happily for us all, he has gone on to write a series of three books that really do serve as "biographies of place", if such a phrase exists. The first was London: The Biography, the second, Albion: Origins of the English Imagination, a tour de force of what is distinctively English. The third in the series is this biography of the Thames River. However unlikely the subject, the book is easily the equal of anything else this eclectic and accomplished author has produced.
As anyone who has ever flown into Heathrow airport across the span of London has seen first hand, the river twists like a silver ribbon throughout the city of London, and leads onward to the sea and up into the heart of the country. Ackroyd's narrative is as sparkling as water should be and thankfully not as sludgy as that of the Thames in London itself too often still is, and takes nearly as many twists and turns in describing its subjects.
Ackroyd, for instance, delves into the symbolic meaning and physical construction of bridges across the Thames, from the earliest days, to the medieval London Bridge and on to the present. The Magna Carta -- the base document on which Anglo-American democracy was founded -- was signed in a meadow by the Thames some 800 years ago. Centuries later, the London docks helped establish London as the center of a commercial empire and were the departure point for generations of explorers, from Raleigh and Drake onwards. (Some of those vessels are still moored for visitors to explore along the banks.) From riverside pubs (although my personal London favorite, the Prospect of Whitby, doesn't rate a mention) to gardens, the river was a place of recreation. But it was also a place of death; just as Anne Boleyn rode along it in barges alongside Henry VIII, she later traveled to her execution in the Tower of London on the Thames, a route followed by her daughter, Elizabeth I, two decades later (to a happier outcome.) Traitors' heads were routinely displayed on London Bridge for all to see; the tale is that Margaret Roper, Thomas More's daughter, removed her father's head from a spike there after his beheading.
It's to be hoped that the City of London and all the other towns and cities that lie along the length of the Thames are suitably grateful to Peter Ackroyd for this elegant and beautifully written book. It's impossible to imagine that it won't create a sudden spike in tourism to the Thames Valley among as many readers as it reaches. I'm already planning my spring visit to a friend there. His home? Well, it's a modern condo built within an old Bermondsey wharf building and from the balcony overhanging the river, I can hear the sound of the water and watch all the watercraft travel between Westminster and Greenwich. And yes, I'll be packing this book to re-read while I sit there...

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