Mudlarking

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK'Enchanting' Sunday Times'Driven by curiosity, freighted with mystery and tempered by chance, wonders gleam from every page' Melissa Harrison'A hybrid of personal memoir, London history and literary cabinet of curiosities' TelegraphMudlark (/'mAdla;k/) noun A person who scavenges for usable debris in the mud of a river or harbourLara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames for over fifteen years, in pursuit of the objects that the river unearths: from Neolithic flints to Roman hair pins, medieval buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes to Victorian toys. These objects tell her about London and its lost ways of life. Moving from the river's tidal origins in the west of the city to the point where it meets the sea in the east, Mudlarking is a search for urban solitude and history on the...