Contents
PART ONE
KENT: THE WAR THAT NEVER ENDED
Whitstable to Roughs Tower
Sheerness: Apocalypse Any Minute Now
Karaoke in Grain
Marsh Fever in Hoo
Death and Life in Gravesend
PART TWO
ESSEX: REACHING OUT FOR AN AFTERLIFE
East Tilbury: A New Start with the Batamen
Fobbing: Peasants in Revolt
Canvey Island: Paradise in Mud
Tilbury Docks: Last Call for the Socialist River
Skipper’s Talk
Dagenham to the Barrier: Triumph of the Engineers
PART THREE
THE SOURCE TO GORING: MACHINES IN THE GARDEN
Dry as a bone
Ewen to Lerchlade: in the tracks of Cornelius Uzzle
Kelmscott: Utopia with B52s
Hobbits in Oxford
William’s Mechanical Namesake
Wittenham Clumps: The Science of Nature
Culham: New Uses for Thames Water
Locks: The View from Afar
Streatley and Goring: a New Building in an Old Gap
PART FOUR
BERKS WITH BUCKS: THE CLASSY RIVER
Vikings in Richmond
Leisure – Uses and Abuses
Henley Royal Regatta
Therapy for Toads
Henley Management College
Eton College: Relocating the Regatta
Runnymede: Muddy Shoes and the Spirit of Democracy
Islands in Sun and Rain
PART FIVE
LONDON: DELIVERING THE KINGDOM
Sounding off
A Labour Peer Takes to the Water
St Paul’s from Coin Street
Bodies in the River
The Docks
Wapping and Limehouse: Loft-living in Hades
Looking Upstream from the Jewish East End
The Millennium – Past and Present
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PICTURE CREDITS
REFERENCES
INDEX