Reviews
Well, the poor reputation of TV tie-ins ensured there were hardly any. I believe the Salisbury Review eventually published a hostile piece. If that reviewer condemned the book as an assault on English national identity, another understood that the disintegration of traditional ideas of Englishness as once represented by the Thames was the work of larger forces than my pen and not invariably regrettable either. Writing in Town and Country Planning, Colin Ward wrote ‘The “ugly bits” of riverside history come into their own in this wonderfully allusive evocation of the waterside landscape’ (T&CP, December 1999, p. 360).