Thames: Sacred River, Volume 1: The Mirror of History - You would have to be really interested in sand, clay, chalk and gravel.

Thames: Sacred River, Volume 1: The Mirror of History audiobook:
Calmly and clearly read by Simon Callow.

Author should be put in jail along with his book until he adds all the sources and citations. Until then copies of this book should be moved to the fiction section. Myths, speculation, facts, legends, hearsay, author's wild imaginings, drug induced hallucinations are all reported in the same way as if they had equal value. I've listened to drunks in pubs who sourced their material more transparently. ( )

Niet het boeiendste boek over de Thames.

I have always liked Peter Ackroyd’s writing and feasted on London: The Biography.

This however is disappointing. Full of facts, supposition, myth and mystery but thrown together in a mélange of stuff that lacks cohesion. What it lacks in structure it makes up for in bulk.

Never mind the quality, feel the width. ( )

Early in Thames: The Biography the first post-Roman bridge is noted at being at York in the eighth century; we know this from church records stating that a witch was thrown from such and drowned. So, okay, what is the significance of this? We don't know, the events is passed over and the facts and images keep flowing. Employing a riparian model, Peter Ackroyd allows the jetsam and debris of history to be washed and buried in the mud immemorial. Thames proceeds thematically, but each sections is scattered in bits: Pepys, the Saxons and Victorian industry may appear under a heading, or maybe Turner, Satanism and angling. You never quite know and it doesn't appear to ultimately matter. Walter Raleigh appears a few times and Ackroyd notes that several volumes of his History of the World only led to a led B.C. timeline. Maybe Mr. Ackroyd should consider such focus. But that isn't the point here, is it?

Sure enough Ackroyd has since started his history of everything British. He and Simon Schama can now stage pay-per-view pissing contests. Just remember 30 million years ago the Thames was connected to the Rhine.
( )