Mudlarking by Lara Maiklam

This quirky and fascinating book was No. 2 Sunday Times bestseller, a the BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, an Observer Book of the Year and won the 2020 Indie Book Award for Non-Fiction! It is now in paperback, with full colour images, awaiting your eyes and heart! Order your copy from us.

Mudlarking by Lara Maiklam

Mudlark (/'mAdla;k/) noun A person who scavenges for usable debris in the mud of a river or harbour
Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames for nearly twenty years, in pursuit of the objects the river unearths: from Neolithic flints to Roman hairpins, medieval buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes to Victorian toys. What began as a search for solitude came to reveal the story of a city, its people and their 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 River Thames, which Lara calls the longest archaeological site in England.

As she has discovered, it is often the tiniest objects that tell the greatest stories.

'Fascinating. Mudlarks are river scavengers, but Lara Maiklem is more like a time traveller' - Guardian
'Enchanting . . . I am quite tempted to join Maiklem on the riverbed looking for treasure' - Sunday Times
'Reveals to us the fascinating and poignant micro-world of London's history' - Hallie Rubenhold, Baillie Gifford Prize-winning author of The Five
'No one has looked at these odd corners since Sherlock Holmes' - Sunday Telegraph

Order this historical journey into London’s past.

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