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Estuary: Out from London, to the sea by…
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Estuary: Out from London, to the sea (original 2016; edition 2016)

by Rachel Lichtenstein (Author)

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513500,659 (3.96)6
LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2017 An immersive, intimate journey into the world of the Thames Estuary and the people who spend their lives there The Thames Estuary is one of the world's great deltas, providing passage in and out of London for millennia. It is silted up with the memories and artefacts of past voyages. It is the habitat for an astonishing range of wildlife. And for the people who live and work on the estuary, it is a way of life unlike any other - one most would not trade for anything, despites its dangers. Rachel Lichtenstein has travelled the length and breadth of the estuary many times and in many vessels, from hardy tug boats to stately pleasure cruisers to an inflatable dinghy. And during these crossing she has gathered an extraordinary chorus of voices: mudlarkers and fishermen, radio pirates and champion racers, the men who risk their lives out on the water and the women who wait on the shore. From the acclaimed author of Brick Lane and Rodinsky's Room, Estuary is a thoughtful and intimate portrait of a profoundly British place. With a clear eye and a sharp ear, Rachel Lichtenstein captures the essence of a community and an environment, examining how each has shaped and continues to shape the other.… (more)
Member:tendring
Title:Estuary: Out from London, to the sea
Authors:Rachel Lichtenstein (Author)
Info:Hamish Hamilton UK (2016), 288 pages
Collections:Your library
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Tags:history

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Estuary: Out from London to the Sea by Rachel Lichtenstein (2016)

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I come from Essex. I really do. That has always been such a stigma laden statement. It's like saying:

I am a criminal
I torture kittens
I have an IQ of 23
I carry a knife
I have an IQ of 23 and I carry a knife
I killed my grandmother
I strangled 4 puppies
I am bored......

I will define Essex as being anywhere within 20 miles of the river. Beyond that it may be called Essex but that's as close as it gets.

As little as 10 years ago you couldn't pay a writer to go to Essex, shit, you couldn't pay anyone to go to Essex. No-one took Essex seriously except for the Armed Offenders Squad. There was no art in Essex. The only thing that was made from Thames mud was shallow graves. The place and it's people were shunned and ridiculed as nothing but a wasteland full of pikeys, thieves, and sluts.

Watch this video from a well known English TV program, they sing a song called Essex is Crap.

The thing about Essex was that we all knew secrets about the Thames. I was born in Grays and I knew where the ancient causeway still lay ignored, overgrown, and rubbish strewn. I used to drink in the Theobald Arms where the Press Gang once lurked. We all knew about the English Armada at Tilbury and Pocahontas at Gravesend.

I found this in a very old book:
"There is a certain Essex quality that is imperishable, stubbornness is that quality, downright cussedness that refuses to be brought into line. But there is no common purpose, no uniformity in this obstinacy, it is simply a series of unconnected statements of implacable self confidence."

It's no coincidence that Pirate Radio began in the waters off Essex.

In a 2005 newspaper poll asking readers to mark English counties out of 10 for landscape beauty, Essex scored zero.

And then it started to change. Slowly. Articles in the Guardian that didn’t mention crime figures, the usual gastronomy rubbish, bloody Jamie Oliver, and so on. The once highly toxic waste dumps were grassed over and the birds came back along with their pathetic watchers, we broke into their cars then set fire to them but still they came.

A more cynical person could claim that it was the middle class appropriation of our river but I tend to think that they too always held the river in high esteem but were simply too afraid to actually set foot in Essex.

Until finally, the great Robert McFarlane walks around Essex and suddenly everyone wants to go there except Will Self who would no doubt, and deservedly, get his head punched.

That's the pre-amble to this book Estuary: Out from London to the Sea by Rachel Lichtenstein. Believe it or not I came to it with an open mind. I originally came across this book when it was published but some of the reviews put me off. But picking it up now, within 10 pages I was committed (in Essex that means something very different).

So I can relate to this book in two ways, I guess the content had me emotionally committed from the get go so that's one way and it gets 5 stars from me on that score, the other is by the book itself as a piece of writing.

After I had read about half I went and looked at some of the negative reviews. Someone said the photos were terrible but I thought that maybe they had never been along the Thames with its huge skyline and brooding skies, the ever present skylark song, the mournful ducks flying fast at sunset on winter days. In the photos the sky is so big that anything on the land and even the land itself seems shrunken beyond what is real but that's really how it is.

While I agree it could have been edited better, there was nothing that bad that I'd be bothered to do it. There was repetition in places but it sometimes helped to get the connections between places. I found her reporting of, and interactions with, the locals to be refreshingly honest and non-judgemental. I liked her easily where I had to work at liking Robert McFarlane.

I knew almost everywhere that was mentioned, had been to lots of them but more than that I knew the territory of the map that Rachel was creating with words. She has a sympathy for the places. I really like Robert McFarlane but his stuff is "drier", excellent, but definitely drier. Rachel's writing is wetter, never wet but definitely on the moister side of things. I could see why the Essex people liked her, underneath their bullet proof vests they are really just big softies, psychopathic maybe, but softies all the same.

She makes reference to The Peregrine by J A Baker, Robert McFarlane rates the book as "a masterpiece of twentieth-century non-fiction". She feels the echoes of that book in her wanderings around the marshes. The Peregrine is an absolute masterpiece by which other non-fiction nature books are (rightly) judged. The fact that they both mention it, is all part of the rehabilitation of Essex. If The Peregrine had been set in the Scottish Highlands instead of Essex I am sure it would be on the reading list of all the schools where they teach reading, in other words anywhere outside of Essex.

Overall I found it a comprehensive account of her time on the estuary and a comprehensive account of the estuary. I liked her writing style, I felt her presence on every page. I liked how she found characters everywhere she went and got their stories, leaving a more resonant memory of the place she describes.

After reading it I immediately wanted to go there, even though I was born there and couldn't get away quick enough. I could feel the pull of the river even though it is grey, dirty and unforgiving. Even though it is surrounded by nutters and rubbish and just plain ugliness, as long as you face the river it all looks good. ( )
  Ken-Me-Old-Mate | Sep 24, 2020 |
This is an extraordinary book, that bestowed an added glow of serendipity as I had come across it entirely by chance in the marvellous Daunt Books in Marylebone.

Having grown up as far from the sea as it is possible to get in Britain, I have never been entirely sure exactly what constitutes an estuary, or at what points it stops being a river without quite becoming the sea. Rachel Lichtenstein’s book does not resolve my uncertainty on that issue, but who cares! It is, instead a beautiful prose poem to the Thames Estuary.

Unlike me, Rachel Lichtenstein grew up on the coast, in Leigh-on-Sea, so is familiar with much of the Essex coastline. She is also deeply interested in the history of the area, and, in particular, the history of the people who have plied their lives in and around the Thames Estuary.

Throughout the book, she travels in a variety of craft (old barges, tug boats, dinghies and ferries), and encounters a wide group of fascinating characters who have spent their lives working in and on the estuary. Each different mode of transport represents a different, long-established form of industry that has been supported by the estuary in a delicately balanced economic network which is closely allied to the natural estuary’s own intricate ecosystems.

She meets former bargemen, fishermen, tugboat sailors and dockers, as well as a thriving community of artists and curators, all eager to capture the essence of life on the estuary, and to preserve valuable mementos for future generations. There are some unusual characters among them, including ‘Prince Michael’, owner and sovereign of Sealand, a man-made fortress just beyond the United Kingdom’s territorial boundary which claims to be the world’s smallest independent principality. When not presiding over Sealand, Prince Michael lives in a bungalow on Canvey Island, under the name Michael Bates.

The Estuary has a fascinating history, and is strewn with the remnants of many shipwrecked boats, including the London, whose demise is described in detail in Pepys’s diary, and the SS Montgomery, which sank during the Second World War with more than seven thousand tons of live bombs and chemical detonators on board. The majority of that ordnance remains unrecovered, and may still be live.

The estuary was also the ‘home’ of most of the pirate radio stations that proliferated during the 1960s, many of which broadcast from the numerous forts that had originally been constructed as part of the country’s vital defence network.

Lichtenstein writes with passion but also with clarity. Her enthusiasm is always evident, but is not allowed to compromise the beauty of her prose. This has been one of the most enjoyable books I have read this year. ( )
  Eyejaybee | Oct 6, 2017 |
An exploration of the Thames Estuary told in segments covering a period of about five years. Rachel Lichtenstein explores by boat and by land, meeting a lot of interesting people and hearing great stories along the way. She goes to the old defensive towers in the sea, she visits beaches and mudflats, she goes along with cockle gathers, she visits the new London Gateway Port, she explores nature preserves, she spends some terrifying bad weather nights on boats, and she listens and retells tales of the region. There are a lot of photos (black and white) and nice end maps. This is one of those books the causes extensive Googling. An excellent adventure by a hardy soul. ( )
  seeword | Jan 5, 2017 |
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The fishermen I came into contact with at Leigh were old men with no scholarship. They told me of their thoughts; the things they said within themselves as they sailed with the stars and with the wild waters about and beneath them. For sheer poetry I have never heard more beautiful things than fell from the lips of those unlettered men.

-Nineteenth-century Methodist minister of Leigh
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This book is dedicated to John Dickens (1945-2016)
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LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2017 An immersive, intimate journey into the world of the Thames Estuary and the people who spend their lives there The Thames Estuary is one of the world's great deltas, providing passage in and out of London for millennia. It is silted up with the memories and artefacts of past voyages. It is the habitat for an astonishing range of wildlife. And for the people who live and work on the estuary, it is a way of life unlike any other - one most would not trade for anything, despites its dangers. Rachel Lichtenstein has travelled the length and breadth of the estuary many times and in many vessels, from hardy tug boats to stately pleasure cruisers to an inflatable dinghy. And during these crossing she has gathered an extraordinary chorus of voices: mudlarkers and fishermen, radio pirates and champion racers, the men who risk their lives out on the water and the women who wait on the shore. From the acclaimed author of Brick Lane and Rodinsky's Room, Estuary is a thoughtful and intimate portrait of a profoundly British place. With a clear eye and a sharp ear, Rachel Lichtenstein captures the essence of a community and an environment, examining how each has shaped and continues to shape the other.

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