Dimensions
129 x 198 x 30mm
A flight of imagination back to a time when London was green meadows and rolling hills, dotted with babbling brooks.
Over the last 150 years, most of the tributaries of the Thames have been buried under concrete and brick. Now Tim Bradford takes us on a series of walks along the routes of these forgotten rivers and show us the oddities and delights that can be found along the way.
He finds the chi in the Ching, explores the links between London's football ground and freemasons, rediscovers the unbearable shiteness of being (in South London), enjoys the punk heritage of the Westbourne and, of course, learns how to special-brew dowse. Here, then, is all of London life, but from a very different point of view.
With a cast that includes the Viking superhero Hammer Smith, a jellied-eel fixated William Morris, a coprophiliac Samuel Johnson, Deep Purple and the Glaswegian deer of Richmond Park, hundreds of cartoons, drawings and maps, 'The Groundwater Diaries' is a vastly entertaining (and sometimes frankly odd) tour through not-so-familiar terrain.