River book

The river Medway has been part of my life ever since my Dad became the river engineer when I was a year old. I’ve lived on its banks, fallen in love beside it, paddled and swum in it, worked beside it. I’ve felt most alive in it, and I’ve almost drowned in it in a freezing mid-winter weir pool.

Yet I became increasingly unsure whether I belonged on the river any more. My next book is a work of creative non-fiction asking how humans and rivers are bound together, and running through it is my journey down the Medway as I followed it very slowly from source to sea.

As I travelled I met boaters, paddlers, swimmers, lock-keepers, anglers, campaigners and naturalists and began to gather the stories of river people. But so many people beyond the riverbanks seemed disconnected from the river at the end of their road. I began to ask how we, twenty-first century people of the West, can find our ways back to the rivers that have flowed through our lives since we first stepped into the current? Like blood through our veins, rivers have fed us, carried us, kept us alive from the moment we first drew breath.

This book is a search for the rivers we have lost touch with, for our deep knowledge of what a river is, and our understanding of how we human animals are part of rivers’ rich lives. I find stories from across the UK and the world of rivers and people living intimately together, of the damage we are doing, and the love and care we are finding at last.

My river book (it doesn’t have a title yet) will be published in 2027.