I vividly remember one day when I was ten or eleven, walking on the foreshore with my parents and some friends of theirs who were visiting who had a son about my age. The only thing I recall seeing were hypodermic needles (it was the early 90s) and I remember coming home extremely dirty. Nevertheless for some reason that day really stuck in my memory with great fondness. Last time I was in London a few years ago I noticed how crowded the area around the Tate Modern and Southbank are at low tide! Maybe I'll get a permit and try again sometime.

Recently I've enjoyed reading books written by successful mudlarks. The topic is so great because it allows authors to weave together social history, psychogeography, and memoir, all focused on my favorite city in the world. I very much enjoyed both this book and Laura Maiklem's "Mudlarking" which I read last year. They are very different but both use the found objects in creative ways to tell stories about London's history. In this book, I liked particularly Sandling's sensitive connection of his treasures not just to local but also to global histories of trade, consumption, slavery, and imperialism. Recommended! ( )

This book is so well written and produced. The hardcover contains glossy plates, at least a hundred or more. Each has text about the item, the author's experience, and it's history. It had me ready to go mudlarking, for one problem: I live in the US. Ah well, this is second best. It helps to look at pictures of the Thames riverbank to gain a sense of the place, which is easily accessible due to stairways cut into the walls - not for mudlarking, but for river-crossing taxis that once existed before the modern bridges were built. An ancient vestige of the city repurposed. It seems possible to pick the mud clean with enough time and hands, but the author seems unconcerned. I listened to the audiobook which improves the text, very well done. While also paging through a copy of the book, which is kind of required; the author visually describes each piece but they are of such unusual shape and pattern the pictures help. ( )

This was an extremely nicely produced book in which a "mudlarker" or collector of items from the Thames, lays out some of his treasures and tells us all about them. The book was quite expensive, although a very beautiful copy, and I think I might have liked something just a little more chatty and personal myself. However, I have given it five stars because I think it succeeds in what it sets out to do, which is to inspire anyone interested in history to consider the unconsidered trifles that our ancestors threw away. ( )