Lara Maiklem's 'Mudlark' is a Love Letter to England's River Thames

Time stands still in the fog. With all modern references obscured, the river is ageless, static, ghostly. The spirits of the foreshore rise up in the mist, just out of sight. Through the swirling whiteness, a medieval fisherman pegs his fish traps to the riverbed, a Victorian scavenger wanders barefoot through the mud, and a Georgian shipwright checks the hull of his newly built ship. On the river, invisible galleons and sailing barges glide past, wherries are carried swiftly downstream, and a phantom paddle steamer pushes through the currents. Thames fogs are quite literally the mists of time. They are daydreams manifested, swirling visions of the past.

Lara Maiklem’s book Mudlark: In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames is a deeply personal account of her experiences on the shores of the River Thames that speaks to us all of the beauty of small, forgotten things, unexpected joys, and the thrill of discovery. Mudlarking is her calling, her respite from a troubled world.

Maiklem is a Mudlark, one of those licensed to search for treasure—often others’ trash—washed up on the low tides of the River Thames. She has made some remarkable finds, a few of museum quality, but most of them small, humble items that were the everyday stuff of past lives, now lost, broken, and discarded. Her gorgeous, elegiac prose allows us time to think, reflect, and dream on a journey from the river’s tidal head to the sea, and wander in time from prehistory to our recent past.