Flights upon the banks

Thames: Sacred River
by Peter Ackroyd

For some reason, the sight of the sea or a river in any historical film always strikes the viewer with a shock, as though some gross anachronism had been committed. It looks frankly very odd to see people walking along a beach, or even by the side of many rivers, in Elizabethan dress. It’s quite irrational, but it does suggest that, fundamentally, we don’t think of bodies of water in historical terms. They seem, as embankments and hills do not, like projections of the unconscious mind, and perpetually contemporary.

The Thames is, in geographical terms, not much of a river. It is only 215 miles long, shorter by far than dozens of rivers you’ve never heard of — a third the length of the Kuskokwim, a quarter the length of the Tobol. Its historical significance is in part the reason why a book of this substance and unflaggingly interesting detail can be written about it.