Ten novels about flooding

Shropshire was named this week as an unlikely entrant in the top ten global dream travel destinations for 2024 – alongside more predictable contenders like Mauritius. This news received extensive media coverage, most of which featured serene, summery images of Ironbridge, the Georgian engineering marvel that is the county’s most recognisable attraction. There was something wonderfully British about the fact that, at the very moment this story appeared, Ironbridge itself was at the centre of flood defence efforts to stop the swollen River Severn bursting its banks.

Thankfully, those Ironbridge defences held firm but after days of torrential rain, things didn’t work out so favourably for other parts of the country. Tens of thousands of homes were inundated with water, dozens of cars were washed away. The ruin that floods can bring has plagued mankind since the earliest settlements and consequently written accounts of flooding are as old as literature itself.