A Mudlarking Year: Finding Treasure in Every Season

An absolute treasure trove of sound advice and historical detail, full of year-round inspiration -- Katherine May Catches the tide of history at just the point where obsession and heroic discipline lifts the journal of an individual into revelation open to us all. And it begins to feel as if the Thames itself is dictating as much of the story as we are allowed to know -- Iain Sinclair Lara Maiklem is a phenomenon. She elevates trudging around in the mud to an epic gallivant through our past. The foreshore is no longer a grubby backwater but our own valley of the kings, rich in beauty and poignancy’ -- Dan Snow A delightful, thought-provoking book, and a profound meditation on the variety of human experience. It is as if the Thames is a great confessional for everyone who has ever lived and worked in London, and Lara is the high priestess who gently hears them and relates their lives to our own. The best historians – and the rarest – are those who look at the past and do not simply objectify it, recounting what happened and why, but intercede between the living and the dead, conveying meaning and understanding so we can see ourselves in the perspective of time. Lara is such a person: a gifted, sympathetic writer who can find poetic truth in the flotsam of forgotten lives -- Ian Mortimer As with anything Lara Maiklem writes, I read it in a hungry gulp. It is totally transporting: the mysteries of the foreshore are ever enchanting, and in her hands, tangible. She writes with such elegance that I could read her day in, day out -- Sophie Dahl Evocative, beautifully written and endlessly fascinating, this is a book to get lost in, whatever the season. There is a delicious sense of anticipation and discovery throughout, and the reader is rewarded with a rich and eclectic trove of finds - from a Neolithic arrowhead to a Tudor posy ring. These seemingly disparate fragments of history unite to form a dazzling patchwork of the past -- Tracy Borman A beautiful, meandering book, much like the river itself, time and nature collide in the gloopy mud of the Thames. Enchanting, lyrical and historically fascinating -- Sam Heughan A Mudlarking Year is a beautiful reflection of what it means to be human. It is a connection to the past through both tangible history and the eternal cycle of nature that has always bound us. This is creative, thoughtful book that makes me want to sink my own hands into the silt of the river -- Helen Carr A Mudlarking Year is a book like no other: with her unequivocal talent and narrative flair, Lara Maiklem takes her readers on an enticing adventure and offers them the opportunity to encounter the lost objects of the past. Warm, personable, and thoroughly absorbing, A Mudlarking Year is a triumph of a page-turner and a truly inspirational read -- Nicola Tallis A Mudlarking Year is a lovely annual retrospective into what attracts people to wonder the stretches of Thames foreshore in search of the capital’s hidden history. Sun, rain or shine the searchers rituals are all too familiar and reminiscent of archaeological excavations and how the seasons can help or hinder in the process of artefact recovery. Ultimately this is a book about landscape and how humans can connect to special places they hold dear -- Raksha Dave Lara Meiklen is a natural historian and a born story teller who sees history from a different perspective. Her books have stopped me in my tracks and shown how changeless we are in spirit. In her finds, Lara skewers our predecessors and we meet them as if face-to-face. She has quietly graduated from the university of unobserved places, stepping out as Professor of the Underbelly and expert in the secrets of the Thames foreshore’ -- Emma Bridgewater A truly wonderful book, full of fascinating details from start to finish. A must read for any Londoner, as you'll see the city with fresh eyes. I loved it! -- Alice Loxton Lara Maiklem’s beautiful diary of mudlarking is a powerful reflection on time, history and attention to the present moment. Her voice is rich and warm, inviting to see beyond the surface of abandoned fragments of lost and shattered things to a deeper connection with the people of the past. For me, Maiklem’s work is not unlike that of the therapist who seeks to understand the history of people’s experience but must stand and look and not rush in too deep nor too fast -- Gwen Adshead An evocative month-by-month account of Lara's addiction “to chasing lost and discarded objects and pulling stories of forgotten Londoners from the mud” . . . her truffling does more than connect her with long forgotten lives – it links her with her fellow obsessives and with the seasons as they ebb and flow along with the river * New Statesman * A Mudlarking Year is a love story between person and place that explores what it means to be human through the things we leave behind. Lara’s passion for flows from every page -- Rebecca Struthers Historically fascinating, domestic, fugitive, mournful, surreal, comic, all by turns . . . [Maiklem] is a modern Everyperson, sifting through a long human history, and coming up with literary pearls, if not often actual ones * Tablet * A Mudlarking Year is utterly brilliant. There's a wonderful balance of observation, which feels very grounded and disciplined, with understated passion . . . The book also made me think about our (my) relationship with objects in a new light, and how the material world is infused with desire and history and identity -- Bridget Collins