Caught by the river

Last week, just before I had a few days off on the south coast, I attended the launch of a new book, Caught by the River: a collection of words on water. It hardly needs me to plug it, since it has been all over the media in the last week or two, but suffice it to say it is a collection of musings on our relationship with this island's rivers, written by a fragmentary collection of individuals from journalists to rock musicians, via salmon-tickling lords and creatively-inclined teachers. Oh, and I wrote something for it, which is what I was doing there. And the illustrations are beautiful.

This is the etching which illustrates my piece, which is about the wonders of the upper Thames. Anyway, I'd urge you to get hold of a copy of this book if you have any interest at all in rivers, swimming, fishing, Jarvis Cocker's childhood, how to tickle a trout or just reading some fine writing about the best of our urban and rural waterways.