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Rag and bone, a famliy history of what we've thrown away, Lisa Woollett

eng

contains biographical information

mapsillustrationsplates

index present

non fiction

Rag and bone

Lisa Woollett

a famliy history of what we've thrown away

From relics of Georgian empire-building and slave-trading, through Victorian London's barged-out refuse to 1980s fly-tipping and the pervasiveness of present-day plastics, this book traces the story of our rubbish, and, through it, our history of consumption. In a series of beachcombing and mudlarking walks -- beginning in the Thames in central London, then out to the Kentish estuary and eventually the sea around Cornwall -- Lisa Woollett also tells the story of her family, a number of whom made their living from London's waste, and who made a similar journey downriver from the centre of the city to the sea. A beautifully written but urgent mixture of social history, family memoir and nature writing, this is a book about what we can learn from what we've thrown away and a call to think more about what we leave behind

adult