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Lead book review

Time is running out for the world’s great rivers

Overfishing, industrial pollution and dams are squeezing life from once revered waterways that have sustained civilisations for centuries

26 April 2025

9:00 AM

26 April 2025

9:00 AM

In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings James C. Scott

Yale, pp.220, 20

Is a River Alive? Robert Macfarlane

Hamish Hamilton, pp.374, 25

That rivers have a life of their own is an ancient idea become current again. Shape-shifting, vital and recognisably capable of being sickened or damaged – as the state of our fragile chalk streams so starkly illustrates – there is good reason why fluvial myths have such historic potency and why the flow of water enjoys so many figurative associations.

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