Secret Life of the River Thames
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What is the opening scene and why are Sophie and Jonty on the Southbank?
Set the scene for us, Sophie.
Well, as you just said a moment ago, Jonty, we are in the presence of some gentle lapping. But I'm not sure that we can hear it on the audio. I really hope we can, because we are on Bankside. We're cheek by jowl with the mighty River Thames, just on South Bank in Southwark, right next to Shakespeare's Globe.
Yeah, this is ground zero for
slob. Yeah,
it's slob ground zero. We're on the Thames with Shakespeare's Globe behind us, and we are going to be talking all things River Thames, inspired by what we're seeing. And in fact, we've also got St Paul's Cathedral right there.
Yeah, we've got St Paul's, which is nothing if not iconic, and we've also got the bridge that Bridget Jones walks across at the beginning of the Bridget Jones movie.
The wobbly bridge.
Yeah.
It's all going
on.
This is The Secret Life of Books. I am Jonty Claypole. I am a terrible poet and I am in a competition to dive into the waters before us. To dive into the sewage-filled waters to see to what depths I can sink.
Excellent. I so, so hoped that you might take that one on. And I'm Sophie Gee. I'm a young PhD student at the very beginning of her career, struggling to decide on a topic for her research and deciding that some really comprehensive history of the literary history of the River Thames would be a gripping narrative with which to regale her supervisors. But at the crucial meeting, she's fatally discouraged by them. They say it's a terrible idea and she shouldn't do it. Oh,
that's sad.
I know. I'm speaking of myself.
Oh, is that true? Yeah. That is really what happened. I
wanted to write my PhD thesis on the Thames. And my supervisor, Barbara Lewalski, who at the time was the world's most famous Miltonist, said that she thought it would end up being a situation where I would just be saying, here's a river, there's a river.
Yeah, everywhere's a river.
Yeah, and it was a failed idea. And you know what? Preparing for this episode, I came to the conclusion that she was wrong.
Right. Well, now we're going to, yeah, set the record straight. So this is sink or swim time. This episode, the secret life of the River Thames. So Sophie, I've spent much of my life very close to this river. I grew up close to the river. I've lived in flats on both sides of the river. I have run round the river every morning at certain stages of my life and I've commuted to work by crossing this river. I think it's fair to say that the River Thames runs through my life as well as through the City of London.
Does it run softly?
It does. Sweet Thames runs sloppily. Yes, I knew we were going to have some Edmund Spencer in there.
Yes, indeed. OK, so I'm going to tell us some vital statistics about this river.
You are chief vital statistics. Yeah. Since we are going back into Roman history.
Yes, exactly. Asterisks. tribute moment. And the thing that is really striking about the Thames is that it has a very significant rise and fall in the tidal stretch, which is the stretch involving London. So the difference between high tide and low tide in the Thames and metropolitan London is seven meters. And from Oxford, which is not the head of the Thames, but it's kind of nearer to the beginning of the Thames, it drops by 55 metres to the estuary. So it's a very volatile river. And actually, my friend Dom, shout out to my great friend Dom, who rows on the River Thames every day. Apparently, if you're going to be on the Thames, you have to do very, very advanced safety training. because it's actually quite a dangerous river.
And it explains why there's a lot of catastrophe and sense of imperilment for people when they're on this river.
So we right now, Sophie, what you are saying, we are flirting with danger. We're dancing with death to do this podcast.
Yes.
I wonder if listeners know how far we go to make this happen.
I was speaking with someone just this morning who's from London. And as I said, you know, I was off to do the Thames episode. He said, take enormous care.
Right. Because you are sitting only five feet from where the waters are. And a tidal wave could suddenly come tearing down from the estuary and sweep you out, couldn't it?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the opening scene and why are Sophie and Jonty on the Southbank?
0:00–5:17
2
How did medieval writers like Chaucer use the Thames in the Canterbury Tales?
5:17–13:55
3
What were the tidal extremes of the Thames and why does it make the river dangerous?
13:55–22:32
4
How did Nathaniel Hawthorne describe the Thames and its impact on American writers?
22:32–30:53
5
Why does Charles Dickens portray the Thames as a site of death and discovery in *Our Mutual Friend*?
30:53–41:53
6
How did James McNeill Whistler’s nocturnes change artistic views of the Thames?
41:53–50:27
7
What does Oscar Wilde’s poetry reveal about the aesthetic shift from realism to decadence?
50:27–59:36
8
How does Joseph Conrad use the Thames to explore empire and darkness in *Heart of Darkness*?
59:36–1:07:48