Adrift: A Secret Life of London's Waterways

Description

After ten years renting expensive rooms in small flats, Helen Babbs swapped bricks and mortar for a boat called 'Pike'. She now calls London's canals and rivers her home. Without a permanent mooring, she cruises ever-onwards, cast adrift in a sometimes hostile city. From deep winter to late autumn, we travel with Helen as she takes us on a tour of London's canal and river flora, fauna, people and history, revealing intricate details and taking us to places only accessible by boat. Adrift also explores issues relevant to city dwellers across the world: the pressures of urban life, alternative ways of living and the age-old experience of setting up a first home. Blending autobiography, nature writing and documentary, Adrift invites the reader on an eye-opening journey into a different side of the city. Praise for Helen's previous book, My Garden, the City and Me: 'This charming book is a love letter to the capital's hidden green spaces and their wildlife' - Daily Mail

Helen Babbs is a writer and journalist. Her work has been published by the BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, New Statesman and Time Out, among others. Helen's first book - My Garden, the City and Me, about urban nature and the glory of growing things - was published in 2011 and nominated for two garden writing awards.

Adrift is an engaging introduction to living on a narrow boat, held together with atmospheric descriptions of reconnecting with life's simple pleasures ... It is at its best when capturing the transition from a life on land to a life on board, as well as mapping the evolving relationship between urban building developments and the canal's ecology. -- Times Literary Supplement Babbs is an excellent nature writer, evoking the lives and emotions tied to the water. Charming -- Steven Cooper * Waterstones Events Manager, The Bookseller * A compelling exploration of river living * Homes and Gardens * One of the best waterways books for decades * Waterways World * A treat ... Babbs's effortless prose is tight and lyrical, moseying along at a calm, steady pace, but there are moments both barbed and cutting ... A serious and fascinating book * Hackney Citizen * Chapter after chapter of utterly captivating prose * Caught by the River * Waterways writing at its finest: the breathtaking, boat-eulogising Adrift. -- @TheBookBarge