- Published: 4 April 2013
- ISBN: 9781448182107
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 288
Silt Road
The Story of a Lost River
- Published: 4 April 2013
- ISBN: 9781448182107
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 288
Captures lyrically the note of melancholy in the English landscape
Peter Stanford, Tablet
Through a slightly eclectic mix of historic record and rueful reflection, [Rangeley-Wilson] has crafted a book which joins the elite of angling books; it holds its own among great books, not just angling books
Slough Express
Sometimes fascinating, often very beautiful, occasionally shocking and sombre… Fans of Robert Macfarlane’s Wild Places will love it (5 star review)
Phoebe Smith, Wanderlust
A rich dowsing-out of a lost river and its stories; a passionate pursuit of landscape ghosts.
Robert MacFarlane
By turns learned and lyrical, this is a great swirl of a book – luminously well written, and as intriguing as a cabinet of curiosities.
David Profumo
A work of extraordinary power and resonance
Melissa Harrison, Financial Times
Charles Rangeley-Wilson has a lyrical eye for country, the heron-like patience of the experienced waterman, and the flinty cussedness of the first-rate researcher. Silt Road is a captivating elegy for a lost river, and for the lives through which it flowed.
Luke Jennings
Superb book… Its story is an acute example of the criminal disregard our nation has had for these remarkable rivers
Mark Lloyd, BBC Countryfile
This remarkable account of a venerated and mistreated English chalk stream is a thousand-year-old detective story of rare beauty and brilliant insight, as though John McPhee had channelled Gilbert White.
James R. Babb, Editor, Grays Sporting Journal
Rangeley-Wilson’s historical excursions are fascinating
Sinclair McKay, Daily Telegraph
Passionate, persuasive and personal…it is an elegy to a fascinating world of which many of us have lost sight
Anthony Sattin, Sunday Times
The author's passion, underpinned by his deftness of touch, makes the book an utter joy to read
John Aston, Trout and Salmon Magazine
You will be moved and altered by what you read in this groundbreaking book
John Andrews, Caught By The River
The language in Silt Road is gorgeous. Throughout the book there are so many fine rhythms – truly musical, poetic beats and phrasing
Henry Hughes, Professor of Literature, Oregon University
Local history raised by water power to the status of allegorical memoir... In searching for the Wye, the author is also looking for something that is 'far more deeply interfused'
John Greening, Country Life
The author has a fine eye for the telling detail, and an even finer ear; the human noise which drowns out the gentler sounds of nature has seldom been anatomised better
Alex Sarll, Western Daily Press
This is an intimate exploration of the interaction between humans and landscape down the ages
Country Walking
A compelling read
Choice
Silt Road is that rare ting: a book that is able to marry exacting research with imaginative fluency, told in language as pliant and revealing as water
Earthlines