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Canals and rivers in fiction


The canals and rivers of the UK are a major part of the landscape and character of the country, so it’s not surprising that they have played important roles in some of our favourite books. Here’s our selection of good reads featuring the waterways.

Mill on the Floss, George Eliot
George Eliot’s bright, frustrated heroine Maggie Tulliver and her brother Tom live on the banks of the River Floss. The river is an important force in the novel; the roar of the mill is a constant background to their lives, and its fast-flowing waters are symbolic of the tide of events that sweeps the characters along. The river even plays its part in events at two key moments: when a boat trip leads to a failed elopment for Maggie, and the dramatic flood at the book’s climax.

Dorlecote Mill, where Tom and Maggie live, was based on Eliot’s own childhood home, Griff House in Nuneaton, close to the Coventry Canal. However, the River Floss was little like the canal, being a tidal river, capable of serious flooding. It was most likely modelled on the River Trent in Lincolnshire.

Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens

This sprawling and complex novel has far too many plot strands to summarise, but it involves wills, long-lost heirs, disguises, social climbing, blackmail, love rivals and violence. It begins with the discovery of a body in the River Thames by the old waterman Gaffer Hexam and his daughter Lizzie. The novel is steeped in the grimy industrial past of the river, where many of the working class characters make their living, while the villain Rogue Riderhood lives in the rough area around Limehouse Basin. The significance of the river is clear in the numbers of drownings and near-drownings in the novel.

The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

A childhood classic, it is normally accepted that the setting for the adventures of Ratty, Mole and the others was the gentle upper reaches of the River Thames around Henley on Thames. However, other waterways that may also have helped inspire Grahame were the Crinan Canal in Scotland and the River Fowey in Cornwall.

The Swallows and Amazons series, Arthur Ransome
Boating is central to this much-loved series, about a group of children spending their school holidays in exploring, sailing, camping and other outdoor pursuits. The books are set in various locations, but the most commonly used are the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. The un-named lake in Swallows and Amazons and several of its sequels is thought to be an amalgamation of Coniston Water and Windemere.

The Wench is Dead, Colin Dexter
Much-loved fictional detective Inspector Morse applies his talents to a very cold case, attempting to solve the 1859 murder of a young woman travelling from Coventry to London on the Oxford Canal. This sends him deep into local history and a time when the canal was a thriving transport link. The television adaptation was actually filmed on the Kennet & Avon Canal.

Waterland, Graham Swift
The setting of the Norfolk Fens is vital to this Booker-shortlisted novel. Narrator Tom Crick lives in a lock-keeper’s cottage on the banks of the fictional River Leem, possibly based on the Little Ouse. His personal history is interwoven with that of his local area, and the land reclaimed from the marsh.

The Canal, Lee Rourke
Published this year, this debut novel centres on a bored young man who leaves his job and spends every day sitting on a bench by the Regent’s Canal in Hackney, London. The modern, urban setting provides a backdrop to his philosophical musings and tentative friendship with a woman who sometimes sits next to him.

Last updated: 02/11/2010

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