Lara Maiklem (London Mudlark)

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Lara Maiklem is a mudlark. She wanders the shores of the River Thames at low tide searching for lost and forgotten objects that tell tales of the past and bring forgotten Londoners to life.

Lara never digs or uses a metal detector and she often walks little more than a mile in 5 hours, yet she can travel 2,000 years back in time through the objects that are revealed by the tide. Prehistoric flint tools, medieval pilgrim badges, Tudor shoes, Georgian wig curlers and Victorian pottery, ordinary objects left behind by the ordinary people who made London what it is today. 

Lara grew up on a dairy farm in Surrey and moved to London in the early 1990s. For several years the river was her go-to place in the chaos of the city, then one day she found herself at the top of a set of old wooden river stairs, looking down onto the foreshore itself. That was 20 years ago, since then it has become her obsession; a weekly amble in central London, lost in the minutiae of her surroundings, or a bracing march further east through the bleak marshes of the Estuary. 

In 2012, Lara became the first person to share mudlarking with the world on social media as ‘The London Mudlark’. What began as an anonymous time filler between feeding, burping and changing baby twins quickly attracted followers and media attention and she has now written two books – the Sunday Times bestseller Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames (Bloomsbury, 2019) and A Field Guide to Larking: Beachcombing, Mudlarking, Fieldwalking and More (Bloomsbury, 2021). She's written for newspapers and magazines and they have written about her, she's appeared on radio and television and she's also consulted for books and television. In 2022 she was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (founded 1707).

Lara regularly speaks at festivals and private events and if you’re interested in mudlarking without getting muddy you can also join over 200k other armchair mudlarks and follow her regular posts on InstagramTwitter and Facebook

 

Current publication

A FIELD GUIDE TO LARKING - Bloomsbury - August 2021

LARK (verb): to get out and about, to explore the world around us and to discover the little treasures hiding in plain sight.

We think, of course, of mudlarking but there is also beachlarking, fieldlarking or even simply exploring your own home with fresh eyes.

In this beautiful field guide, Lara teaches us how to lark for ourselves. There are maps and charts, tips and lists, and colour illustrations throughout to help identify finds. From tide tables for mudlarkers to a flint guide for fieldlarkers, this book is richly informative and yet small enough to pop in a pocket. Like a journal it invites you to interact - to make notes and record finds along the way.

If Lara Maiklem's first book was a glimpse into a hidden world, with this field guide she shows us how we can discover it for ourselves.

 

Previous publication

MUDLARKING - Bloomsbury - August 2019

THE TOP 2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK

Mudlark (/'mAdla;k/) noun A person who scavenges for usable debris in the mud of a river or harbour

Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames for over fifteen years, in pursuit of the objects that the river unearths: from Neolithic flints to Roman hair pins, medieval buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes to Victorian toys. These objects tell her about London and its lost ways of life.

Moving from the river's tidal origins in the west of the city to the point where it meets the sea in the east, Mudlarking is a search for urban solitude and history on the River Thames, which Lara calls the longest archaeological site in England.

As she has discovered, it is often the tiniest objects that tell the greatest stories.

 

Praise for MUDLARKING - Bloomsbury - August 2019

"Enchanting. It made even a capsized cynic like me feel more sentimental about the Thames. In fact, I am quite tempted to join Maiklem on the riverbed looking for treasure." (Sunday Times)

"Mudlarks are river scavengers, but Lara Maiklem is more like a time traveller. Her prose has none of the self-conscious sensibility that defines contemporary nature writing; her thoughtful sentences read as though she were talking to herself. There is a great deal to learn from these pages, not least the insight that finding lost things is the best way of losing yourself. It is, above all, her wisdom that makes Lara Maiklem such restful company." (Guardian)

"This is a quirky and delightful read, wonderfully evocative of London's gloopy, ghost-haunted river." (Daily Mail)

"Maiklem persists, in this weirdly engaging book, in seeking out a curious beauty. Maiklem's description of the fog is worthy of Dickens or Joseph Conrad. Maiklem pungently evokes the broken bridges, slippery river stairs, causeways, jetties and boatyards. No one has looked at these odd corners since Sherlock Holmes." (Sunday Telegraph)

"Maiklem's storytelling shines. Her imagined histories for her special finds read like waterborne fairy stories, a hard kernel of truth clothed in mythical finery. Reading it, I felt like I was down on the foreshore myself, sifting through the pages for titbits." (Daily Telegraph)

"A lovely, lyrical, gently meandering book, filled with fascinating diversions and detail." (Literary Review)

"Lara Maiklem reveals to us the fascinating and poignant micro-world of London's history; the fragments of life deposited on the tidal shores of the Thames. Mudlarking is a flowing river of human stories; beautiful, wondrous and eternal." (Hallie Rubenhold)

"Maiklem's enthusiasm is infectious, and her reimagining of the lives of those who parted with these items is an illuminated joy." (i)

"Whoever buys it is blessed. I love the fact that [Maiklem] makes herself the centre of this huge, timeless, endless story that reaches from the distant past and flows past all our consciousnesses out to a place far beyond the reach of the estuary. Lara is such a natural writer; every page just tingles with her imagination. It is a love letter to life itself." (Ian Mortimer)

"This book is as great a treasure as any of the fascinating and eclectic finds that the author has unearthed along the Thames over the years. The narrative ebbs and flows like the river itself, revealing London's rich history, its modern day landscape and a wealth of poignant personal reflections. One of the best books I've read in years." (Tracy Borman)

Mudlarking

Non-Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes
2019

Bloomsbury

Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames for over fifteen years, in pursuit of the objects that the river unearths: from Neolithic flints to Roman hair pins, medieval buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes to Victorian toys. These objects tell her about London and its lost ways of life.

Moving from the river's tidal origins in the west of the city to the point where it meets the sea in the east, Mudlarking is a search for urban solitude and history on the River Thames, which Lara calls the longest archaeological site in England.

As she has discovered, it is often the tiniest objects that tell the greatest stories.