The Great Flood
25 June 2020Imprint: Picador
Synopsis
A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.
Flooding has always threatened the rainy, wind-swept islands of the United Kingdom, but it is becoming more frequent and more severe. Combining travel writing and reportage with readings of history, literature and myth, Edward Platt explores the way floods have shaped the physical landscape of Britain and left their mark on its inhabitants....
Details
25 June 2020192 pages
9780330420280Imprint: Picador
Reviews
How we visualise climate catastrophe tends toward the epic, the exotic . . . Platt instead locates its effects in the everyday: the flooding experienced by England’s picture postcard towns and occasionally decrepit coastal settlements . . . The Great Flood makes the global local in the same way that the climate emergency does. Platt’s writing combines sharp reportage with a poet’s eye for a striking image that vividly captures the otherworldly, waterlogged landscapes he travels through . . . “When it comes to climate change, we are all to blame.”Guardian
A reporter of fearless imaginationSimon Jenkins, The Times
[An] engrossing account of floods ancient and modernSunday Times
FascinatingChoice
