Rag and Bone

Lisa Woollett follows the trail of discarded objects through the centuries, beginning with remnants of the Georgian era's imperial expansion and the slave trade. She then moves on to the waste that Victorian London sent down the river by barge, the illegal dumping of the 1980s, and the plastic that now turns up almost everywhere.

The book is built around a series of walks along foreshore and water. Woollett starts on the Thames in central London, continues out across the Kent estuary, and finally reaches the coastline around Cornwall. Along the way she searches the mud and shingle for what has been left behind.

Running alongside this is her own family history. Several of her relatives earned their living from London's refuse, and her story mirrors their route from the heart of the city down to the open sea. The result blends social history, family memoir and nature writing, and asks readers to consider what our discarded things reveal about us and what we owe to the places that absorb them.