Rag and Bone: A Family History of What We've Thrown Away

· John Murray · Narrated by Karen Cass
Audiobook
6 hr 27 min
Unabridged
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More
Want a 38 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline. 
Add

About this audiobook

From relics of Georgian empire-building and slave-trading, through Victorian London's barged-out refuse to 1980s fly-tipping and the pervasiveness of present-day plastics, Rag and Bone traces the story of our rubbish, and, through it, our history of consumption.

In a series of beachcombing and mudlarking walks - beginning in the Thames in central London, then out to the Kentish estuary and eventually the sea around Cornwall - Lisa Woollett also tells the story of her family, a number of whom made their living from London's waste, and who made a similar journey downriver from the centre of the city to the sea.

A beautifully written but urgent mixture of social history, family memoir and nature writing, Rag and Bone is a book about what we can learn from what we've thrown away - and a call to think more about what we leave behind.

(p) 2020 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

About the author

Lisa Woollett's family have found value in what is thrown away for generations - her great-grandfather was a scavenger and her grandfather was a dustman, while she herself has been a beachcomber all her life, and in recent years has taken photographs of her beach and river finds. She is the author of two award-winning photography books about the sea, and Rag and Bone won a Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award for Non-Fiction. She has lived in Cornwall with her family since 2004, in a house shared with buckets and boxes of shore finds.

Rate this audiobook

Tell us what you think.

Listening information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.

More by Lisa Woollett

Similar audiobooks

Narrated by Karen Cass