Waterways Living Landscapes

Illustrations: 70 colour and 30 black & white

This book is the fourth title in the National Trust's series Living Landscapes. Waterways in their many forms reveal a fascinating history and today represent one of our most precious resources. This book tells the story of the water's journey, from mythical connections of the humble spring or well to the formal water gardens and moated castles of the aristocracy. Along the way we learn about the engineering feats of the earliest canal builders, the colourful communities that grew up around the watermills, how rivers powered the industrial revolution ( and gave us our first taste of large scale pollution), the wildlife that water supports, and explore the many literary and cultural connections of water.

How to manage a finite resource upon which our lives depend has been an issue with which man has grappled throughout history. In the developed world we may no longer be fighting cholera but we are still facing other environmental challenges, such as rising sea levels and the threat of flood, and how to limit the damage caused by industrial and agricultural pollution in many forms. Beautifully illustrated with a mixture of contemporary colour photographs, fascinating archive images and artworks from leading wildlife illustrator Bryn Edwards, Waterways takes stock of the state of our streams, rivers and canals in the early 2000's and looks forward to a time when we might embrace a deeper cultural, spiritual and environmental understanding of this life giving force.