Guy’s canal bookshelf
The best recommendations come, I find, from a lifetime of experience and of being interested in something.
This recommendation comes from my friend Guy, who has spent over fifty years in, on and around the canals and rivers in the UK. His enthusiasm extends to the books written by people who lived and worked on them.
We got chatting recently about literature that tells stories of the canals, and it turns out Guy has an extensive library on the subject. I asked him to narrow down his top choices. He went further and gave me advice about which order to read them in.
There are ten books here, and I have quite a bit of catching up to do!
Guy has kindly given me permission to share his recommendations, along with his pointers about where to begin. Here they are in what he recommends as the reading order:
Hold on a Minute - Tim Wilkinson
Published in 1965, this tells the story of the year Wilkinson and his wife spent carrying cargo on the canals in 1948,
The Amateur Boatwomen - Eily Gayford
Idle Women - Susan Woolfitt
Troubled Waters - Margaret Cornish
These three books recount the experiences of women who worked on carrying boats during the Second World War.
Guy recommends beginning with The Amateur Boatwomen. It covers Eily Gayford’s boating experience before the war and how she subsequently became responsible for training other women to work the boats.
Maidens’ Trip - Emma Smith
Another recommendation from the wartime boatwomen’s bookshelf. Guy describes this as more of a story based on Smith’s experiences, rather than the direct recollections of the three books above.
Bread Upon the Waters - David Blagrove
The Quiet Waters By - David Blagrove
These follow Blagrove’s successive experiences of working on the waterways. Guy’s advice is to read Bread Upon the Waters first, then The Quiet Waters By.
Anderton for Orders - Tom Foxon
No. 1 - Tom Foxon
Following the Trade - Tom Foxon
Another author whose experiences unfold across several books. Guy recommends reading these in the order listed.
Thank you, Guy, for taking the time to pull these together, photograph them and share a little of your bookshelf with the world.
Have you read any of them? And which canal book would you add?