Every drowned, unwanted or lost object is precious to Maiklem, who reveals, as she takes us downriver from Richmond to the Estuary, a preternatural sympathy for the broken, mud-caked and out of context ... A custodian of the past, Maiklem’s relation to the life of the river is personal rather than scientific ... Maiklem likes to kneel down with her nose inches from the foreshore: 'I breathe in the muddy aroma of silt and algae and listen to the sound of water drying on the stones: a barely discernible fizz-pop as it evaporates and the lacquered shine turns to a powdering of fine grey silt.' Her prose has none of the self-conscious sensibility that defines contemporary nature writing; her thoughtful sentences read as though she were talking to herself ... There is nothing that Maiklem does not know about the history of the river or the thingyness of things ... There is a great deal to learn from these pages, not least the insight that finding lost things is the best way of losing yourself. It is, above all, her wisdom that makes Lara Maiklem such restful company

Even river geeks will learn a lot from this book ... The picture Lara Maiklem paints of the Thames in her first book, Mudlarking, is...enchanting — even though the pastime it describes is rummaging around in the dirt at its edges ... The one element I felt the book lacked was people: who are the characters beside the river? I am also not convinced it will have wide appeal. It reminds me of that trend a few years ago for books about tree-climbing; most sank with poor sales. Yet I hope it does succeed: it made even a capsized cynic like me feel more sentimental about the Thames. In fact, I am quite tempted to join Maiklem on the riverbed looking for treasure.

There’s a certain coldness to this mudlark’s process of discovery and storytelling alike, as if the mud dulls the capacity for shock ... Maiklem’s attempts to describe her emotional connection to the river and to mudlarking remain rather vague, in sharp contrast to her ability to focus on, say, the carving on the head of a centuries-old ship’s nail. Perhaps a collector’s obsession is impossible ever to fully explain or share, but it means her narrative remains fragmentary—a cabinet of curiosities lacking the binding thread of a story. There’s only so much an object can reveal, and most of their stories inevitably end in speculation, the tantalizing uncertainty of what can’t be recovered. The foreshore, the mudlark’s domain, remains 'a muddle of refuse and casual losses.'

There are other mudlarking books, but this one offers engaging insight into an amphibian ambience of strongly marked characters, semi-secret exploits and outlandish theories. Maiklem is not alone in resorting to the river for salvation as much as salvage ... The author is attuned — glimpsing faces in walls, sensing ‘ghostly essences’, especially of her boat-builder ancestors, seeing the river almost as a deity to be propitiated ... The further downriver, the more evident England’s erosion; recent trash at Tilbury ‘tells a story of overconsumption and wanton waste’. Vast mounds of soiled, single-use junk befit a recent past whose voices cry ‘loud and angry’ on the estuarial wind. It is hard to imagine such stuff ever feeling evocative, but while we hope for transmutation we can follow Lara Maiklem’s footprints down to the tideline and back.

Maiklem’s storytelling shines when it’s focused tightly on her finds ... She collects everyday trifles like pins and bottle tops that might not fetch much at auction but offer a precious glimpse into how ordinary people once lived. Her imagined histories for her special finds read like waterborne fairy-stories, a hard kernel of truth clothed in mythical finery. Interspersed with these are somewhat less captivating diversions about the river’s broader history – retellings of well-known events that have received more detailed exegesis in comprehensive volumes ... Indeed, part of Maiklem’s premise is that most Londoners know very little of their river, but I’m not sure how well that claim stacks up, especially given her own large social media following and the popularity of other works on this topic ... Maiklem has also fallen prey to modern publishing’s insistence on inserting memoir into all non-fiction, no matter how relevant it may or may not be to the subject at hand ... By far the most arresting portions are those that deal with the practicalities of mudlarking. Reading it, I felt like I was down on the foreshore myself, sifting through the pages for titbits ... Yet these morsels are tantalisingly brief. The book contains an undercurrent of secrecy and competitiveness that seems inherent to the mindset of a passionate mudlark ... This is the paradox, which Maiklem lays bare: the erosion of the Thames foreshore is an environmental concern and a sad loss, but as the mud breaks down, treasures from ages past come to light. The mudlarks are snatching London’s history back from the river, piece by piece, before it disappears.

...[an] engrossing front-line report from 'a world of escapees and obsessives' who think nothing of scaling the perilous riverside ladders at odd hours, dressed in waterproofs and latex gloves, on the lookout for whatever traces of the past the river might spit up ... It’s a riveting crash course not only in the history of London from prehistoric times to the present, but in urban geography and how to read a living environment from organic clues ... Ms. Maiklem’s Thames is above all a place of transformation. Mudlark conveys a powerful sense of the river of life on its journey through time, not just via public symbols such as the coins she collects...but in the traces of everyday lives disrupted by local and national crises.

The sense of discovery, of finding forgotten objects, is captured superbly in Maiklem’s debut ... From long discarded oyster shells to 18th-century police uniform buttons, the items she finds encourage her to research the people behind the artifacts. For example, finding a well-preserved bottle near where prison hulks were once moored leads Maiklem to learn that one of her ancestors was a prisoner on one of the ships bound for the penal colony in Australia ... Maiklem positions the River Thames as a narrator, which only offers up some of its stories in a piecemeal fashion. The parts that are revealed, however, make for a captivating read.

Throughout the narrative, Maiklem’s imagination and infectious enthusiasm make for a lovely fantasy world where 'the tiniest of objects…tell the greatest stories.' ... Entertaining reading for British history buffs and budding archaeologists.

British editor Maiklem plumbs the archaeological history of the Thames River through unearthed remnants discovered on its banks in her engrossing debut ... This thoroughly fascinating look at treasure hunting along the banks of the Thames also serves as an astute history lesson.