Top ten books about the River Thames

Caroline Crampton is a writer and editor who contributes regularly to the Guardian, the Mail on Sunday and the New Humanist. She has appeared as a broadcaster on Newsnight, Sky News and BBC Radio 4.

The Way to the Sea: The Forgotten Histories of the Thames Estuary is her first book.

One of Crampton's ten top books about the River Thames, as shared at the Guardian:

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Hoo peninsula, a spur of land between the Thames and its final tributary the Medway, is not a place that has appeared much in classic fiction. But it’s in a graveyard near the Hoo’s highest point that young Pip meets the convict Magwitch, who has just escaped from a prison hulk and is fleeing his jailers through the Thames marshes. I first read this scene as a teenager and I still find it chilling. Pip is terrified, but little knows that this chance meeting will change the course of his life.

Read about another entry on the list.

Great Expectations appears on Jenny Kawecki's list of four of the worst holidays in fiction, Lynne Truss's 6 best books list, Charlotte Seager's list of five well-known literary obsessives who take things too far, TheReadDown's list of seventeen books to read during wedding season, Phoebe Walker's list of eight of the best feasts quotes in literature, Rachel Cooke's top ten list of single women, Robert Williams's top ten list of loners in fiction, Chrissie Gruebel's top ten list of books set in London, Melissa Albert's list of five interesting fictional characters who would make undesirable roommates, Janice Clark's list of seven top novels about the horrors of adolescence, Amy Wilkinson's list of five books Kate Middleton should have read while waiting to give birth, Kate Clanchy's top ten list of novels that reflect the real qualities of adolescence, Joseph Olshan's list of six favorite books, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best clocks in literature, ten of the best appropriate deaths in literature, ten of the best castles in literature, ten of the best Hamlets, ten of the best card games in literature, and ten best list of fights in fiction. It also made Tony Parsons' list of the top ten troubled males in fiction, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and numbers among Kurt Anderson's five most essential books. The novel is #1 on Melissa Katsoulis' list of "twenty-five films that made it from the book shelf to the box office with credibility intact."

Read an 1861 review of Great Expectations.

--Marshal Zeringue