Rag and Bone cover art

Rag and Bone

A Family History of What We've Thrown Away

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Rag and Bone

By: Lisa Woollett
Narrated by: Karen Cass
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £14.35

Buy Now for £14.35

About this listen

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 about what we can learn from what we've thrown away - and a call to think more about what we leave behind.

©2020 Lisa Woollett (P)2020 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd Europe Great Britain Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Science England
All stars
Most relevant
A more insightful take on “ Mudlarking” going deeply into the environmental effects of the disposal of man made products. Lots of fascinating
facts wrapped around an interesting storyline and well worth a listen, l will go on to seek out the other writing’s of Lisa Woolley.

Endlessly fascinating

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Step away from the bustle for a quiet, thoughtful, mudlarking stomp in the company of a seasoned beachcomber and masterful storyteller – a wonderful gift for yourself or a loved one.

Companiable and meticulously researched, Woollett leads us quietly along the shorelines of our lives and those of our ancestors. The author’s accounts are arresting – reflecting a photographer’s keen eye, the bright narrative of a talented storyteller, and the playful enthusiasm of a child exploring shoreline stomping grounds.

This book’s narrative is built on years of low tide forays - chilly weed and debris strewn shores and equally dogged digital trawling. This atmosphere is preserved in written form - each fragment of the past curated with a lightness of touch. Yet the result is a book where each passage glistens like a ribbon of freshly deposited treasures on a bright morning shore.

This is the most beautiful book I have listened to or read in a long while.

Step away from the bustle for a mudlarking stomp - the most beautiful book I have listened to in ages

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Struggled to the end of chapter 2 and gave up. This book is dull, dull, dull. I’ll be requesting a refund.

Boring and monotonous

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.