On Warmheartedness (An Easter Message from the Anti-Christ)

The twin themes of tenderness and warmheartedness dominate in Lawrence's late work. In Lady Chatterley's Lover, for example, challenged by Connie to say what he believes in, Mellors famously tells her: 

"'I believe in being warm-hearted. I believe especially in being warm-hearted in love, in fucking with a warm heart. I believe if men could fuck with warm hearts, and the women take it warm-heartedly, everything would come all right. It’s all this cold-hearted fucking that is death and idiocy.'"

I don't know if that's true or not. But I do know that Nietzsche problematizes the notion of warm-heartedness in Human, All Too Human - particularly in relation to Christ, whom he regards during this mid-period of his writing as not only the noblest human being, but also he who possesses the warmest of hearts.

For Nietzsche, however, this warmth of heart led Christ into the fatal error of over-identifying with the poor and meek in spirit and thus ultimately promoting an enfeebled morality full of ressentiment and base stupidity.

And where did this unintelligent goodness get him? Nailed to a cross. For when warm-heartedness is made into an ideal, it ultimately results in self-sacrifice - an issue that Lawrence often discussed in his critique of Christianity (see for example the novel Aaron's Rod).

So we should be wary of the claim made by Oliver Mellors that warm-heartedness will eventually make everything come good; though, to be fair, he constructs a libidinal practice rather than a moral teaching upon his belief. Thus, whilst Christ beseeches us to love our neighbour, Mellors busies himself fucking a little flame into being between himself and Connie; just as the flowers are fucked into being between sun and earth.

And Nietzsche? Nietzsche teaches us the philosophical importance of coldness and cruelty and demonstrates how the highest intelligence and the warmest of hearts cannot coexist in the same individual.               

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), Ch. 14. 

Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1986), Sections 475 and 235. 

I am grateful to Keith Ansell-Pearson, whose new book on Nietzsche's mid-period writings - Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy, (Bloomsbury, 2018) - inspired this post. See Ch. 1 of this work in particular, 'Cooling Down the Human Mind', pp. 17-45. 

Two Inconvenient Truths

Poster by Stanislav Petrov 

deviantart.com 

I: Habitat Heterogeneity Leads to Greater Biodiversity 

According to the ecologist and evolutionary biologist Chris D. Thomas, paradise hasn't been lost because we never had it to begin with: "The harmonious coexistence of humans and the rest of nature in the distant past is a romanticized and largely fictional notion" [59].

Thus it is that the relationship between man and nature remains an often violent one, involving environmental destruction and species extinction. Having said that, human beings have also (inadvertently perhaps) created a "world of new opportunities for those animals and plants capable of seizing them" [59].

Already I can hear the obvious objection from the green lobby: There were once huge areas of land covered by dense forest. Animals and plants wouldn't need new opportunities if only we conserved what remained of these primordial environments.

And, yes, it's true, ancient woodland does contain a great number of trees and many rare species.

However, it's only by converting it into a mixed landscape consisting of a patchwork of forest and various human-created habitats, that the number of species significantly increases: "This is because new species move into human-created habitats faster than the previous residents of the region die out." [67]

This, obviously, is an inconvenient truth for those who oppose all deforestation, for example, and dream of protecting pristine nature as they imagine it. But it's a truth, nevertheless, that if you want to maximise the number of animals and plants, then accelerating habitat heterogeneity is the way to go.


II: Life Prefers Warm and Wet

To say that the world's climate is getting hotter is to state a scientific fact. But to claim that global warming will prove catastrophic for life on Earth is a moral and ideological interpretation of that fact - and a misinterpretation too. For most animals and plants like it warm and wet and will exhibit enhanced physiological performance if the global thermostat is nudged up a degree or two.

Of course, there will be climate change casualties; "at least 10 per cent of all species that live on the land are expected to perish, and possibly double this number" [78]. But the rest - being naturally more dynamic and adaptable - are likely to survive and prosper by migrating, if necessary, to where the conditions best suit them.

Conservationists may not like it, but life is chaotic and in a state of constant flux. Nothing has ever stayed the same and as soon as you begin to think on grand timescales you realise that species are essentially nomadic: "Biological communities are transient. ... That is how species survive climate change. They move around. ... Any attempt by humans to keep things just as they are is utterly pointless." [84]

Thanks to human activity, it's going to get warmer. And wetter. Warmer and wetter than it has been for three million years. But, amazingly, around two-thirds of the species that researchers have studied in recent decades have already wised up to the fact and "shifted their distributions in response" [91].

At the present rate of movement, within just a few centuries we will have a "new biological world order" [92] as subtropical species, for example, move into the temperate zones and former inhabitants of the temperate region "try their luck in the polar world" [92-3]. And this will very likely increase biodiversity, even if the total number of species on Earth is likely to be lower.

I'm not trying to pick a fight with Al Gore or cause Vivienne Westwood to get her knickers in a twist by pointing out this inconvenient truth concerning global warming; I'm not even advocating that we should stop thinking seriously about climate change and its likely consequences.

I'm simply saying - in agreement with Chris Thomas - that we need to accept the reality of the world we live in and encourage the movement of so-called invasive species "because botanical and zoological world travellers will form the basis of the world's new ecosystems, just as they have when the climate has changed in the past" [94].

See: Chris D. Thomas, Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction (Allen Lane, 2017). All page numbers given in the text refer to this work. 

To read a related post to this one - on biodiversity in the Anthropocene - click here.  

On Dead Sparrows and the Great Leap Forward

Poor Dead Sparrow 

Stephen Alexander (2017)

I pretty much like all birds (with obvious exceptions, such as the vulture, ostrich and flamingo). But, mostly, I like the little birds that live in my garden; robins, blue tits and sparrows. The latter in particular hold a special place in my affection and the fact their numbers have fallen in England so dramatically over the last forty years is a cause of great sadness. I miss their company.  

Not only do I not trust people who fail to find sparrows anything other than delightful, but I despise those who would wish them harm; be it Queen Elizabeth I or Chairman Mao. The former, for example, passed a law in 1556 that branded sparrows as vermin and placed a small bounty on their tiny heads. Whilst for the latter, sparrows were one of the four main pests in the People's Republic of China (the other three being rats, flies, and mosquitoes) and, in 1958, Mao launched a public campaign of extermination as part of the so-called Great Leap Forward.

All citizens, including solders and schoolchildren, were instructed to loudly bang pots and pans and to shout and scream at the birds, thus preventing them from resting in the trees or on rooftops. As a result, the exhausted and terrified sparrows literally fell dead from the sky. Nest were also destroyed, eggs smashed and chicks killed.

Starting in the countryside, the campaign eventually moved to the towns and cities, including Peking, where staff at foreign embassies watched on in horrified amazement. The personnel of the Polish Embassy - to their great credit - refused to allow any bird abuse on their premises, but Chinese citizens surrounded the building and began two days of constant drumming. As a result, even the sparrows that had sought refuge in the embassy were eventually killed.

By 1960, however, this mad avian genocide had resulted in a plague of crop-destroying insects of biblical proportions. With rice yields falling and faced with an ecological catastrophe, Mao was obliged to redirect the campaign away from bourgeois sparrows - all birds were regarded as animals of capitalism by the communist regime - and towards bedbugs.

Unfortunately, it was too late and a famine followed that was so severe in nature, that tens of millions of Chinese starved to death. And whilst that's not usually something I'd be flippant about, in this case one can't help feeling that it serves 'em fucking right.  

On Biodiversity in the Anthropocene

The London Underground Mosquito (Culex molestus)

When you read reports about global warming, the destruction of the natural world and accelerated rates of extinction, it's easy to think that there are no winners other than ever-proliferating humanity and that even our malignant success as a species is unsustainable and will thus be relatively shortlived.

But, actually, there are other animals who are doing OK and might even be said to be thriving in this age that some term the Anthropocene ...

Mosquitos, for example, are well-adapted to life in cities; illegally dumped waste and poor sanitation means lots of stagnant water in which to breed; whilst millions of people and their pets all conveniently packed into one place means a constant supply of warm blood on which to feed.  

Other insects doing just fine thanks to human expansion and activity, include bedbugs and cockroaches. But it's not just creepy-crawlies that will enter the evolutionary future alongside man. Larger animals also find shelter, warmth and plentiful food in urban environments. It has been pointed out that if a rat was to design its own ideal home, it would pretty much resemble the system of sewers we've built for them.

And in the UK, thanks to current forestry practices and the eradication of natural predators, the number of deer is at its highest for a thousand years, with some one-and-a-half million frolicking in the woodlands and suburban gardens (just ask my sister about her plants).

Even when we poison the lakes and pollute the rivers, the cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae as they are commonly known) come up smiling; eagerly exploiting the increased nitrogen levels that result when fertilisers applied to farmland are washed into the waters. 

Finally, it's worth giving a big shout to the cephalopods; for species of squid, cuttlefish, and octopus are also making the most of present conditions. Whilst not entirely sure why their numbers are rising, scientists think it's likely due to the fact that the oceans are warming - thanks to human activity - and because we're significantly depleting the numbers of those animals that usually prey on the above.

In addition, celaphopods are natural suvivors; highly intelligent and extremely adaptable creatures who have been around for approximately 480 million years (cf. the pitiful 200,000 years chalked up by modern humans).  

In brief: although some like to imagine an apocalyptic future in which the earth is devoid of all life apart from human beings and their parasites, there is evidence to suggest that things won't be so grim; that large scale and drastic changes to the environment can, in fact, give evolution a real kick up the arse, resulting in new and more resilient species (often as the result of hybridization).

Of course, there probably aren't going to be any charismatic megafauna outside of zoos and conservation areas, but the process of natural selection will almost certainly ensure the survival of life at some level and in some form. Indeed, to return to our friend the mosquito, a sub-species has been discovered living in the London Underground of all places; while you mind the gap and worry about saving the whale, she pierces your skin and drinks ...    


Notes 

Those interested in this topic might like to see the recently published book by Professor Chris D. Thomas; Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction, (Allen Lane, 2017). 

For a fascinating interview with Prof. Thomas on the Vox news site (Dec 15, 2017) click here.

Isn't it Grand! Isn't it Fine! Graham Harman's New Theory of Everything

(Penguin, 2018)

According to Graham Harman, Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) is first and foremost a form of realism. It is thus a counter-idealism. But it's not a materialism; more a weird and intangible metaphysics in which "reality is always radically different from our formulation of it, and is never something we encounter directly in the flesh" [7]. The fact that things withdraw from direct access into ontological darkness is the central principle of OOO. 

Harman acknowledges the obvious objection that arises: that when you posit an unknowable reality, there's really nothing you can say about it; for any propositions advanced are ultimately unverifiable. But he doesn't let this objection worry him too much. For hey, philosophy isn't a natural science or an accumulated body of knowledge; it's a love of wisdom, man, and OOO is an attempt to share the love and pass the word along. 

As an openly erotic form of aesthetics, OOO is thus heavily reliant upon metaphor to make its case. Or, more accurately, to make itself as alluring as the objects it describes in order to seduce those open to its often provocative - if implausible - ideas. Harman particularly prides himself on the fact that his new theory of everything has emerged as a major influence on individuals in the arts and humanities, "eclipsing the previous influence ... of the prominent French postmodernist thinkers Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze" [8]. 

And, as if that weren't enough, the charisma of OOO has even "captured the notice of celebrities" [8]. So it's obviously very important. Or fashionable. You won't read about Harman's flat ontology or the quadruple character of existence in Nature anytime soon, but you're quite likely to see him on the cover of Art Review and, who knows, maybe you'll one day come across a spread on him in Hello! (perhaps in the private London residence where he once entertained Benedict Cumberbatch).

Never one for false modesty, Harman compares his writing style in this new OOO for beginners book from Penguin, to that of Sigmund Freud. For whatever one thinks of Freud's psychological theories, "he is an undisputed master of the literary presentation of difficult ideas, and is well worth emulating in at least that respect" [14].

That's true. But it's also much easier said than done. And, sadly, Harman doesn't quite pull it off. He hopes that reading his book will be as "pleasant an experience as possible" [17], but this is frustrated by the fact that it is often extremely tedious. Even passionate objectophiles with a good deal of sympathy for Harman's project, will, I fear, struggle to enjoy this text.

Which is a shame. For whilst I'm not convinced that his post-Heideggerean philosophy offers the best hope of a theory whose range of applicability is limitless, Harman and his fellow-travellers do at least offer an opportunity to reimagine a mind-independent reality - even if we can never accurately describe such in the language of literal propositions and must, therefore, either resort to poetic speculation or be reduced to silence, as Wittgenstein famously acknowledged.   

Always Pet a Cat When You Encounter One

The mysterious black cat in my backgarden

It would be easy to mock controversial clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson and his 12 Rules for Life; a work in which he offers a series of 'profound and practical principles' that enable readers to combat the suffering and chaos that is intrinsic to human existence and construct meaningful - though not necessarily happy - lives.

Indeed, John Crace has already provided a magnificent spoof of the above in a digested read which appeared in The Guardian shortly after the book's publication in January of this year. I doubt that I could better this comical critique, which, to his credit, even Peterson found very amusing. Nor am I going to try.

Rather, I'm writing here to praise Peterson, whom I admire and respect - even if I don't necessarily share his moral-political views, or his quest to identify eternal truths and archetypal patterns of behaviour.

For one thing, he's very intelligent and very articulate. He also seems to be courageous; a man prepared to take a stand and fight for what he feels to be right, no matter who this might upset or offend. I also think he's good-looking and that always helps. But what really won me over was an experience I had a few days ago with a black cat that came into the garden ...      

She was very friendly and clearly wanted to be stroked; so much so, that she even followed me from the garden into the kitchen, where she allowed herself to be petted (and fed) by the Little Greek. Even my mother - who doesn't feel comfortable around cats or much like animals in general - was charmed by this beautiful stranger who had come visit from out of nowhere and bring a few moments of joy. 

And so, it seems that Peterson's Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one, is worth serious consideration.

I certainly agree that it's often the smallest of things and the briefest of moments that seem to matter most in life - i.e., those redemptive elements of being that spontaneously arise when we least expect them amidst all the relentless horror and suffering and banality of everday existence. Peterson's right: you have to enjoy these soul-sustaining things and opportunities when you can.

Of course, just because he's right here, it doesn't automatically validate or legitimise his other eleven points. But I'll leave it to others, however, to assess the truth value of propositions that include Stand up straight (Rule 1) and Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world (Rule 6).   

See:

Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, (Allen Lane, 2018). Click here to watch Peterson discuss Rule 12 concerning the cat with Dave Rubin.

John Crace, '12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B Peterson - digested read', The Guardian (28 Jan. 2018): click here.

Lady Chatterley's Orang-Outang

Oliver Mellors as we might imagine him

Although Lady Chatterley's Lover was set in England and not the rainforests of Borneo or Sumatra, it sometimes amuses me to think of Mellors as an orang-outang and, indeed, there is plenty of good reason to do so ...

For one thing, Mellors has reddish fair-brown hair like one of these great apes and prefers to spend most of his time alone among the trees; so much so that he is known to French readers as l'homme des bois. He is also highly intelligent and adapt at using a variety of tools with his nimble-fingered hands - again, just like an orang-outang.  

Further, as a gamekeeper, his life is endangered by poaching and he knows that his wooded home is under increasing threat of destruction by the modern world, whose inhabitants he regards with suspicion and hostility.  

Of course, the comparison between literature's most famous gamekeeper and King Louie only stretches so far. Physically, for example, there isn't much resemblance; Mellors being relatively slim-bodied with handsome limbs, whereas the latter is a large and bulky beast, with a thick neck, very long arms and short, bowed legs.

Nor does Mellors possess the distinctive cheek flaps made of fatty tissue, known as flanges, that characterise adult male orang-outangs, though one can't help wondering if Connie would have found him more or less attractive if he did (female ourang-outangs certainly display a marked preference for males with such, over those without). 

This might seem like a rather ridiculous question, but the sexual relationship between humans and orang-outangs is an interesting one. Amongst the native peoples of Sumatra and Borneo, for example, there are legends and folk tales involving interspecies shenanigans, including acts of copulation - some of which were said to involve rape.*

No wonder then that Connie is a little frightened by Mellors, the ape-man, when she first sees him emerging from the trees with such swift menace - "like the sudden rush of a threat out of nowhere", as Lawrence writes. He may not have flanges, but he does possess a gun and gaiters, a red moustache and the strange potency of manhood - ooh-bi-doo!

*Note: this is not simply a belief amongst supposedly primitive peoples; it is also a popular and persistant fantasy within the pornographic imagination of Westerners that apes, including male orang-outangs, find white women sexually irresistible and will kidnap and forcibly copulate with them if given the opportunity. The racial - and, indeed, racist - overtones of this King Kong complex are well-documented.

Some readers may also be interested to discover that a female orang-outang, named Pony, was rescued from an Indonesian brothel in 2003; she had been shaved and chained and made available for sexual exploitation by customers with zoosexual proclivities.   
 
See: D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993). The line quoted from is in Ch. 5. 

Musical bonus: a magnificent instrumental track by Bow Wow Wow entitled 'Orang-Outang', from the album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah! City All Over, Go Ape Crazy! (1981): click here.

Reflections on the Death of a Rhinoceros

Sudan the rhino (1973 - 2018) 

Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros, is dead [insert sad face emoji here].

The 45-year-old beast, who had lived almost his entire life in captivity, was euthanised by his keepers yesterday after suffering from a number of age-related complications.

Now there are just two females left alive; Najin and Fatu, both his offspring and which, like Sudan, live at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, under 24-hour armed guard in order to protect them from poachers. 

It's pretty much the end of the line, then, for this subspecies of rhino.

Having said that, there are ongoing attempts to bring them back from the very brink of extinction using the latest IVF techniques; i.e. harvesting eggs from Najin and Fatu and fertilizing them with supplies of Sudan's frozen semen. The resulting blastocysts would then be implanted in the wombs of female southern white rhinos.   

One might wonder, however, if there's any real point in the scientific resurrection of a species if the animals are simply going to be studied as specimens and displayed as living fossils ...?

I genuinely wish there were tens of thousands of these magnificent creatures still charging about in the wild. But, sadly, that's no longer a possibility in the world today. And so maybe the next best thing is to let them die with dignity and then rest in peace in the great void of non-being. 

For even if the rhino vanishes forever, the earth will keep on turning. For the rhino is, like man, but one expression of the incomprehensible, as Birkin would say. There will be further utterances and life will continue to evolve in magnificent new ways when they've gone - and when we've gone - just as it did after the death of the dinosaurs.

Perhaps the rhino, like the ichthyosaurus and the dodo, was one of the mistakes of creation - or, rather, let us say, an interesting but ultimately flawed experiment; lacking in the fourth dimensional perfection of the bluebell and the butterfly.

And so, to paraphrase the immortal words of Ogden Nash:

Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,

I'll hope for something less prepoceros.

See: D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey, and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987). Birkin discusses his thoughts on the evolution of life with Gerald in Chapter V and, later, with Ursula in Chapter XI. 

On the Fall and Rise of British Woodland in the Last Hundred Years

The Major Oak, Sherwood Forest

Photo: FLPA / Rex Features

Sir Clifford Chatterley was very proud of the fine (if somewhat melancholy) park and woodland - a remnant of Sherwood Forest - that belonged to the Wragby estate; "he loved the old oak-trees. He felt they were his own through generations. He wanted to protect them. He wanted this place inviolate, shut off from the world." 

His father, however, Sir Geoffrey, had been rather less proud and protective of the ancient oaks. In fact, he was more than willing to chop them down for timber during the War. Blinded by patriotism and "so divorced from the England that was really England", he failed to see the difference between Lloyd George and St. George.  

Thus it was that, post-War, when Clifford inherited the estate, there were large clearings in the wood, "where there was nothing but a ravel of dead bracken, a thin and spindly sapling leaning here and there, big sawn stumps, showing their tops and their grasping roots, lifeless."

Standing on the crown of the knoll where the oaks had once been, you could look over to the colliery and the railway and the sordid-looking houses of the ever-expanding town with their smoking chimneys. It felt exposed and strangely forlorn; "a breach in the pure seclusion of the wood", that revealed the industrial world triumphant: 

"This denuded place always made Clifford curiously angry. He had been through the war, had seen what it meant. But he didn't get really angry till he saw this bare hill. He was having it replanted. But it made him hate Sir Geoffrey."

This hatred of his father and his father's generation for their wilful destruction of the heart and soul of England, makes me rather love Clifford - even though, of course, his dream of securing such is in vain and he ultimately proves himself more concerned with modernising his coal mines than he does with replanting trees and preserving the natural world. 

Thus, there's not only a certain pathos to his words, but falseness and perhaps a degree of self-delusion. The wood, as Lawrence notes, "still had some mystery of the wild, old England", but the War had had a truly devastating effect and exposed forever the lie of England as a green and pleasant land entrusted to the care of a benevolent ruling class.

For if truth be told, in 1920 - the year when Sir Clifford and his wife Constance enter into their married life at Wragby Hall - the amount of land covered by trees in Britain stood at less than 5%. This is an outrageously low figure, particularly when recalling that the entire country was originally (and is potentially) one huge forest thanks to ideal conditions for tree growth, including relatively mild winters, plenty of rain, and fertile soil.

The good news is that in the hundred years since, things have significantly improved and, today, about 12% of land surface is wooded, with plans to increase this figure to 15% by 2060. However, before getting too excited about this, it's sobering to recall that other European countries already average between 25-37%. France and Germany, for example, both possess almost three times the number of trees that England has.

Further, whilst the planting of young trees is to be welcomed, the real issue is preserving what remains of the UK's ancient woodland - defined as woodland that has existed continuously since 1600 in England and Wales and 1750 in Scotland; i.e. long enough to develop incredibly rich, complex, and irreplaceable ecosystems.

It is ancient woodland that provides home to more rare and threatened species of flora and fauna in the UK than any other type of habitat. But presently just 2% of land is covered with ancient woodland, which means there are very few oaks still standing as majestic as the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest; a thousand-year-old tree which is said to have provided a safe haven for Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men.

In sum: there is cause for celebration; British woodland has returned to the levels of the 1750s, with tree cover having more than doubled since Lawrence's day. But it would be foolish to become complacent on this issue and not acknowledge that there is still much that needs to be done (the present government is already falling well below its own target for reforestation - a target that one might argue was insufficient in the first place). 

Like Lawrence, I adore the stillness of trees, "with their crinkly, innumerable twigs against the sky, and their grey, obstinate trunks rising from the brown bracken". And I marvel at how gaily the birds and forest creatures and lovers move among them.  

See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993). Lines quoted are from Chapters 1 and 5. 

This post is dedicated to David Brock; an Englishman with a heart of oak. 

A Liquid History: On the Death and Resurrection of the River Thames

Mercedes Leon: 'River Thames' (from her
2012 print collection London and You)

merchesico.com

It's important when considering the natural environment not to view the subject through rosy-green tinted spectacles and imagine that things were always better in the past, because, as a matter of fact, they were very often worse - much, much worse.

Take the River Thames, for example ...

As early as the 14th century, London's dark river was effectively functioning as an open sewer. An ever-expanding population greatly increased the amount of human and animal waste deposited in the water and, in 1357, even the royal nose of Edward III had detected the abominable stench that resulted from the dung and other filth accumulated along the banks.

Five hundred years later and things hadn't improved. Indeed, the condition of the Thames had significantly deteriorated. For not only was raw sewage still being cheerfully dumped into the River, but the many new factories built alongside were now discharging industrial waste products, including ammonia, cyanide, and carbolic acid.

These and other lethal elements eventually poisoned whatever wildlife remained. And, perhaps not surprisingly, between 1832 and 1865 tens of thousands of Londoners died due to outbreaks of cholera; some historians have also attributed Prince Albert's death in 1861 to typhoid, caused by the disease-ridden waters around Windsor Castle.   

If Edward III found things intolerable in his day, one wonders what he would have made of the so-called Great Stink of 1858 when the stench of the River became so overpowering that proceedings in the House of Commons were suspended; this despite the fact that chlorine-soaked curtains had been hung in the windows of Parliament in an attempt to neutralise the odour. 

Although the decline of heavy industry and the closing of the docks during the twentieth century led to improved water quality, nevertheless the River still sweated oil and tar and still bubbled with methane gas. Finally, in 1957, the Thames was officially declared to be biologically dead; there was insufficient oxygen to support any life bigger than shit-eating bacteria.

Today, however, things are better - much, much better and the River lives once more! Thanks to a raised level of concern for the natural environment, there are now much tighter regulations governing what can and cannot be dumped in UK rivers and waterways and sewage systems have gradually been either repaired or replaced.

It's believed there are 125 species of fish - including salmon - once more inhabiting the Thames and a wide variety of other creatures have also remade a home in (or on) the river; including eels, birds and marine mammals such as seals and porpoises. 

But of course, it's important not to get carried away; if the River is cleaner and healthier than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, one still wouldn't want to go swimming in it. For one thing, the sewage problem hasn't been completely solved. Not only does treated waste matter from the towns and villages in the region continue to flow into the Thames, but heavy rainfall typically overburdens London's ancient sewers and the excess rainwater mixed with untreated effluence is released into the River to prevent flooding.

Such discharge events - which happen once a week on average - obviously have a negative impact. However, the Thames Tideway Scheme - currently under construction at a projected cost of £4.2 billion - aims to collect the raw sewage before it overflows and it is hoped that the project will ultimately result in a 90% reduction of shit entering the River. Again, that's good news. But the real problem, however, remains a very modern form of waste - plastic ...

Despite a recent campaign to raise public awareness of the issue, there's still a huge amount of plastic waste material floating in the Thames, putting animals large and small at risk not only of becoming trapped in it, but of digesting it too (next time you apply your facial scrub with microbeads you might want to think about this).

Thames Water claims to remove 25,000 tonnes of plastic waste from their sewage system every year. Unfortunately, tiny pieces of plastic routinely pass through the filters and screens in treatment plants, thus entering the River (and the food chain) where they take decades to decompose.        

Still, despite this, the fact remains that the Thames is in a better condition now than it was when D. H. Lawrence went for a riverside walk in the village of Pangbourne, on a monstrous hot day in August 1919, and complained afterwards in a letter to a friend about the repulsive smell of the water. So cheer up David Brock!  


See: The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume 3, October 1916 - June 1921, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984).