Casting Shadows
Fish and Fishing in Britain
Published on 2. April 2020
Book
Hardback
368 pages
978-0-00-828344-5 (ISBN)
Description
A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year
Peer into the secret, silent world of the freshwater fish and explore evolution of the art and industry of fishing in Britain's rivers and streams.
From cunning Neolithic traps, intricate Roman nets and quarrellous Victorian societies to the evolution of angling and eventual gentrification of river access, this history spans thousands of years and ends with a poignant call to protect the underwater world from the horrors of industrial fishing and farming.
Meanwhile, another thread of the narrative weaves in the lives of the fishes themselves: the incredible struggles of the Atlantic salmon and secretive eel; the pike, a lean and camouflaged predator; the carp, huge and stately, begetter of obsessions; the exquisite spotted brown trout and its silver cousin, the grayling.
Lives built on and around fishing have largely faded from Britain, but fishermen and conservationists are working tirelessly to prevent the same fate befalling the fishes.
Peer into the secret, silent world of the freshwater fish and explore evolution of the art and industry of fishing in Britain's rivers and streams.
From cunning Neolithic traps, intricate Roman nets and quarrellous Victorian societies to the evolution of angling and eventual gentrification of river access, this history spans thousands of years and ends with a poignant call to protect the underwater world from the horrors of industrial fishing and farming.
Meanwhile, another thread of the narrative weaves in the lives of the fishes themselves: the incredible struggles of the Atlantic salmon and secretive eel; the pike, a lean and camouflaged predator; the carp, huge and stately, begetter of obsessions; the exquisite spotted brown trout and its silver cousin, the grayling.
Lives built on and around fishing have largely faded from Britain, but fishermen and conservationists are working tirelessly to prevent the same fate befalling the fishes.
Reviews / Votes
A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year'Tom Fort's wonderful social history of angling is the ideal book for fish fanciers ... A wonderful and unsnobbish social history of angling by a master fisherman' Max Hastings, Sunday Times
'His writings cover a wide range of subjects ... he therefore brings to this book a more practised pen than most angling writers bring to theirs' Literary Review
'Casting Shadows is a beautifully written, unexpectedly humorous and fastidiously researched expression of gratitude for creatures and for a sport. Fort recreates vivid vignettes of moments in angling's heritage with novelistic flourish' Patrick Galbraith, The Times
'Tom Fort's Casting Shadows ... offers garrulous witness to a fine passion ... [Fort] is a sort of aquatic anthropologist, an angler with an infectious curiosity about all things fishy ... The aroma of wonder seeps through his sentences. Buried beneath the anecdote and the arcana is the poignancy of the fisherman's encounter with nature ... A plea for attention to the radiant world' London Review of Books
'Tom Fort ... leads us into all sorts of fishy places, with their delightful sights and smells, and introduces us to rough-hewn, fishy characters - and we love it ... His writing must give any fisherman nostalgic thoughts. Equally, any non-fisherman will surely be enticed by the scenes he depicts, and amazed by the facts of history and natural history he reveals' Oldie
'Marvellous' Jeremy Paxman, Saga Magazine
'An essential antidote to a modern world' Fly Fishing & Fly Tying magazine
'The ideal book for lock-down ... Thought-provoking ... intelligent and well researched ... You will not be disappointed' Journal of the Piscatorial Society
Praise for Tom Fort
'This is a captivating study...Tom Fort is incapable of writing a dull sentence'
Financial Times
'A fascinating, beautifully written and deeply peculiar book' New Scientist
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 159 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
560 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-00-828344-5 (9780008283445)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
04/2020
1st Edition
William Collins
€8.99
Available for download
Person
Tom Fort is a lifelong fisherman. With his love of the sport there grew a profound curiosity about the lives and habits of fish and their world. As a fishing correspondent for the Financial Times, he has written a huge amount not just about fishing, but the places fish live. Tom has travelled all over the world to pursue this fascination. He even wrote a whole book about the freshwater eel and its biology and life cycle and the people who fished and fish for them.