684 Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 34 (2008) 658–687

colonization and its lived experience ofcolonization.

The individual chapters are all strong, butsome in particular highlight the volume’s cen-tral themes. Cassandra Cavanaugh’s paper‘Acclimatization, the shifting science of settle-ment’ is a case in point. It follows 1920s Rus-sian scientists’ engagement with, and eventualdistancing from, wider debates over the pro-cesses of acclimatization to tropical climes asexperienced by Europeans in their overseascolonies, and the ways in which the lived expe-rience of Russian colonization of CentralAsia, as well as Russians’ visions of them-selves as colonizers emerged through theirwritings. Here, the idea of the (Soviet) stateis not only inextricably bound up with thestate imperatives of colonization of CentralAsia, and the challenges of the process, butcrucially with the process of the positioningof the Soviet Union in relation to the West.

At a time when Russian colonization is lit-erally an international process, this book isa timely contribution to the wider literature.In a discipline which enthusiastically carveshistory into discrete ‘periods’, it achieves itsaims of drawing out the constancies as wellas the contrasts across a vast swathe of timeand space. The conclusion aptly identifiesthe key paradox of Russian colonization,that while Russia has been ‘on the move’ forcenturies, ‘throughout modern history greaterrestrictions have been imposed on populationmovement in Russia than in most other Euro-pean states’ (p. 265). It also draws out the im-plications of the ‘depeopling’ of the peripherywhich has occurred post-1991, both within theterritory of Russia, and of Russians from the‘near abroad’, and points out the questionsraised in terms of state security, economicdevelopment and social reform in the NewRussia.

This excellent book is a timely addition tohistorical geography, and is recommended to

students and scholars of Russia regardless ofperiod of specialty, and to scholars of migra-tion regardless of geographical area ofexpertise.

Dominique MoranUniversity of Birmingham, UK

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2008.07.015

Peter Ackroyd, Thames: Sacred River,London, Chatto and Windus, 2007, 456pages, £25 hardback.

It is hard to thinkof anybookbyPeterAckroydthat is not a source of pleasure, and Thames:Sacred River is no exception. Ackroyd is, ofcourse, knownas awriter of outstandingfictionand innovative nonfiction. His latest book isa joy to read, but problematic for the profes-sional reader.

As one would expect, this is a beautifullywritten book. There is scarcely a sentence herethat is not clear and well-balanced. Much ofthe book contains passages of an elegancethat one will find in very few other texts onplace. Take, for instance, his description ofthe river as ‘a backward and melancholy pres-ence even in London itself where, on a darknight by the banks of the Thames it is possibleto re-create the shapes of the older city loomingbeside the water’ (p. 14). Who would not finddelightful the observation that in the Londondocks of the nineteenth century there was‘enough sugar to sweeten the Thames andenough indigo to dye the river blue’ (p. 197)?Who would not enjoy the mellifluousness ofsome of the lists he provides, such as that ofthe upper Thames weirs: ‘Old Man’s Weir,Old Nan’s Weir, Rushy Weir, Kent’s Weir,Ten-foot Weir, Winnie-Weg’s Weir, Noah’sArk Weir, Skinner’s Weir’ (p. 174)?

685Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 34 (2008) 658–687

More than that, there are many insights inthe book that should most certainly be of rel-evance for those interested in the places of thepast – above all the Thames and its surrounds.Geographers may well find useful his descrip-tion of the Thames as ‘border country’ (p. 74),his observation of its pacificity as having ‘in-corporated the myth of the nation’ (p. 110),his description of the river as ‘liquid history’because it carries all epochs and generations’(p. 6). Some of these observations are substan-tive, rather than stylistic in nature, such as hissuggestion of the river as a place of ‘sacredfearfulness’ (p. 23), or that the Thames –from the obscenities of its watermen to thepromiscuous mixing of the high and the lowat its riverside pleasure grounds – helped inthe forming of a democratic spirit. The sug-gestion that the Thames’s course ‘has beencharacterised as one of youth, maturity andold age’ (p. 30) may find less favour.

The book has an enormous breadth: di-vided into 15 sections, 45 chapters, 400 pagesplus appendices. The sections range from thesacred to the profane, from art to death. Ofcourse, in a book of this size it is inevitablethat errors creep in, but there is a disappoint-ing number for all that. For example, there isno Hampton Bridge (p. 46), it will not do todescribe Buckinghamshire as south of theThames (p. 34), and quite a number of mapscontain errors such as ‘Great Brood’ (p. 409)or ‘Babcock Hythe’ (p. 414). More signifi-cantly, though, the book provides us withdifficulties in its treatment of the ‘backwardand melancholy’ (p. 14). In Ackroyd’s accountthe Thames is a place of power, ‘haunted bythe past’ (p. 358), and it is hard not to bereminded of Ackroyd’s fiction in which thepast looms over us in cycles of perpetualrepetition with little (perhaps no) place forlife to move on through reconciliation. Para-doxically, this refusal to acknowledge thebounded power of the past seems to provide

a potentially reactionary trap for all studentsof the past to create it as a static and melan-choly other rather than a lively and flowingpast-present.

There is an enormous amount here, thoughit is an enormous amount aimed at the generalreader. Professional readers will need to goelsewhere for substantive material. More sub-stantial as a criticism, though, is that withonly the most occasional of references thebook lacks the wherewithall to allow it to beused as a professional text. What is above allimportant in a book is its ideas, but the pro-fessional scholar will have to take consider-able pains to get little that is new. Given theother qualities of the book, that isa disappointment.

Stuart OliverSt Mary’s University College, UK

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2008.07.016

Stephanie Barczewski, Antarctic Destinies:Scott, Shackleton and the Changing Face ofHeroism, London, Continuum, 2007, 417pages, £25 hardback.

Any historical geographer who has read DrBarczewski’s Myth and National Identity inNineteenth-Century Britain: the Legends ofKing Arthur and Robin Hood (Oxford Univer-sity Press, 2000) will turn with anticipation toher latest book on two of the most celebratedexplorers in British history, Robert FalconScott (1868–1912) and Ernest Shackleton(1874–1922). In her first book Dr Barczewskielegantly argued that the way in which na-tional identity was created, sustained, andmodified to suit changing circumstances canbe understood by examining the changing for-tunes and guises of literary heroes, notably