Sweet Thames

This historical novel, set in nineteenth-century London, is based upon the lives of two influential Victorian men, Henry Mayhew and Joseph Bazalgette. A cholera epidemic is threatening the inhabitants of the city, a crisis Joshua Jeavons hopes to avert by reforming the sewers. A sudden disappearance plunges Jeavons into a desperate search through London's slums, inadvertently leading him to the solution for his problem in the process. Kneale is best known for his Whitbread Award-winning novel English Passengers, but this earlier book also won an award, the 1993 Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.