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Tom Holland Profile picture
@holland_tom
Sep 13, 2020 • 7 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
A tale of 2 rivers: an illustration of the ecological mess this country is in. Just before lockdown, I walked the #Ver, one of the chalk streams that - with the exception of a few in northern France - are unique to southern England. It was dead.
Then on Friday I was taken by @Feargal_Sharkey to walk the #Itchen, one of the most famous stretches of fishing in the world, & which is still just about holding its own against water companies desperate to extract its water & fill it with sewage.
Compare and contrast the Itchen & the Ver at identical stages of their length. The waters of the Itchen still flow, still sustain life.
The waters of the Ver are gone. Extracted by a predatory water company. Left to die by the Environment Agency. The river is dead, and everything that depends on the river is dead.
And we have the nerve to lecture Brazil or Indonesia when we are heedlessly sacrificing our chalk streams - a unique ecological habitat - on the altar of greed.
Anger at this should transcend politics. If only @ExtinctionR & fly-fishermen would make common cause, & take each other's arms, & form a human chain along the length of the Ver to protest its murder, what an extinction rebellion that would be.
So, in a spirit of optimism, @ExtinctionR, meet @VerValleySoc. @VerValleySoc, meet @ExtinctionR.

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More from @holland_tom

Tom Holland Profile picture
Jun 12, 2023
To the seas of Suffolk, there to embark tomorrow with @jamiembrixton on a journey across England to Blackpool: coast to coast, as directly as we can, stopping off along the way to admire & explore what may lie in our path... Image
And so it begins.

@jamiembrixton kneels in admiration before the spectacle of the river Deben, as it meets the North Sea. 2 Martello towers stand on sentry in the distance. #CoastToCoast Image
Bawdsey Manor: built in 1886 by thé splendidly named art collector & Liberal MP, Sir William Cuthbert Quilter; requisitioned in WW1; bought in 1936 by the Air Ministry to serve as a centre for radar research. Amazingly, it continued as a RAF base into the 90s. So Dr Who… Image
Read 91 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
Apr 23, 2023
Huge disappointment as the first match of the @AuthorsCC’s season is CANCELLED. ☹️
Still - I am yet to be dismissed this season!
Also - after 4 hours tuition yesterday in the art of fly-fishing - I am ready to take up A NEW SPORT Image
Read 4 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
Mar 10, 2023
Up bright and early, to set off with @jamiembrixton on a tour of pre-Norman Conquest Kent! #PreConquestKent Image
Huge excitement as we arrive at the first stop on our tour of #PreConquestKent: a Romano-British temple found during the building of a housing estate in Newington, just off Watling Street.

@jamiembrixton engages in some top archaeological research, scoping out the very site. Image
The remains of the temple were moved 70 metres to a neighbouring recreation area. It dates to the 1st century, & stood in what seems basically to have been a huge industrial zone, producing iron & pottery. Although massively developed under the Romans, it was originally Iron Age. ImageImage
Read 69 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
Jan 18, 2023
The readiness of faith leaders to ignore the evidence of history should it conflict with their doctrinal positions is always a bit depressing
No! By and large, we owe what survives of classical literature to Christian copyists. Christian emperors might order heretical & astrological books burned - but there was never any campaign to destroy pagan learning. Quite the opposite, in fact.
This, by @TimONeill007, is an excellent summary of why the notion that Christians destroyed classical learning is a myth of the kind that atheists pride themselves on opposing. (Whereas in fact they tend merely to be recycling Protestant anti-Catholicism) historyforatheists.com/2020/03/the-gr…
Read 4 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
Jan 17, 2023
To the ancient city of Mandu, for a millennium and more a mighty stronghold, but also, in the 15th century, the scene of what @DalrympleWill has described as “one of the most singular experiments in pleasure that the world has ever seen.”
“Ghiyath Shahi filled Mandu with no less than 16,000 beautiful female slaves and the good-looking daughters of his feudatory rajahs; the walled hilltop citadel was defended by an army of five hundred armour-clad girls from Abyssinia.”
Ghiyath Shah’s other enthusiasms included: samosas (“don’t forget to add saffron, fried aubergines & ginger”); hunting; perfumes (especially aromatic oils); and aphrodisiacs (“sparrow brains fried in milk and ghee”).
Read 11 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
Jan 2, 2023
The lift and changing rooms in the White Stuff.

H/t Hannah Robinson’s excellent @secret_unusual guide to Edinburgh
“The lodge is designated No. 1 in Scotland & it may well be the oldest Freemason lodge in the world. References are made to it in 1504 & it holds minutes of the oldest Masonic meeting on 31 July 1599, making it the world’s oldest Masonic document.” #Edinburgh
The birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell, without whom I would have been unable to post this tweet
Read 5 tweets

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