Water matters: we must end the pollution of our rivers with sewage

I was born on a houseboat on the upper reaches of the river Thames. Summer was spent in the river. Home from school I would tear off my uniform—torture wearing it in those hot, sunstruck classrooms—and hurl myself into the cool water. This was the Seventies. Although the river ran green or brown according to the day, it was clean. Despite the disbelief of onlookers, it was, biologically at least, safe to swim in. My father marvelled at the comparison with the London Thames he knew in the Forties and Fifties: a dead river, little more than a toxic, anaerobic sluice, foul with human and industrial waste. But as a kid I swam in water that trout were rumoured to haunt. It was so obviously progress, such a hands down win for the world—for the environment, for the liberty of summer, for the joy of being alive—that I took its…
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