This wonderful evocation of boyhood friendship in the 1950s flows beautifully and convincingly.    It’s not a long book, yet manages to convey both family life and the working life of the canal without seeming to stint either.    It brought me memories of dim distant days learning about the coal and coke carrying barges of the Hargreaves Group.    The author, who lives on a narrowboat on the Grand Union canal, admits that it’s unusual to start a work of fiction with acknowledgments, but ‘wanted to be sure that the background to this story was believable and accurate’. It certainly comes across as

such, but doesn’t scream ‘RESEARCH’.    He credits Alan Faulkner’s Willow Wren, Our Canal in Oxford by Mark Davies and Catherine Robinson, and No. 1, a memoir of the days when he was working the ‘Oxford Cut’ of the 1950s by Tom Foxton, one of the ‘real’ people who appear in the story.    Having photos of the fictional characters on the cover is a nice conceit.    A feel-good book with a poignancy warning.

I recently revisited this book, one of my favourite ‘local’ crime novels.     The Bloodhounds of Bath is a society that meets to discuss just such books in the crypt of the church just up Walcot Street from us, St Michael with St Paul.      Our hero is Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond, head of the murder squad in Bath.      The world’s oldest stamp (worried philatelists will find that explained) is stolen from the Postal Museum (now relocated under the new Post Office next to St Michael’s and well worth a visit), but the theft is overtaken by murder when the corpse of one of the Bloodhounds is discovered

in a locked narrowboat (you were wondering when we’d get there) moored at the Dundas boatyard across the road from the Viaduct pub (now sadly all boarded up), with the only key in the possession of a man with a perfect alibi.    I’m always fascinated by novels with real settings, and the murderer’s knowledge of Bath (ie the author’s) is important to the story — but don’t worry, not to the non-Bath reader.    I much enjoyed revisiting this book and think you’ll enjoy discovering it.    Now I’m determined to read the rest in this series, and if the K&A has a role I’ll let you know.

I was once accused of not reading completely the books I review. Well, mea culpa: very occasionally. But not this one!    I couldn’t skip a single word of Warren Berry’s exhaustive history of the K&A. Warren writes with the authority of the professional historian — which is what he is — and his time as Curator of the Trust Museum at Devizes gave him access to the minutiae that is so fascinating in this book.    Warren is generous with his acknowledgements of previous authors, particularly Ken Clew, but the book is definitely his own and gives a completeness to the up-to-date story that was inevitably lacking in earlier works.    Surely this will be the

definitive history of the waterway, the one that future researchers will turn to.    Reservations? Perhaps it’s a pity it’s an entirely black and white book. The only colour is on the dust sheet — and Caen Hill is on the back with a live-aboard’s boat on the front. Absolutely no comment.    I know it’s a history book but black and white photographs of the K&A today don’t reflect its true glory — there’s even a grey kingfisher. And the ornamental gate in Sydney Gardens was actually constructed in the 1980s, not as a compensation claim.    But if you thought you knew your K&A, read this — and you’ll find you didn’t.

This is a somewhat esoteric book, which will find a limited audience but it is none the worse for that.    Some Butty readers (I would say the fortunate ones) have done the trip up or down the Severn between Avonmouth and Sharpness and will be well aware of the deep antagonism of the river to anything it considers alien.     Chris Witts, himself a life-long navigator of the Severn, writes with the confidence of personal experience of some of the disasters he relates.    He was a 16-year-old deckhand present at the scene of the incredible accident in 1960 when two tankers collided with and destroyed the railway bridge above Sharpness.

But Mr Witts doesn’t confine his narrative to the river itself, although there have been an amazing number of disasters on this short stretch of highly tidal estuary.     He includes floods, aircraft crashes, murders, vanishing people – and there is a fascinating chapter on the Battle of Tewkesbury of 1471. (This was certainly a disaster for the loser, Margaret of Anjou, if not for her opponent, Edward IV).     If you are not already exhausted by this catalogue of misery, the final chapter is headed Yet More Accidents!     Well illustrated, this book is a riveting — albeit somewhat morbid — read.