Rivers are great workings of nature, time and geology. They have long been at the very centre of human culture, sustaining us with water, food, power and stories. Our thoughts flow like a river. A river's journey, from source to sea, is a metaphor for life. H.E. Bates's own journey began on the banks and in the waters of two contrasting Midland rivers. The River Nene's jumbled course and character, with its towpaths and locks and bridges, speaks of human industry on its journey to The Wash. The River Ouse, in contrast, with its wide meanders brimmed with reeds and smoky willows, rich in wildlife and wild flowers, is an uplifting, ephemeral water, a river of summer memories and flag irises, the blue pulse of kingfishers and pike lurking in weed-shadows. Peopled by his relatives and neighbours, both the Nene and the Ouse, however different, filled H.E. Bates's imagination with the wonderful stories and characters that make his writing so enjoyable.

'A wonderful and important book, that from its first pages draws the reader along on a fascinating, gripping, often funny journey.' Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of Underland. An idiosyncratic history of our island story told through five iconic fish On these rain-swept islands in the North Atlantic man and fish go back a long way. Fish are woven through the fabric of the country's history: we depend on them - for food, for livelihood and for fun - and now their fate depends on us in a relationship which has become more complex, passionate and precarious in the sophisticated 21st Century. In Silver Shoals Charles Rangeley-Wilson travels north, south, east and west through the British Isles tracing the histories, living and past, of our most iconic fish - cod, carp, eels, salmon and herring - and of the fishermen who catch them and care for them. In the company of trawlermen, longshoremen, conservationists and anglers Charles goes to sea in a trawler, whiles away hot afternoons setting eel nets, tries to bag his first elusive carp and drifts for herring on Guy Fawkes night as fireworks starburst the sky. Underscoring this journey is a fascinating historical exploration of these creatures that have shaped our island story. We learn how abundant and valued these fish were centuries before our current crisis of over-fishing: we learn how eels built our monasteries, how cod sank the Spanish Armada, how fish and chips helped us through two World Wars. Of course there is a deeper environmental dimension to the story, but Charles' optimistic perspective is this: no one is more invested in fish than the fishermen whose lives depend on them. If we can find a way to harness that passion then the future of fish and fishermen in Britain could be as extraordinary as its past.

Fishing can take you to the heart of a landscape in a way few other forms of travel can match. Whether in the world's most outlandish and awe-inspiring places or just at the end of your road, fishing will introduce you to crabby weather and crabbier locals, moon-phases, rip-tides, floods, droughts, remarkable tales, and of course fantastic slippery beasts. In The Accidental Angler you'll battle titanic monsters on a tropical atoll and make-believe sharks on the mushy-peas-and-gravy Wash. You'll chase inscrutable grayling through back gardens in Provence, or phantom sea trout in downtown Southampton. And you'll dance in Brazilian carvinals and find secret rivers hidden beneath the streets. Join Charles Rangeley-Wilson - angler, conservationist, television presenter and traveller - for the trip of a lifetime, on a journey that will make the familiar new, and the strange familiar.