'Beautiful, like a muddy journey through time . . . a really important book' RAYNOR WINN, author of The Salt Path Lisa Woollett has spent her life combing beaches and mudlarking, collecting curious fragments of the past: from Roman tiles and Tudor thimbles, to Victorian buttons and plastic soldiers. In a series of walks from the Thames, out to the Kentish estuary and eventually to Cornwall, she traces the history of our rubbish and, through it, reveals the surprising story of our changing consumer culture. Timely and beautifully written, Rag and Bone shows what we can learn from what we've thrown away and urges us to think more about what we leave behind.

WINNER HOLYER AN GOF PUBLISHERS' AWARD 2014. A beautiful collection of photographs, discoveries and natural history that is by turn atmospheric, quirky and fascinating. Many of the photographs are glimpses of the mercurial sea around Cornwall's shores, in all its moods: from sunlit shallows to exhilarating waves powering into cliffs. Woven in with these is Lisa's haphazard museum of finds - the often strangely beautiful things she has picked up on Cornwall's shores, along with any curious or interesting findings from her subsequent research. There are wonderful names - by-the-wind sailors, the warty venus - and some extraordinary creatures in this inter-tidal world, their lives at times violent, charming and bizarre. There is much of the evocative and often mysterious language of the sea, with some beautiful old Cornish words: many portents of bad weather - the sun-dog, graving clouds - and a telling number to describe a fine misty drizzle. There is, too, the odd maritime legend, and some wonderful oceanographers' research: a science of washed up trainers, bath ducks and fishermen's boots lost at sea.

'A really important book' RAYNOR WINN From relics of Georgian empire-building and slave-trading, through Victorian London's barged-out refuse to 1980s fly-tipping and the pervasiveness of present-day plastics, Rag and Bone traces the story of our rubbish, and, through it, our history of consumption. In a series of beachcombing and mudlarking walks - beginning in the Thames in central London, then out to the Kentish estuary and eventually the sea around Cornwall - Lisa Woollett also tells the story of her family, a number of whom made their living from London's waste, and who made a similar journey downriver from the centre of the city to the sea. A beautifully written but urgent mixture of social history, family memoir and nature writing, Rag and Bone is a book about what we can learn from what we've thrown away - and a call to think more about what we leave behind.