Diary Date - flood talk October 9

I'm giving a talk entitled 'Are floods getting worse? at Swiss Cottage Library on October 9 at 1830, based on my book Flood: Nature and Culture.  Admission free.  All welcome.   

Last year, the UK’s Environment Agency issued a record number of flood warnings, while also in the last few years, Pakistan has had its worst monsoon floods in eight decades, Thailand suffered one of the costliest inundations in history, Colombia and Brazil experienced the severest in living memory, and Australia’s prime minister declared the Queensland floods perhaps the worst natural disaster ‘in the history of our nation’.

So are things actually getting worse? I will be revealing that floods are the natural disasters humans are most likely to experience, and that some of the most ambitious structures ever built have been put up to defend us against them.

I will also be telling how stories like that of Noah’s ark, about an apocalyptic flood which almost wipes out humanity, feature in dozens of religions all over the world. Floods caused by rain, melting snow, storms, tsunamis, tides, the failures of dykes or dams, or deliberate act of war all feature.

The talk will also look at the way floods have been portrayed in films, literature and art.

Floods - the lengths to which we have gone to fight them

Some of the most ambitious structures ever created by humans have been put up in an effort to stop flooding. The founder of China’s first real imperial dynasty owed his position to some of these. Throughout history, the Yellow River has flooded so often it became known as ‘China’s Sorrow’, but during the third millennium before Christ, a man named Yu (pictured), was hired to tame it.

Inspired, it is said, by the many lines on a turtle’s shell, Yu decided the answer lay not just in building dykes, but also in clearing existing waterways and digging new canals. In one place, he even had a gorge cut through a mountain, which became known as ‘Yu’s doorway.’

Yu took on the job just four days after getting married, but such was his dedication that he never once visited his wife during the eight years he fought the river. The existing emperor was so impressed that he named Yu his successor instead of his own son, leading to the foundation of the Xia dynasty, which ruled the country for 400 years, though the river continued to be a menace.

Now there is a campaign to get World Heritage status for the Yellow River dykes, which were said to have required more technological expertise than the Great Wall, and consumed 13 times as much effort.

My new book, Flood: Nature and Culture (Reaktion Books. ISBN 978 1 78023 196 9) tells the story of many more ambitious anti-flood structures.  It also includes chapters on the deadliest floods in history, the flood myths that feature in so many religions, on how floods have been portrayed in literature, art and films, and on the impact that climate change may have on humanity’s attempts to combat them in the future.

* Review of the book from a Belgian newspaper -http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20140206_00966899

Floods in literature

Perhaps the most famous flood story in literature concerns one that fails to happen in a book that was never written. Children all over the world have been transfixed by the tale of the little Dutch boy who is on his way home one evening and spots a hole in a dyke, then spends the whole night in the freezing cold blocking it with his finger, knowing that if for a moment he deserts his post, the waters will rush in, bringing disaster to his neighbours and loved ones.

Those who believe the story is true, or at the very least a time-honoured legend, can be forgiven, as a number of Dutch towns have put up memorials to the young hero (pictured). In fact, the tale comes from a book-within-a-book, written in 1865 by the American children’s writer, Mary Mapes Dodge. Her Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates includes a passage in which a school class reads the little boy’s story aloud from a fictional work called The Hero of Haarlem.

My new book Flood: Nature and Culture (Reaktion Books) tells how floods have been described in literature from Alexander Pushkin through George Eliot, Emile Zola, William Faulkner and Mervyn Peake to modern science fiction.

A number of fictional accounts, such as Pushkin’s epic poem, The Bronze Horseman, and Zola’s ‘naturalist’, almost documentary, story, The Flood, are based on real events, while modern writers as diverse as J. G. Ballard, Bernard Malamud and Stephen Baxter have conjured up world-destroying apocalyptic deluges.

*Flood: Nature and Culture (Reaktion Books. ISBN 978 1 78023 196 9) also includes chapters on the deadliest floods in history, how so many religions have stories of apocalyptic floods, how floods have been portrayed in art and films, how some of the most ambitious structures ever built by humans have been erected to protect against flooding, and how climate change may now be making humanity more vulnerable than ever to the waters.