Last Updated on April 23, 2026
BRITISH CANALS
Charles Hadfield
When this book was first published in 1950
The Spectator said: ‘An important contribution to English social history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and as a canal history is unlikely to be super-seded’. Since then British Canals has gone through edition after edition: this is the fifth. For it, much of the book has been rewritten, to take account of the results of recent research, to include Ireland for the first time, and to continue canal history to 1973.
This edition has been largely re-illustrated and includes several new maps.
In addition, it now includes an index to the twelve regional titles of the ‘Canals of the British Isles’ series (see back of jacket), to which it is an introduction, so that the reader who would like to find out more about one or two canals that especially interest him will know in which book he will find the principal account.
For browser, for student; for keeping, for giving; in summer, in winter; on board or on shore; British Canals is the answer to the perennial need for a readable, one-volume history of British canals and navigable rivers.
This book was previously for sale at Margot’s Books. The shop is now closed — this post is kept as an archive record only.
Leave a Reply