Marshland

'Layered London, black, funny, marshy, full of horrible vigour & hidden channels.'
– M. John Harrison.

'Marshland is essential reading – a psychedelic trip into London’s secret wilderness.'
– John Rogers

'I had become a bit part in the dengue-fevered fantasy of a sick city.'

Cocker spaniel by his side, Gareth E. Rees wanders the marshes of Hackney, Leyton, and Walthamstow, avoiding his family and the pressures of life.

He discovers a lost world of Victorian filter plants, ancient grazing lands, dead toy factories and tidal rivers on the edgelands of a rapidly changing city.

As strange tales of bears, crocodiles, magic narrowboats, and apocalyptic tribes begin to manifest, Rees embarks on a psychedelic journey across time and into the dark heart of London itself.

First published by Influx Press in 2013, Marshland is a deep map of the east London marshes where nothing it as it seems, blending local history, folklore, and weird fiction in a genre-straddling classic of contemporary place writing

This fully revised and expanded 2024 edition features brand-new material and never before-seen photographs from the author’s archive.

Gareth E. Rees is author of occult Hastings memoir The Stone Tide (Influx Press, 2018), acclaimed psychogeographic work Marshland (Influx Press, 2013), and an album of spoken word and chamber music, A Dream Life of Hackney Marshes (Clay Pipe Music, 2013). He has written weird fiction and horror tales for titles including This Dreaming Isle, The Shadow Booth: Vol. 2, Unthology 10 and The Lonely Crowd. He is the founder of the website Unofficial Britain (www.unofficialbritain.com), lead singer in garage punk band, The Dirty Contacts, and guitarist in psychedelic noise duo, Black Arches.