Downstream

chair, and ducked in the river
Thames, under Kingston
bridge, in the presence of
2,000 or 3,000 people’. When
the characters in Three Men
in a Boat set off on their trip
along the Thames, it was at
Kingston that they began,
picking up their boat just
below Kingston Bridge. The
town in those days was a
place of quaint backstreets, a
‘glinting river with its drifting
barges’, a wooded towpath