Three Rivers: The Extraordinary Waterways That Made Europe - The perfect gift for the armchair traveller in your life

by Robert Winder

*

FINANCIAL TIMES – BEST BOOKS OF 2025




'An enjoyable grand tour of western European history … full of flavour and sparkle.' The Sunday Times

 

'The book's elegant premise is that the Rhine, the Rhône and the Po gave rise to the three great national cultures — and in doing so helped unify Europe' Financial Times




A fascinating exploration of the rich and varied cultural worlds shaped by the Rhine, the Rhone and the Po




Three of Europe's greatest rivers share the same geological one fertile patch of Alpine ice in the jagged heights of central Switzerland. Coursing down through the peaks, the Rhine, the Rhone and the Po gave birth to three different European cultures – German, French and Italian – as they flowed across the continent.




From this shared geological cradle, these waterways have shaped the landscape, influenced the pattern of towns and cities, laid the foundation for economies and created an intricate network of transport, trade and agriculture. From the Romanesque buttresses and vines of Provence to the Wagnerian music of the Rhine and the artistic miracles of Lombardy, the heart of Western Europe – its languages, religion, philosophy, science, politics and art – has been nourished by these waters.




Setting off in the dramatic mountain landscape where this story begins, acclaimed historian Robert Winder traces the rivers' journeys from their increasingly fragile glacial sources, revealing in shimmering detail their impact on Europe's rich history as they flow towards the sea.




'Revelatory and inspirational, a passionate love-letter to Western Europe's great trinity of waterways.' James Hawes, author of The Shortest History of Germany




'Enthralling . . . gives intriguing insight into the ebb and flow of Western Europe's culture, history and geography.' Jasper Winn, author of Water Ways




'In this love letter to the Continent, Robert Winder takes a meandering and always entertaining journey down Western Europe's three great rivers. His affection for his subject shines through on every page . . . and his daring digressive style gives him latitude for quirky erudition and the chance to deliver unexpected delights.' Stephen O'Shea, author of The Alps




'Insightful, elegant, and deeply researched to the very last drop, this book will change the way you see rivers – and the continent they have shaped – forever.' Matt Gaw, author of In All Weathers




'Three Rivers is wonderful excursion into history, travel and stories about some of the most fascinating rivers of Europe – do yourself a favour and take a holiday with this book.' Robert Twigger, author of Red Nile

Genres: History, Nonfiction

352 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 28, 2025

About the author

Robert Winder, formerly literary editor of The Independent for five years and Deputy Editor of Granta magazine during the late 1990s, is the author of Hell for Leather, a book about modern cricket, a book about British immigration, and also two novels, as well as many articles and book reviews in British periodicals. Winder is a team member of the Gaieties Cricket Club, whose chairman was Harold Pinter.

Reviews

[Denise Ruttan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating and wide-ranging survey of three major European rivers, the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po, throughout the formative years of a continent to the present day of the countries along their borders. At times it was so wide-ranging I wasn't sure how it could be a cohesive whole and do justice to each topic, but the central thesis centered around the river being the continuous thread tying everything together.

Covering everything from glaciers, droughts, floods, environmental degradation, and climate change, to wars, nation building, art, the Reformation and the many colorful characters who were influenced by these waterways, this was quite an ambitious survey. Interspersed with the research was the author's first-hand visits to these places, which added color to an otherwise rather academic narrative. I usually prefer narrative nonfiction, but I still found this interesting. I hope to read more environmental nonfiction.

What surprised me was how much natural elements influenced geopolitics. Politics was a driving force of this narrative. The rivers watched as disparate, warring tribal states became nations with borders, and all the evils that nationalism can bring.

Footnotes were interspersed throughout, which I appreciated as I tend not to read them when placed at the end, but I wished they had been formatted differently than the body text because it was difficult to jump between similar blocks of text in an ebook.

Overall I really appreciated this fascinating and far-reaching account of the importance of these waterways to many different facets of European life and culture.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite the unexpected book was this, I was expecting a journey floating down the river as Winder points out important landmarks and shares a bit of local history with the reader, but it was way more than that. Winder does infact take use down each river but his journey focuses not just on the water but on the people, geography and history surrounding the river and the impact that the rivers have on those three.

The three rivers are Rhone, Rhine and Ticino (later the Po). All three start off in the Alps fed by mighty glaciers and plenty of rain and snow, the scenery here is dramatic, mountain peaks and valleys, the sort of background you’ll find on Windows log on screens. Gradually it decends to dams, villages, cities and industrial complexes that do their best to polute the river. Throughout this epic journey the river has had a bigger impact on humans that you possibly expect before picking up this book, it is obvious once you think about it, early on we had to build near a water source and you can’t go wrong building next to a river, so of course any progress in civilisation is going to be influenced by the river.

A huge amount of data is shared by Winder on an impressive range of topics and not once does it get dull, he blends facts, local lore, literature, history, science, religion, poetry and art, all laid out to show civilisations progress as the river takes it journey to the sea. The rivers have seen it all, every single sadistic and brutal cruelty that humans have dished out on each other, the rivers have run red with what we can acheive. On the flip side they have also witnessed some of our best moments, stunning architecture, art, scientific discoveries and literature.

This was a fantastic book, one of those that will go onto the shelf to be re-read in a few years time as I will have forgotten a lot of it, info runs through my head as quick as these rivers.

Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2025...

[VickydpBooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I am honest I didn’t like this book but I read and it’s about the river

Blurb

A fascinating exploration of the rich and varied cultural worlds shaped by the Rhine, the Rhone and the Po



Three of Europe's greatest rivers share the same geological cradle: one fertile patch of Alpine ice in the jagged heights of central Switzerland. Coursing down through the peaks, the Rhine, the Rhone and the Po gave birth to three different European cultures – German, French and Italian – as they flowed across the continent.

From this shared geological cradle, these waterways have shaped the landscape, influenced the pattern of towns and cities, laid the foundation for economies and created an intricate network of transport, trade and agriculture. From the Romanesque buttresses and vines of Provence to the Wagnerian music of the Rhine and the artistic miracles of Lombardy, the heart of Western Europe – its languages, religion, philosophy, science, politics and art – has been nourished by these waters.

Setting off in the dramatic mountain landscape where this story begins, acclaimed historian Robert Winder traces the rivers' journeys from their increasingly fragile glacial sources, revealing in shimmering detail their impact on Europe's rich history as they flow towards the sea.

[Jonathan Crain · Rating 4 out of 5]

2025 for me is turning out to be the year of the river. It first started with Robert MacFarlane's "Is a River Alive," which asked readers to consider rivers not as resources but as relatives, legal entities, and keepers of memory. Now, my river journey continues with Robert Winder’s "Three Rivers: The Extraordinary Waterways That Made Europe," a sweeping yet tightly focused exploration of how geography—not just politics or personalities—has directed the course of European history. His subject is deceptively simple: three rivers, the Rhone, the Rhine, and the Ticino/Po, all born in the same Alpine massif. His argument, however, is anything but simple. Winder insists that these waterways were not passive landscapes but “active forces” that carved out civilizations, carried faith and ideas, and determined where trade and conflict would flourish. “Without the pattern laid down by these waters,” he writes, “Europe would simply not exist in the form we know it.”

The book excels in showing how the physical shaped the cultural. The Rhine is both frontier and artery, the “bloodstained moat between French and German Europe,” but also a highway for trade and cultural interaction. The Rhone channels Rome, Christianity, and wine into France. The Ticino and Po, less dramatic in profile, still anchor the intellectual flowering of Renaissance Italy and the rice and cheese traditions of the fertile plains. By tracing these currents, Winder reframes familiar epochs—the Reformation, the Napoleonic Wars, even the birth of Gothic horror in the wake of Tambora’s eruption—as phenomena inseparable from the rivers that carried people, armies, and ideas.

Winder’s storytelling is a strength. He delights in overlooked figures like Jean-Pierre Perraudin, a chamois hunter whose observations made him one of glaciology’s unacknowledged founders. He makes room for Kaspar Stockalper, a 17th-century trader whose control of the Simplon Pass helped shape Swiss neutrality, and Johann Gottfried Tulla, whose “rectification” of the Rhine foreshadowed modern international cooperation. These biographical sketches ensure that geography never overwhelms humanity and prevent the book from drifting into abstraction.

The narrative is thematic rather than chronological, and at times the Rhine dominates the stage, but this imbalance reflects the river’s historical weight rather than any lapse in Winder’s methodology. What emerges is a collage—an assemblage of wars, inventions, artworks, and natural catastrophes—that consistently flows back to its source in the Alps.

Where the book resonates most is in its relevance to current environmental concerns. The same rivers that once carried Charlemagne’s dream of unity now face the attrition of climate change. Glaciers are retreating, riverbeds are running dry, and nuclear plants along the Rhone are struggling with overheated waters. Winder warns that the health of these rivers is not a quaint local issue but a continental one—a warning that is equally relevant in nearly every country in the world.

"Three Rivers" is not a comprehensive history, nor does it pretend to be. It is instead a bracing reminder that geography remains an unrelenting force in human affairs —and that understanding this force has never been more urgent. In an age when we often think of ourselves as masters of our environment, Winder shows us that we remain, as much as our ancestors, creatures shaped by the waters that flow around us. Ultimately, Three Rivers is not just history—it's also a call to recognize that the health of Europe's rivers is inseparable from the health of European civilization itself. The same currents that carried Caesar's legions and Luther's ideas now carry the consequences of our choices downstream to future generations.

This review is based on an advance reader copy provided by NetGalley and Elliott & Thompson.

[Jemima Pett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three Rivers is an astounding exploration of the rivers that cradle Europe. The blurb is accurate, but doesn’t go anywhere near the depth of exploration or development of ideas that flow through the lands onto the pages and into my brain.

This book singlehandedly sorted out my understanding of European politics from the Romans through the Holy Roman Empire, the Hapsburgs, to Napoleon, and right the way through to last year. It starts gently, dragging me in with a loving description of the mountains, or should I say mountain, where all three originate. The actual sources are a bit murky in some cases, but the Ticino runs into the Po, and the land drains off into the Rhone, even if it doesn’t have a ‘source’. Trust the Rhine to be more orderly. Geology, meteorology, the water cycle all play their part and I’m in my element.

It helps if you have a reasonable knowledge of Western Europe’s geography. If you didn’t ‘do’ one of these rivers at school, you may not hold its course in your head. For me, the Rhone is ingrained, with vaguer knowledge of bits of the Rhine but not exactly how they join together. Dodgy ground with the Ticino-Po, saved by visiting Venice by train a few years ago. I now know what I was looking at over breakfast, and why the landscape was so flat. You may wish to have a map at your side when reading - saves turning back tot he one at the front.

The geography and geology provide the resources, the bones, but the history brings everything together, plus music, poetry, art — and wine. Mr Winder writes his historical summary in a glorious sweep, bringing the places to life and the personalities to your reading room.

And between World Wars 1 and 2 we look at the impact of technology growth on the Rhine, and the dire state of its pollution (it was always a sewer) that brought the countries dependent on it to work together for the common good. We forget how young the EU is — how fragile the agreements between nations. And reviewing the history from this standpoint, it is only too clear that history repeats itself, and we never learn.

Let’s hope we do, this time. Brilliant book, much more than expected.

[Acantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an engaging dip into three rivers that start in the same area but cross very different landscapes and come out in very different seas. They each have their own distinct 'personality' and character influenced by the landscape and influencing the landscape in turn.

Chapters cover such wide ranging topics as food in the Po valley, to music inspired by the rivers, to the countless wars and boundaries that the waters have seen. The author does a skilful job at linking everything back to these rivers, to showing how they shape, inspire and frustrate the humans who have made their lives along their banks. It's a micro look at two thousand years plus of history across Europe.

There is also a strong warning about climate change across the book, as the writer demonstrates with stark clarity the efforts the modern world is having on these rivers, the glaciers and all the landscape around them. It is a call, a warning and hopefully one that is listened to - although I'm not holding my breath.

It is almost too ambitious an undertaking - each chapter barely scratched the surface of what the topic had to offer. Still waters run deep, but so do rushing rivers, lakes, waterfalls and everything else that these three rivers cross. Chapters on poetry, painting and music offer a refreshing change to the history of war that otherwise cuts through this book, and so many books of history. I also really liked the photos scattered through the book, as well as the musings by the writer as he personally visited some of the sites mentioned - at times, this is more a philosophical travelogue rather than history, but its stunning for it.

~Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in return for an honest review~

[Tom Stanger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three Rivers must rank as one of the most deceiving books I've read recently.  On reading the description, I felt I was about to read a general history of three rivers (Rhine, Rhone and Po), but opening this rather wonderful book, historian Robert Winder takes us on, not just a geographical history of these three rivers, but a rapid-paced history of the western European continent.

From their origins in the Swiss Alps, these rivers have ebbed and flowed their way through to France, Germany and Italy. These three rivers have not just provided life to the regions in which they've flowed, but played influential roles in not just the history of human settlement in Western Europe, but also pivotal roles in the development of our culture from the Romans through to the creation of the European Union.

However, on reading Three Rivers, this in itself feels like an understatement, and it is not just the achievements, but also the atrocities of humans that Robert Winder relates equal emotion which grace the book with both humour and sadness.  From the Romans, Napoleon and World War II, these rivers have been central aspects in the shaping of the modern world, although whether that could be construed as a positive or negative really is up to the reader, however, the influence of these rivers on, not just those wishing to reshape the European map, but also the great artists, thinkers and composers who travelled along the banks of these rivers.

In Robert Winder's hands, these three rivers not only reveal a story of our own culture and understanding, but come alive as characters of their own, and while these rivers brought life to the many regions they pass through, Robert Winder gives life to these three rivers in this entertaining and fascinating page-turner.

[Chantal Agapiti · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author initiates by stating a reminder of the way in which the differences between Europe’s nations, however clear and clung to,
disguise a profound similarity. There’s no chicken-and-egg mystery about cities, people settled near water.
Three major rivers, flowing in different directions, carving out the three valleys that gave rise to three great civilizations:
French - German - Italian, and it was worth having a closer look at them.
Without the pattern laid by these waters, Europe would not exist the way we know it today.
While tracing down the courses of these continent-shaping waterways, the author found a particular story to tell us.
A broadband collage of Europe’s past and future.

I’m European and I know some of the places the author talks about in this book, that made it all relatable and more interesting.
Geography has always been one of my great interests, and this book has a strong geographical content intertwined with history from the past,
present and future. I learned many anecdotes reading this book, and awareness about how fragile our continent is.

I enjoyed reading and definitely recommend.

[Federica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

Robert Winder takes us on a journey through the historical and geographical landscape of the Rhine, Rhone, and Ticino-Po rivers, collecting well-known and lesser-known stories about these rivers and the countries they flow through. Following in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors, he attempts to write his own version of European history, highlighting how the continent is intrinsically connected and united, despite its differences.

I enjoyed the book, although I was expecting more of a travelogue and would instead describe it as an anecdotal essay—nevertheless, a very enjoyable one. The author dwells a little too much on metaphors, comparisons, and lists, which sometimes interrupt the flow of the narrative, but despite this, it is an interesting read. I had no prior knowledge of these territories, which did not detract from my enjoyment of the book but, on the contrary, probably made me appreciate this essay even more.

[Gayle (OutsmartYourShelf) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look at the history & cultures which have developed by the side of three of Europe's greatest rivers: the Rhine, the Rhone & the Po. Following them from their sources in the mountains, we see the way these rivers have shaped the landscape & the lives of those who have lived near them.

I enjoyed this mix of history (I didn't know that Da Vinci was the one to pioneer the canal lock system of raising & lowering the waterline to transport boats), cuisine, (there were times whilst reading when I found myself craving crusty bread with butter or a dish of risotto), & culture. It would make a cracking watch as a series of travel documentaries & I could imagine someone like Michael Portillo turning this book into a two or three series run. My only criticism is that for a book about rivers, it was more than a little ironic that, at times, it became a little dry to read in places but this is a minor quibble.

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Elliott & Thompson, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

*Publication date UK: 28th Aug 2025*

[Kelly Hollingworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting and detailed book exploring the rivers Rhine, Rhone and Ticino/Po. From their source to their mouths from Germany, France and Italy the rivers and their tributaries cover a vast expanse. I enjoyed the cultural references, as well a the geography, topography and history of each river and the photographs throughout the book. The book covers the changes in the rivers due to rising temperatures and the impact of glacial melts. When most of us think about climate change we think of the oceans and not the equally as important rivers. I particularly liked the corrections chapter, the changes made over history and why this was done. I also liked the sections on the lakes - Geneva, Constance and Maggiore. With a beautiful eye catching cover this is a wonderful meandering read, best sat by a river or better still on one of the three rivers highlighted in this book.

[Sharyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Winder has written a fascinating and informative biography of three rivers that all have their source in the same area in the Swiss alps. The Rhone flows to and through France, the Rhine flows to and through Germany and the Po flows to and through Italy. They divide and unite western Europe. So much history and so many anecdotes are included in the 300 odd pages; I learned a lot and was fascinated by most of it. Written in a readable and understandable style with some cute turns of phrase. A very good book. With thanks for the e-ARC to read and review.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very readable book giving a condensed view of three of Europe’s major rivers, the Rhine, the Rhone and the Po. All rise in the same area of the Swiss alps but then take totally different routes, the Rhine goes north to Germany, the Rhône west and south to France and the Po south and east to Italy. The book covers all the things the rivers have influenced, the geography, the populations and the arts. A book to read, to dip in and out of and reread.
A really good read which I thank NetGalley and the publishers for the arc copy.

[Susu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Following the Rhine, Rhone, Ticino/Po rivers from source to deltas - describing the rivers as main source of historical and cultural developments
At the same time cutting a lot of other influences out of the picture and presenting long-known as truths as "findings" ... walking into a gallery and "discovering" that Turner´s brilliant skies may have been a result of the ash clouds in the atmosphere during the year without a summer - congrats - a fact well-known and described in a stack of art history books

[tash · Rating 4 out of 5]

thank you to netgalley and elliot and thompson for providing me with this arc of robert winder’s three rivers

4.25 stars

i really enjoyed this book! the book explores the history surrounding three rivers: the rhine, the rhone, and the po. i didn’t really have an understanding of the histories behind each river until this book, and do recommend