What we can do to let the UK’s tamed rivers flow wild and free again

WHEN I visited the river Derwent in Yorkshire in March, the landscape wasn’t as I remembered it from my youth. Normally, the floodplains would be inundated with water and the whole river system feel like a miniature recreation of the vast glacial lake that covered this part of northern England after the ice sheets last retreated. But an unusually dry February meant that floodwater was lacking. On the upside, it allowed me to approach the river across …