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LIQUID GOLD BLACK WATER
Britain’s Water Privatisation Scandal
How London’s sewage became a private monopoly—and how I got dropped in the shit
By Tony Brophy
A personal story of enterprise and betrayal. A documented history of water and power. An urgent challenge to the future of Britain’s most essential public service.
The Public Built It. Private Finance Exploited It.
London’s water and sewerage system was created through generations of public investment. It conquered cholera, transformed public health and made the modern capital possible.
Then it was privatised.
Liquid Gold Black Water traces the extraordinary journey from London’s night-soil men and the Great Stink to Bazalgette’s sewers, Thames Water, corporate debt and the pollution of Britain’s rivers and coastal waters.
At the centre of the book is Tony Brophy’s own remarkable encounter with Thames Water.
His family company formed Thamesgro, a pioneering environmental joint venture that converted treated sewage sludge into manufactured soils for major land-restoration projects. Thames Water later acquired Brophy Plc.
What began as an innovative partnership became, in Brophy’s account, a struggle between a family business and an increasingly powerful corporate monopoly.
Tony Brophy was dropped in the shit—but the greater scandal is that the British public was dropped in it too.
Why read LIQUID GOLD BLACK WATER?
This book reveals:
- how London survived the sanitation disasters that culminated in the Great Stink;
- how public investment created one of the world’s great water and sewerage systems;
- how sewage sludge was transformed from waste into a valuable environmental resource;
- what happened when Thames Water entered Tony Brophy’s family business;
- how water privatisation transferred essential public assets into regional monopolies;
- how debt, dividends and financial engineering came to dominate Thames Water;
- why sewage pollution became a national public-health and environmental scandal;
- why regulation failed to protect customers, infrastructure and the natural environment;
- what Britain must now do to create a clean, affordable and accountable water system.
Part memoir, part industrial history and part public-policy investigation, LIQUID GOLD BLACK WATER follows the history, the money and the decisions that brought Britain’s water industry to crisis.
The story behind the scandal from a man who saw part of it from the inside.
SIR TIM SMIT KBE
Co-founder, Eden Project
“The laissez faire attitude to the policing and stewardship of our water is, in my view treasonous.
It is not a misdemeanour or a business crime it is a knowing assault on the future.
There are many who should hang their heads in shame at the certainty that
their descendants will feel that an indelible stain has been visited upon them.
This is a timely and very readable work of righteous anger
that should grace the bedside table of all citizens who care.
Choose your edition
Paperback
The complete sixteen-chapter edition, including endnotes and principal documentary sources.
Price: £12.99
Publication date: 1st September 2026
ISBN: 978-1-0369-9457-0
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Read before you buy
Discover the opening pages and follow the story from London’s historic sanitation crisis to the modern struggle over Thames Water.
PREFACE
This is the story of how London’s sewage became a private monopoly and how one Irish family landscape business got dropped in the shit.
It begins in the old London of cesspits, night-soil men, plague, cholera and the Great Stink, when the city learned the hard way that civilisation depends on what happens below ground. Joseph Bazalgette’s sewers were built as public-health salvation, not as a financial asset. They rescued London from its own filth.
More than a century later, Margaret Thatcher’s government sold the pipes.
Tony Brophy entered the story from the inside.
In 1986, his family landscape company formed Thamesgro, a pioneering joint venture with the statutory Thames Water Authority, turning treated sewage sludge into manufactured growing media for major land-reclamation projects including Stockley Park.
In 1990, Thames Water Plc bought 50 per cent of Brophy. What began as partnership, validation and opportunity later became a battle over control, capital, trust and survival.
From there, the story follows the wider scandal: privatisation, monopoly power, debt, dividends, financial engineering, Macquarie, sewage pollution, regulatory failure, public anger, Surfers Against Sewage, We Own It, Dirty Business, Dieter Helm and the growing demand for a new water settlement.
This book is not simply about sewage in rivers. It is about who owns essential public-health infrastructure, who profits from it, who pays when it fails, and why customers who cannot choose another sewer have been left carrying the risk.
Blunt, personal, angry and evidence-led, LIQUID GOLD BLACK WATER argues that England’s privatised water model has failed morally, financially and environmentally.
The Victorians built the sewers because the smell reached Parliament.
Now the great stink is back.
Give the book to someone who cares about Britain’s water
Liquid Gold Black Water is for; –
- Members of Parliament
- water customers facing higher bills;
- swimmers, surfers, anglers and river users;
- environmental campaigners;
- journalists and political commentators;
- students of politics, business and environmental policy;
- people interested in London’s industrial and public-health history;
- anyone asking who owns Britain’s essential services—and whom they should serve.
Bookshops, libraries and organisations
Bookshops, libraries, universities, campaign groups and professional organisations are invited to stock LIQUID GOLD BLACK WATER.
Discounted terms may be available for qualifying bulk orders, conferences, campaigns, educational use and public events.
For orders of 10 copies or more, please contact:
Email: brophybooks@gmail.com
Telephone: 00 44 (0)79 19193267
Review copies
Review copies are available for bona fide journalists, broadcasters, reviewers, producers, booksellers and event organisers.
Buy Liquid Gold Black Water today
LIQUID GOLD BLACK WATER
How London’s Sewage Became a Private Monopoly and How I Got Dropped in the Shit
By Tony Brophy
A personal story. A corporate struggle. A national scandal.
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Book Orders
For individual copies:
For bookshops, libraries, universities, campaign groups, conferences and qualifying bulk orders:
Email: brophybooks@gmail.com
Please state the number of copies required, delivery destination and preferred date.
After reading the Book
Watch Channel 4’s three-part Dirty Business, sign the Surfers Against Sewage petition hosted by 38 Degrees and ask your MP to support fundamental reform of Britain’s water industry.
The public built it. Private finance exploited it. Now Britain must decide how to reclaim it.