This is a good read and goes straight into my list of contenders to be this blog’s book of the year. The format involves the author walking stretches of the coast of Britain investigating the places, talking to the people and trying to figure out what he makes of the issues that affect these places and their people and wildlife.
I’ve described Morgan-Grenville’s approach in The Shearwater as Eric Newby-esque and that author was brought to my mind as this author described the consequences of switching his diet from one seafood to another in Chapter 2. Whereas in Across a Waking Land, the chance encounters with fellow walkers and travellers provided much of the pleasure of the book for me, in this volume the people to whom the author talked were clearly not serendipitous meetings but carefully chosen to illuminate the issues, and that approach works very well too.
Imagine you were planning a book about coastal issues – what would you aim to cover? How about fisheries, sea-level rise, renewable energy, salmon farming, sewage pollution, plastics, wonderful wildlife, bird flu and tourism including seaside holidays? All those, and more, are here and we are left better informed as the journey continues, sometimes to return to the same issues elsewhere on the trek, but sometimes not. This is not a definitive guide to all these issues, and is not intended to be, but I usually came away knowing more and with a broader perspective thanks to this book.
I particularly enjoyed Chapter 2, on salmon farming, because it is easy to see this as a simple issue and it is not that simple if you are looking for a way forward. I found this very helpful. Further south, the ridiculous, it seems to me (and it seemed to seem to the author), stance of the local council on recolonisation of a dynamic beach by vegetation was a brilliant though sad look at how decision-makers rate the environment in modern Britain. The insights into tidal energy on the Severn Estuary and Bristol Channel were helpful and the account of crustacean die-offs on the Tees, and their potential causes, was also helpful to me. But there is lots more to enjoy and from which to learn in these pages.
This book is a great read and it brings together places, people and issues in what seems a fair and intelligent way. It should be short-listed for lots of prizes and might well win some too. I may not read a better book this year, but we’ll see…
The cover? That’s an imaginative cover which captures a surprisingly large number of aspects of the journey and its story. I like it, and would give it 9/10.
The Restless Coast: a journey around the edge of Britain by Roger Morgan-Grenville is published by Icon Books.
Previous books by Roger Morgan-Grenville reviewed here; The Return of the Grey Partridge (with Edward Norfolk), Across a Waking Land, The Shearwater.
Buy Roger’s books direct from Blackwell’s – a proper bookshop (and I’ll get a little bit of money from them).
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