Customer Reviews

Coasting/a Private Voyage

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I am amazed that this book is out of print - it is probably the best travel book I have read.

Jonathan Raban decides to sail around the English coast and, in the process, teaches himself navigation and buys a old wooden sailing boat.

The author has an excellent perspective on the whole ethos of sailing and the drama that is involved - particularly if sailing single-handed. This is combined with a highly penetrative insight into the English character and beautiful descriptions of the various small ports and towns that he visits on his trip.

Perhaps the two highlights of the book are Raban's encounters with Paul Theroux and Philip Larkin. It is very rare to encounter an author with such a sublime sense of humour and these are just two passages amongst many that make this book a 'must read' for any reader.

This book is about water, how it moves in open and closed places, how wind moves it and stirs it (it could almost be a book on hydraulics), how it had provided livelihood for many people in the British Isles. It is a book about Britain as a museum, a service culture which hardly manufactures anything anymore. Old derelict coal mines have a better future as living museums, as do places such as Rye and Hull. It is a sad book as it charts in clear eyed terms the decay of old Britain into a museum island, and he sees the Falklands war (when the book was being written)as the last stand of an insular people somewhat like the Manxmen he describes early in the book. There are some neat surprises as when he bumps into two dyspeptic fellow writers, Paul Theroux and Philip Larkin. Imagine these three writers looking out at you while you went about your daily business! For me I was astonished at how someone can be alone for such stretches of time and not go completely bongers.