Jonathan Raban Coasting

`A valuable book and a necessary one.

One of the funniest and cleverest voyages on record.

' Christopher Hitchens, New Statesman `The finest writer afloat since Conrad.

' Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Guardian `Unfailingly witty and entertaining.

' Salman Rushdie Coasting round Britain single-handed in an antique two-masted sailing boat, Jonathan Raban conducts a masterly exploration of England and the English at the time of Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War.

He moves seamlessly between awkward memories of childhood as the son of a vicar, a vivid chronicle of the shape-shifting sea and incisive descriptions of the people and communities he encounters.

As he faces his terror of racing water, eddies, offshore sandbars and ferries on a collision course, so he navigates the complex and turbulent waters of his own middle age.

Coasting is a fearless attempt to discover the meaning of belonging and of his English homeland.