`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.