Philip Parker
Making Waves
The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are
By Michael Pye
Viking 394pp £25
The North Sea is a harsh mistress. The peoples living along its shores have long rejoiced in its bounty of fish and, more recently, oil. Yet they have been equally fearful of its terrible storms – the worst, in 1953, killed over 2,500 people and inundated vast areas of the Netherlands – and of the raiders, Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Vikings, who have crossed its enticingly narrow waters over the centuries. However, unlike the Mediterranean, its more fashionable southern counterpart, the North Sea has had few histories of its own. There is little in the way of an overarching survey to gather together its stories and set them in an orderly narrative of a ‘North Sea World’.
Michael Pye’s The Edge of the World proposes to fill this gap, promising in its subtitle to explain ‘How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are’. Right at the start, in a meandering introduction that ranges from the 18th-century origins of seaside bathing to the uncovering of Roman-era graveyards
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk