Description

An immersive history of a pivotal stretch of water

‘Fascinating, spellbinding, erudite and great fun.’ Roddy Doyle

‘Remarkable. Lively … Gower writes beautifully [and] the book is profoundly popular.’ Times Literary Supplement

The Turning Tide is a hymn to a sea passage of world-historical importance. Combining social and cultural history, nature-writing, travelogue and politics, Welshman Jon Gower charts a sea which has carried both Vikings and saints; invasion forces, royals and rebels; writers, musicians and fishermen.

The divided but interconnected waters of the Irish Sea – from the narrow North Channel through St George’s Channel to where the Celtic sea opens out into the wide Atlantic – have a turbulent history to match the violence of its storms. Jon Gower is a sympathetic and interested pilot, taking the reader to the great shipyards of Belfast and through the mass exodus of the starving during the Irish Famine in coffin boats bound for America. He follows the migrations of working men and women looking for work in England and tells the tales of more casual travellers: sometimes seasick, often homesick too.

The Irish Sea is also a place with an abundant natural history. The rarest sea bird in Europe visits its coasts in summer while the rarest goose wings in during winter.

The Turning Tide navigates waters teeming with life, filled with seals and salt-tanged stories and surveyed by seabirds. Lyrically written and fizzing with curiosity, this is a remarkable and far-reaching book.

Publisher Review

'Fascinating, spellbinding, erudite and great fun - every page made me want to walk out the door and go look at the Irish Sea.' Roddy Doyle 'As full of life and vitality as the sea itself.' Nicholas Crane, author of The Making of the British Landscape 'The Irish Sea has found her bard. This is a dazzle of storytelling, an enthralling trove of history and a joyful work of travel and reportage, singing with the love of the sea. The Turning Tide is a spell book written by a scholar of the deep archives, a naturalist, a time-traveller, a wizard who knows the colours of the winds. Nobody can tell a tale like Jon Gower.' Horatio Clare, author of Down To The Sea In Ships 'Contagious with delight and fascination, this book has brought new understanding and significance to a patch of water I'm by, on, or in most days of my life. The seeming informality, the twinkle-in-the-eye in the telling, the gentle provocation make it a joy to read. More like sitting back to listen. Jon's perhaps brought into a being a new class of book, for it's nothing if not a "Racontography."' Cynan Jones, author of Stillicide 'In prose as glittering as the ocean itself, Gower unearths the saints and smugglers, the birds and bards that have inhabited this salty kingdom, and weaves together stories of his own life in the main with their legends and tales. In The Turning Tide, the Irish Sea roars with a unique passion and character.' Mike Parker, author of All the Wide Border 'An elegant, engrossing portrait of the turbulent Irish Sea. Bursting with detailed natural history and stories of conquest, love, tragedy, and poetry alike, Jon Gower has given us a history worthy of the deep waters he describes - one so teeming with life, you can't stop reading.' Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast