‘A tiny split had opened in the fabric of the world, and I found myself eagerly passing through it.’
‘Out here in the far west, along the fractured coastline of Britain and Ireland, is Europe’s dreaming frontier, its open horizon, where the solid becomes fluid, the fixed wobbles a little and the cliffs and seas grow their own elaborate mythology.’
— From The Summer Isles
— Robert Macfarlane
— John Lewis-Stempel
“Equally entertaining and enlightening... Marsden’s references are glittering. This is a timely volume, describing in beautiful prose the opulence of our natural and human fabric. Guaranteed to fill the windows of Cornish bookshops, it is a superb and educative work which should be read everywhere”
“Outstanding... His pitch-perfect feel for a phrase, plus a gift as sublime as James Hamilton-Patterson or Jonathan Raban’s for describing water lifts The Levelling Sea far above ordinary history towards a state closer to poetry.
”
Philip Marsden is the award-winning author of a number of works of travel, fiction and non-fiction, including The Bronski House, The Spirit-Wrestlers, The Levelling Sea and, most recently, The Summer Isles. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and his work has been translated into fifteen languages. After years of travelling, he now lives on the tidal upper reaches of the River Fal in Cornwall with his wife, children and various boats.
