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 Raban 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.