Lost to the Sea cover art

Lost to the Sea

A Journey Round the Edges of Britain and Ireland

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Lost to the Sea

By: Lisa Woollett
Narrated by: Amy Noble
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About this listen

'An immersive and lyrically personal journey through deep-time and modern tides' RAYNOR WINN

'Wondrous, elegant and haunting, Lost to the Sea is a fascinating alternative history of the fractured, flooded and eroded edges of Britain and Ireland' PHILIP HOARE

'Beautiful . . . Woollett paints vividly the day-to-day lives of past peoples' TLS

Medieval kingdoms. Notorious pirate towns. Drowned churches. Crocodile-infested swamps.

On a series of coastal walks, Lisa Woollett takes us on an illuminating journey, bringing to life the places where mythology and reality meet at the very edges of Britain and Ireland.

From Bronze Age settlements on the Isles of Scilly and submerged prehistoric forests in Wales, to a Victorian amusement park on the Isle of Wight and castles in the air off County Clare, Lisa draws together archaeology, meetings with locals and tales from folklore to reveal how the sea has forged, shaped and often overwhelmed these landscapes and communities.

Lost to the Sea is an exhilarating voyage around the ever-shifting shores of the British Isles, and a haunting ode to our profound relationship with the sea.

'A hugely enjoyable mosaic of history, myth and imagination' SARA WHEELER

'Beautifully written and researched . . . I was immediately tempted to head out in search of lost lands' WYL MENMUIR©2024 Lisa Woollett
Europe Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Science Travel Writing & Commentary Mythology

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Critic reviews

Absorbing and highly enjoyable . . . Woollett has an excellent sense of the strange, the inexplicable, the funny and the unforgettable
Filled with incident, insight and human curiosity . . . In elegant, haunting, always lively prose, Lost to the Sea proposes a vision of the great power of the elemental sea: the mysteries it has concealed, revealed, and will eventually take back to itself . . . a fascinating alternative history of the fractured, flooded and eroded edges of Britain and Ireland. (PHILIP HOARE)
A haunting evocation of vanishing places. Meticulously researched, Lost to the Sea delivers scene after scene of watery destruction at a host of crumbling, mythical or sunken sites - and a timely reminder of the transience of our coasts (PHILIP MARSDEN)
A beautiful foray into the lost boundaries of Britain and Ireland (LARA MAIKLEM, author of Mudlarking)
All stars
Most relevant
Woollett’s finely textured prose brings us close to the day to day lives of vanished communities along our coast. Her story sees the epochal woven through the ordinary: quiet beauty characterises her descriptions – whether the incidentals of her visits to each place or the lost communities she evokes.

This excellent audio version accentuates the cogent rhythm of Woollett’s narrative. Each piece of her story is gathered and presented attentively – in a manner reminiscent of the care afforded to the resplendent beachcombing and mudlarking treasures of her
award-winning earlier book - ‘Rag and Bone’.

Woollett leads us to the cliff tops and reminds us of the power of the sea to destroy places that shelter human lives. A single understated paragraph contextualises these stories within our present era of rapid environmental change. But this careful study of past fragments of our
nation leaves the listener to reach conclusions for our own for the future. A tale of epic environmental change given human proportions.

An epic story given human proportions - beautifully observed

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