Return of the Native

I wrote this piece a few years ago, but it seems appropriate it publish it now, with all the talk about Dunkirk and the new film:

I was reading, just the other day, about the gathering of former Little Ships of Dunkirk at Ramsgate. I read with more interest than most since a) I was born in Ramsgate, and b) I love boats. I looked online and discovered a list of many of the known vessels that took part, and, in scanning it, a familiar name jumped out at me; the New Britannic.

She was built, I read, as a pleasure boat with a very shallow draft, specially designed to take trippers out to the Goodwin Sands. It was just this attribute that made her so useful at Dunkirk; her ability to go right inshore and pick up troops from the beach and ferry them out to waiting warships. She plied back and forth for three days and two nights, I learned, rescuing around 3,000 soldiers. A most remarkable feat for a boat able to carry only a small  number of people at a time. It is hard to imagine the feelings of a soldier trapped in that awful place on seeing the friendly face of this steady, stable, south-coast pleasure boat with her reassuringly British name coming to the rescue. She must have seemed almost motherly.

After the war, the New Britannic resumed her old life, taking visitors out to the Goodwins, and that is when I met her. As a child, I went out on most of the local pleasure boats, and I clearly remember a trip on the New Britannic. Still steady, stable and unfussed, I can see her now, tied up at the harbour wall.

After that we went our separate ways, two Ramsgate natives, the boat and I, but our paths have since crossed – in different timelines. Both of us fetched up in Weymouth, strangely enough. Subsequently she moved on to the Scilly Isles, and seemed doomed to end her days there, mouldering away. But no, she was found, and towed back to the mainland, where she sank at her moorings. Again, she was rescued, and taken back to Kent by road in the end, to begin a long and painstaking period of restoration. The least that could be done, you could say, for a boat that had so thoroughly done her duty. Now she is back at Ramsgate enjoying a new life as a boat for the disabled, her kindly steadiness and stability paying off once again.

Will I, too, find my way back to Ramsgate one day? Who knows – perhaps. But if I ever do, there will be at least one friendly, motherly face awaiting me there –  the New Britannic.

The New Britannic, June 2016. (Photo: Foxy59)

For more information see the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships

Songs in Stone

It isn’t often that the Isle of Portland is completely still. It’s a breezy place, verging on the gale force much of the time, but on this particular evening it fell quiet for us. I had visited the Memory Stones a few weeks earlier and instantly knew that I had to persuade the other members of the Island Voices Choir to come and sing here. So here we were.

Island Voices at the Memory Stones, Portland

This remarkable place on the lip of an old Portland stone quarry is an art installation, a gateway and an amphitheatre, and not long completed. The stones are still raw white and fresh, and each has a dual significance – in alignment to the sun at different seasons, and relating to Portland’s history, both natural and man-made. It’s a remarkable idea. Hannah Sofaer, the artist responsible, came along to take pictures.

This place already has atmosphere, but when the choir lined up in that still sunset and launched into our song Portland Stone, the great blocks looming over us suddenly had… presence. I can’t think of a better word. Their individuality became clear. They were part of the place, and so were we. I had thought from the first time I saw the Memory Stones that this song was made for them, but I hadn’t expected the connection to be so profound. I for one found it very moving.

The only way to improve on this wonderful moment, for me, was for us to sing Island Voice. And we did. I wrote the lyrics for this twelve years ago when both the Island Voices Choir and my writing career were taking their first baby steps. We’ve sung it many times since in all sorts of places but it never seemed so right as it did in this place. “If only there were songs in stone…” I wrote, all those years ago. Well, just for a moment, with the blessing of the Memory Stones, there were. It was pure magic.

Beauty and the Book

The book and its cover – how often does the reality of the first live up to the promise of the second? The cover, of course, is a piece of advertising, designed to catch your eye and part you from your hard-earned cash. It can, and often does, promise you everything and anything. The book, when you read it, has to stand on its merits, not the hype of the cover. And that is when disappointment so often sets in.

I was thinking about this the other day when I bought a book purely on the strength of its beautiful cover, having barely glanced even at the blurb on the back. I don’t often buy books at the supermarket, but one look at this cover and I knew there was no way I was going home without it.

Book Covers Matter

As a writer myself, the knotty problem of what makes a good book cover is one I grapple with whenever one of mine is published. How do you sum up a complex story, interest potential readers and compete for their attention among the many thousands of books on the market? And all in the small space of a book cover, perhaps seen in the glimpse of an eye? It takes a special kind of magic to make this work. It’s probably true to say I’m a little more alert to the tricks of cover design than the average reader – but I fell for this beautiful book in an instant, and into the trolley it went.

Arts-and-Crafts Style

And yet this cover seemed to me to break all the rules. It’s intricate – fussy, even – you need to look at it a couple of times to see what it consists of. A closer look shows it’s part overwrought Victorian floral wallpaper, Arts-and-Crafts style, and part Chinese dragon; the title is woven in discreetly and is not particularly easy to read. This is far from the clear, simple, easy to understand design of the average modern book cover. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I suppose that breaking all the rules just works sometimes. This is one book that will have a permanent place on my bookshelf. It has certainly given me a few different ideas regarding possible covers for my forthcoming novel, which has an eighteenth-century setting.

The book, in case you’re wondering, and would like to see for yourself, was Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, and I’m happy to report that I found the book itself every bit as rich and intricate as its cover. Have you ever bought a book purely for its cover design?