Coasting round Britain single-handed in an antique two-masted sailing boat, Jonathan Raban conducts a masterly exploration of England & the English at the time of Margaret Thatcher & 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 & incisive descriptions of the people & communities he encounters. As he faces his terror of racing water, eddies, offshore sandbars & ferries on a collision course, so he navigates the complex & turbulent waters of his own middle age. Coasting is a fearless attempt to discover the meaning of belonging & of his English homel&.