I LIVE on the North Sea coast, in East Anglia, and am familiar with its shifting colours, from aquamarine to brown Windsor soup. The writer and historian Alistair Moffat is perched in Kelso, in the Scottish borders, within a sort of hailing distance of the coast. Kent and Shetland are each 650 kilometres away.
Moffat takes us on a personal and conversational journey along the rim of the North Sea, “a maritime highway, a vital source of food. Its dangerous moods, its near land-locked shape, its violence, fauna and flora helped form our idea of ourselves.”
He is a companionable guide on what is, in effect, a seaside pilgrimage. Moffat uses six of the 31 Shipping Forecast locations to navigate along the coast: Thames, Humber, Tyne, Forth, Cromarty, and Fair Isle. He begins in Pegwell Bay, East Kent. Here, Julius Caesar failed to land in about 54 BC, defeated by the turbulent currents. Claudius’s Roman army met with more success in AD 43. Cut to 449, and Hengist and Horsa arrived, followed, about 1501 years later, by St Augustine and a form of Christianity. These were incursions that shaped our nation’s history and identity.
The author argues that, while these events were significant, there was more to come. The character and density — genius loci — of the East Anglian fens, for instance, preserved pockets of ancient culture impervious to invasion. The holy and historical activities of Cuthbert and Bede in the seventh and eighth centuries, on the sea’s north-eastern edge, were hugely influential in the evolution of English Christianity. Further north, the industrial-scale fishing centred on Peterhead fed the nation and, ultimately, Europe.
Near the end of his journey along the eastern edge of the country, Moffat arrives at a location that, it could be argued, is the true birth of British civilisation: the windswept neolithic henges of Orkney, which go back about 5000 years. Moffat concludes: “Much of our history had come to us across the North Sea, and on its shores much of our identity was compiled and continues to be compiled.” The North Sea made waves.
The Revd Malcolm Doney is a writer, broadcaster, and Anglican priest, who lives in Suffolk.
The North Sea: Along the edge of Britain
Alistair Moffat
Canongate £20
(978-1-83726-122-2)
Church Times Bookshop £18
