Coasting: A Private Voyage

by Jonathan Raban

From the national bestselling, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Bad Land comes “a lively, intensely personal recounting of a voyage into a gifted writer's country and self” ( The New York Times Book Review ).

Put Jonathan Raban on a boat and the results will be fascinating, and never more so than when he’s sailing around the serpentine, 2,000-mile coast of his native England. In this acutely perceived and beautifully written book, the bestselling author of Bad Land turns that voyage–which coincided with the Falklands war of 1982-into an occasion for meditations on his country, his childhood, and the elusive notion of home.

Whether he’s chatting with bored tax exiles on the Isle of Man, wrestling down a mainsail during a titanic gale, or crashing a Scottish house party where the kilted guests turn out to be Americans, Raban is alert to the slightest nuance of meaning. One can read Coasting for his precise naturalistic descriptions or his mordant comments on the new England, where the principal industry seems to be the marketing of Englishness. But one always reads it with pleasure.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir, British Literature, Nature, History, Nautical

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 22, 1986

About the author

British travel writer, critic and novelist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan...

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jonahthan Raban writes at a whole new level, he can blend his current travels with his past in a way nobody else can. His wonderful poetic prose draws you in right from the off.

I love hiking, one of the reasons is how remote things are and that there is nobody else around, bliss for me. I recently walked in the Brecon Beacons, finding 50 people eating lunch at the highest point, others having loud conversations that echoed around the hills and others playing loud music on their phones. Back in 1982 Raban found England to be very cluttered too so he looks towards the sea for a bit of secluded peace and quiet. His description of the sea is near perfect:

"The sea marks the end of things. It is where life stops and the unknown begins."

Whilst at sea, real life goes on, Britain goes to war with Argentina, Lady Di drops her first sprog and Thatcher goes to war with the miners. Each trip back to shore gives him little updates on what is happening, he tends to be disgusted with what he reads in the papers, especially The Sun and it blood hungry racist slurs, these all make him desperate to get back out to sea.

It's almost inevitable but when you spend so much time alone your mind is going to travel back in time to past events, each time his thoughts end up with his difficult relationship with his dad, it was fun to read him meeting up with his dad and realising they seem to have swopped places.

My first Raban book and it was a joy to read, I'm now hooked on this writer.

Blog post is here> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018...

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Following on from his journey down the great Mississippi, Jonathan Raban decided to explore his homeland from the see. He acquired a small boat and filled it with personal effects and a lot of books, some relevant to his research and some just for the pleasure of having them nearby. He set off in 1982 to see if we were still a nation that loved the sea.

His journey would be back through the pages of our history, a semi nostalgic look back at his own childhood and a contemporary take on the state of our nation under the rule of Thatcher in the early 1980’s and the effect that the outbreak of war with Argentina over the Falklands Islands would have on our outlook as a people. However, this was all a backdrop to the seascapes that he travels through, the looking cliffs, fast races and eddy’s, sandbanks and other much larger boats that would challenge him every day of the journey.

He has a slightly tense meeting with Paul Theroux in Brighton who is heading around the UK in the opposite direction and also in the process of writing his book, The Kingdom by the Sea. Raban joins the miners on the picket lines to see what real political action is like and takes the views from the locals on their opinions of the Falklands War. There is often a vast gulf between the rabid right-wing press and their attitude to the war and the indifference of the general populace.

I didn’t think this was quite as good as Old Glory, but I don’t think it is as easy for an author to understand their home country as sometimes it is for an outsider to do. That said, it was written just as the country had begun an enormous political change, was at war and in the middle of a enormous strike by the miners. This means that he could easily see the differences and splits that were very visible in society at large. There is something about Raban’s writing that is beguiling and very readable too, he is a stickler for the details that he drops into the narrative when meeting people like Philip Larkin or talking to the owners of trawlers in Lyme Regis but also has that ability to present you the seascape; you sense the rock of the boat and the wind on your cheek as you bob along with him, in sparse lyrical prose.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A journey round the coast of Britain with a back drop of the start of the Falklands war give the author both the opportunity to think through his earlier life and his observations of his country, and promptings to think about reactions to the war, both his own and those of the individuals he meets. The idea of 'coasting' is well demonstrated, and the book has a pace of it's own, of the sea, and of the time in which it was written.

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

This, kindly loaned to me by my mother after I mentioned having enjoyed 'The Kon-Tiki Expedition' and 'The Brendan Voyage', was a curious mix whilst Raban told tales of his circumnavigation of Britain.

A mix of travel writing and autobiography. A mix of insight into mid-Twentieth Century English pluck and sense of adventure, and late-Twentieth Century Conservatism (interesting, viewed through the prism of being read forty years since this was published). A mix of the familiar and the alien (I was particularly disappointed this book ended up being more a case of the author dicking about on the south coast for three quarters of the book, barely discussing the remaining majority of the British coast).

Most importantly however it was a mix of prose that held my attention and struck me as beautiful, intelligent and insightful.. and prose that bored me witless. I'm not sure why this was - I don't doubt the objective quality of what Raban writes - perhaps there was just too much of it and I wasn't receptive to a book that I frequently found myself turning the pages of then thinking 'hang on.. I didn't take in any of the last couple of sections, I'll re-read that'.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this with 'The kingdom by the sea' by Paul Theroux. Theroux walks around the UK, Raban sails. They meet each other and both report the meeting in their book. Let's say they have a different perspective. I like Raban's best - and he's a better writer than Theroux.

[Ivan Kinsman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is my third or fourth time reading this book as Jonathan Raban is one of my favourite writers because of his superb and erudite literary style and the his rather laconic approach to his subject matter.

Having lived through the Falkland Wars, the book brings back the atmosphere as the time during the government of Margaret Thatcher. But far more appealing is the author's account of his sailing experiences and the places he stops off. The parts that stand out for me are: he recounting of the other solo voyagers around Britain, his time spent on the Isle of Mann, his recounting of his years growing up in various parsonages as the son of an Anglican vicar and the radical transformation of the church and his own father, along with his uncomfortable position as a young teenager neither of the upper or the lower classes, his meeting with his old mentor Philip Larkin and his time spent with the picketing miners. All of these seperate events make up the rich tapestry of the travelogue as he tries to define what Britain is as a nation judged from the perspective from sailing aboard a yacht offshore.

I cannot recommend this book more highly, and the same applies to his other books that I have also greatly enjoyed reading, because he so deftly combines the history of the places he travels through with his own contemporary experiences. Raban sadly died in January 2023 aged 80 in Seattle which he made his final home. He is a British author who will be very much missed.

[Andrew]

Normally, Jonathan Raban is one of the sunnier travel writers out there, but in Britain in the early 1980s, sunlight was strictly forbidden. Please see the attached documents: the complete oeuvre of Hanif Kureishi and Derek Raymond, Paul Theroux's Kingdom by the Sea, the complete musical output of Joy Division and the Smiths, This Is England... the list goes on.

He starts in the hyper-conservative tax dodge of the Isle of Man, and then works his way around the coast, expressing horror in various degrees at the general warm-beer-and-gravy stench of the whole island, the toxic Thatcherism that plagued the place, his lousy childhood, etc. etc. Oh, and he meets up with noted glass-half-full types Theroux (who was trudging around working on Kingdom by the Sea at the same time) and Philip Larkin, both of whom are positive about positive things all the time forever.

Of course I loved it.

[my.bookshelf.87 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one man's account of a voyage around the coast of England in a sailing boat, written in the 1980s.

Not only do we learn about various places around the UK but Raban also delves into his own background and childhood, explaining how he ends up on the journey to begin with.

Because of the era in which this was written, we learn about various moments in history such as the Falklands conflict, miners' strikes etc. Raban also meets up with some interesting characters on his travels, including Paul Theroux and Phillip Larkin.

I really enjoyed this. Looking forward to reading more of his work!

[Joep · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this while sailing around Scotland. A lot has changed since 1982 when Raban's Odyssee took place, crowed marina's, ugly plastic sailing boats and less couleur locale. Anyhow, the major part of the book is about the landlubbers, the Falkland war, parents and a few (actually quite funny) pages about meeting Paul Theroux (which Theroux also describes in his 'Kingdom by the sea'). Even when you are not into sailing it is a very interesting read and during a stopover at Inverness I bought more of Raban's books in an amazing secondhand bookstore located in a church (Leaky's bookshop).

[Natalie Bayley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written around the same time as Paul Theroux’s Kingdom By the Sea, (early 1980’s) I enjoyed this book so much more. Raban gets the UK in a way that Theroux fails to do.
Example from Theroux’s book- he hates Brighton because “it’s a mess”. Visiting Raban on his boat there, the latter points out that he loves Brighton for those exact reasons. One may see a man dressed as “Cardinal Wolsey or Robin Hood… singing and having a grand time”
Exactly!

[Erik Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Das Buch erzählt nicht nur vom Segeln, sondern vom Gefühl, in Zeiten großer Umbrüche (industrieller Niedergang, miners‘ strike und Falklandkrieg) als Tourist im eigenen Land unterwegs zu sein und es oft nicht mehr wiederzuerkennen. Man kann es nachvollziehen, dass sich Raban fühlt wie ein Eindringling an den vielen Orten, die den Menschen genommen, ihrer wahren Geschichte beraubt und wie ein Museum für Touristen aufpoliert werden. Die großen Unterschiede zwischen Englands Regionen vermittelt er in kleinen, aufmerksamen Erzählungen über Menschen und Städte.

[Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feel like it’s confusing and not chronological.

Half the time I had no idea what I was even reading.

Author isn’t clear what’s the past, what’s on land , what direction he’s going sometimes

When I did understand it it was interesting though

[Ashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is some really good writing in this book (written in 1986) but I've given up (I'm about a third of the way into the book) because of the author's continual negativity about his own life. In the especially uncertain times that we are living through, I need to read something more uplifting! Perhaps there is a more positive direction later in the book, I'll never know, as I've donated the book to a local charity shop!

[Ryan Murdock · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1982, Jonathan Raban bought a wooden two-masted sailing boat and circumnavigated England in a slow, wandering, unhurried way.

He called this manner of travel “coasting”: moving along with the tide, letting the wind decide the direction of travel, and living “on the shifting frontier where the land meets the water and the water shades into the land.”

According to his childhood schoolmaster, coasting is what he had always done. “Raban has coasted through yet another term,” his housemaster’s report said, “and I can hold out little hope for prospects in the forthcoming examinations.”

But what may have been a disadvantageous temperament in early education is an ideal mode for the writer and observer.

Sailing along the coast with charts and a hand bearing-compass, and talking to the people he meets in harbour towns and failing fishing ports, Raban comes to understand England and the English, and his own sense of national belonging.

An early stop on the Isle of Man leads to observations on the insular nature of small island people, and the isolated, inward-looking Manx, with their prickly sense of grievance, localness, xenophobia, and nostalgia for the old days, come to mirror Britain at large.

The Falklands War breaks out in the midst of his journey. Raban hears the news when he ties up in Sutton Pool at Plymouth Sound, alongside working trawlers by the fish market. He observes from a distance as a sort of national hysteria breaks out, a poorer version of Churchillian resistance, stubborn Britain against the world.

“The Falklands stood anchored off the coast of South America very much as Britain stood anchored off the coast of Europe,” he writes. “You only had to look at the atlas to see that the identity of the Falklanders, like that of the British, was bound up in endless aggressive assertions of their differences from the continental giant across the water.”

Great travel literature has a way of shining a light on deep truths, those fundamental aspects of a culture that reveal themselves again and again. As the publisher of Raban’s back catalog, Barnaby Rogerson of Eland Books, said to me over breakfast at London’s Exmouth Market, “Anyone who has read Coasting would not be surprised by Brexit.”

But Coasting does more than expose the English national subconscious.

It also contains some memorable dialogue. One of my favourite scenes was a dinner with the elderly poet Philip Larkin, who the author had known as a young undergraduate. Larkin orders a gin and tonic at the bar. “Would you mind making that a double gin?” he says. “Since I’ve gone deaf, I don’t seem to be able to see single gins anymore.” That’s a line I’ve filed away in my notebook, to be shamelessly trotted out should I reach old age.

Earlier, in Brighton, Raban meets Paul Theroux, who is on his own book journey around the coast. Theroux is traveling clockwise on foot and by train, where Raban is sailing counterclockwise. The two writers meet for lunch and fence uneasily — “Nothing to see here!” — in a scene that perfectly captures the self-doubt and greedy possessiveness of an author at work on a book.

Raban’s descriptions are crisp, layered and sometimes startlingly interesting. “England shows as a dark smear between the sea and the sky like the track of a grubby finger across a windowpane,” he writes, describing the view of land from a northern sea.

Or take this wonderful description of waiting out a gale at anchor: “The boat thrummed and shivered on its moorings. Below, it felt as if one was squatting in the sound box of an out-of-tune harp, with every shroud vibrating on a slightly different note and the wooden frame answering the shrouds with a long, low sympathetic groan.”

But it is the way Raban mixes the personal past with his present journey that stayed with me after I turned the last page. His awkward church parsonage childhood, the poverty and class consciousness, and his incipient middle age, all reflected amidst the sea-shifting background of his journey, conveys something fundamental about the nation and culture, something you need to venture beyond the limits of London to discover.

But if you don’t have the opportunity to travel, you can still go Coasting with Jonathan Raban in this superbly written book, a true classic of the genre.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

50% of this book could have been kept in a private journal/letters to friends. The rest was insightful and sometimes beautiful. Too many obscure references and dull train of thought for me.

[Dead John Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a sweet little book. In the beginning it was hard to work out when it was written. It comes across in that timeless middle class way of habit and tradition. But then it parts way and goes on its own journey.

He gets a boat and decides to sail around the British coastline. As details get filled in the Falkland Island war begins and so we get placed in time. The journey goes anti-clockwise around the coast and by the time he gets "Up North" the 1980's Miners Strike is in its final throes.

Those are the markers in time but they are not really that relevant, they help give context to how he is writing about things and what those things meant at that time.

The rest is really about his voyage and ongoing learning how to handle this boat and how to be at sea. If I read it right he was given a few cursory lessons then sailed away. He pulls into various harbours around the coast to shelter, stock up, refuel, and to take in the locale and its inhabitants.

A very gentle travelogue that could be poignant at times and refreshingly uncynical as well. His telling of his life as a student in Hull was surprising and entertaining and his meeting with Philip Larkin was an unexpected treat.

A book for winter reading on wet rainy windswept days when you don't have to be anywhere else. Enjoyable.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book at the moment and finding it very satisfying and up there with Passage to Juneau - by the same author and in a similar vein. I do worry about his relationships with women though. At the start he decribes being galvanised by earlier sailing books written by authors with "philistine certainties .... and chauvinistic attitudes towards women". Not referring to himself of course, but most of the characters he connects with in the book are men, and he talks about his relationship with his boat as if it were a person. I suppose his sailing experiences are deeply and essentially solitary and it is within this reference frame that he is at his most creative. In the Passage to Juneau he does his best writing after his partner has left him and he goes on alone...... go figure

[Henry Le Nav · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Raban's Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings years ago and really enjoyed it, and so with this book years later, I absolutely loved it. Raban writes very well, makes keen observations, teaches one something about sailing, and has a wonderful ability to tie his trip, the conditions he finds, and his personal history into a thought provoking narrative. The events of the book took place in the early 1980's and while being a snapshot of that time, it seems a remarkable harbinger of the events of today. One of the best books that I have read this year.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Jonathan Raban's obituary in January, I was reminded that I'd intended to re-read this, to see if my memory of it being disappointing was justified. I'd bought it second-hand some forty or more years ago, hoping, I think, for some description of places as approached from the sea. Re-reading it, I realise I was simply too immature to appreciate the skill in the writing, the incisive accuracy of observations and the many wonderful musings on Life through Raban's eyes. I intend to read more of his books.

[Cedric Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're an anglophile and a boat-o-phile and a limnophile, you're going to love this book. Raban delivers his usual heavy dose of esotera and history... some of it in the making here: The Falklands conflict gets under way, coal miners are going on strike, and England is decaying as Raban sets sailing in the Gosfield Maid.

[Christopher Whalen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. My father-in-law, Tom, recommended it to me after our conversations about Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island and my love of Tim Parks (A Season with Verona; Italian Neighbours; An Italian Education; Italian Ways). It did not disappoint. It took me nearly a year to get round to starting it, but my timing was perfect. This book was written in the mid-1980s, reflecting on a Britain of the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher, and the miners' strikes. There are some pertinent parallels to life in Britain in 2022.

Coasting, I learned, is the act of sailing around the coastline of a country, taking your time, dipping in and out of life on land. Raban turns it from an insult from his schooldays into a personality trait worth celebrating. It is a removal from life in the mainstream: selling up and going to sea. What's brilliant about the book is the way Raban combines memoir, travel writing about his own country, and descriptions of the awesome power of the sea and Britain's coastline. I found myself highlighting large chunks of the book. It is just so wise, enlightening, and intriguing. I expected it to be slightly dusty and dated but it feels fresh, vivid, and timeless. Highly recommended.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the early 1980s two travel writers had the same idea: to take the measure of the UK from its edges. Paul Theroux described his journey, made mainly by rail, in The Kingdom by the Sea which I read when it was published, and Jonathan Raban, who chose to sail around the country in an old two masted sailing boat, recounted his travels in Coasting, which became something of a travel writing classic, and which I have only just got round to reading. The two authors’ journeys, incidentally, bumped up against each other in Brighton; a somewhat awkward encounter, described rather differently in each book.
It was a good time to be taking an outside-in look at the British: Margaret Thatcher was at the height of her authority , and the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands brought out the worst in British jingoism and sabre-rattling The country was changing rapidly but continuing to hanker after an imperial past. Coasting is less of a travelogue than The Kingdom by the Sea, and is content to bob along on the current and go wherever fancy leads, and there’s a strong element of personal journey involved as well, but as a perceptive view of a period of great change it’s an essential record.

[Vivian Klerk]

‘Coasting’ by Jonathan Raban
Best known for his nautical writing, this book is a mixture of travel (sailing on a 4000 mile single-handed voyage around the coast of Britain at the age of 40), personal reminiscences of his life as the only son of a vicar, a mediocre student ‘coasting’ through life, trailing an unfinished Masters and Phd behind him. All of this autobiographical material is elegantly entwined with apt quotes and comments from various British writers since the 1600s. Using beautifully crafted language, his descriptions of the sea in its various moods, small ports and (crumbling) villages are enchanting. With wry humour and acid incisiveness he includes personal snippets here and there – like his first (unsuccessful) sexual encounter as an awkward teenager, which is hilarious. He plots his naval trajectory, getting it wrong more often than not, while he ponders the perilous state of Thatcher’s Britain (at the time of the Falkland war), the insular arrogance and condescension of the people living there, the rigid social hierarchies in place, the creaky state of the Church of England, and so much more. This book takes its place, for me, alongside Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson. Well worth reading.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a lovely travel account of Raban’s 1982 journey around the coast of England in a boat, “coasting” from unknown town to remembered city. Raban meets up with friends and strangers and writerly mentors and competitors. For me it was an escape from Trumpism into Thatcherism, because Raban was a keen observer of England at the tipping point from Industrial Revolution to tourism and a global economy. The coal mines were closing, fishing grounds were being taken over by other North Sea countries, and mechanized container ships were taking over the docks. His account is equal parts sea / sky / weather and the mystifying customs of people on land. But it is his keen observations and lyrical descriptions—however sad—that compel the story and the reader on the tide of the book.

[ricard flay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved his review of the current UK coastal geography, and the socialogical variences from town to town. But, I was dismayed when he announced he was not sailing over the top of Scotland. For me, sailing past Cape Wrath would have been the most enjoyable part of his book. I understand that he was afraid to do this as the winter was closing in, but he should have arrived in Scotlan
d earlier in the year rather than spend so much time in London. This is the same situation I encountered when reading The Oregon Trail only to find the author failed to complete his journey.

[Peter Burton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written but now perhaps a bit dated so it’s an historical record of Britain in the early 1980s with the Falklands War,the miners’ strike etc.I enjoyed the autobiographical sections,his school and father and also the discussion of the changing role of the Church of England and his meeting with Philip Larkin in Hull.The boating sections evoked the pleasure and dangers of his trip.Overall an interesting book but a time capsule of the past.Is Britain different now or are some things unchangeable?

[Torsten Wiedemann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story about my favourite country (England),
In my favourite decennium (the 80ies),
Based on my favourite theme (travelling).
Beautifully written.
I have read this book in 2022, 40 years after Jonathan sailed around England in a small trawler. The world didn't change much since then:
Among many other themes, the Falkland war and the economic recession, which are important themes in the 80ies, seem to worry the author.
Now we have the Ucrainian war and another economic recession. Nothing ever changes. Running away (for example in a small boat) seems to be the only option.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars?

Raban is a good writer, and I loved Bad Land for its masterful balance of context, history and travelogue.

Unfortunately, Coasting isn't as tight. When he actually talks about his adventures and the experience of sailing around the British coast, this book is excellent. This book starts strong, and I loved the chapter about the Isle of Man.

However, the balance in some of these chapters just feels a bit off, and while I enjoyed reading this, I think the book itself wasn't well resolved as one thing or the other.

[Norman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written and an enjoyable read. It reveals much about his C of E vicar father, himself and lots of conservative minded English coastal characters. It especially shows England as it was in 1982 and the dreadful ‘smash the Argies’ gutter press attitudes of the early Thatcher years. These and the brief miners’ strike episodes make for a disturbing and depressing read at times. For a voyage round Britain, he spends too much of the book on England’s south coast and too little on Wales and Scotland’s glorious west coast.

[Matthew Cartledge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a conventional travel book in any sense, the narrative doesn’t follow the course of the journey chronologically, and instead strings together a series of musings on life and the state of the nation in the early 80s against the backdrop of Raban’s round Britain sailing voyage. The dry, slightly gloomy tone suited my January mood, and the whole book works wonderfully well. Such a shame it seems to be out of print.