Coasting: Running Around the Coast of Britain – Life, Love and (Very) Loose Plans

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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. 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.

Elise is so candid about her experience and I found this approach refreshing and generous and, at times, hilarious.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. Quite an annoying book really because it was good in patches and if he'd have just stuck to the actual voyage and not rambled on about other bits and bobs it would have better. Over the next 301 days, she saw Britain at its most wild and wonderful, and discovered that running away doesnt solve your problems but it's more fun than dealing with them. The personal reminiscences are skillfully woven into the stories of storms at sea and encounters on shore.

Where Theroux is cocksure, Raban is barnacled by hang-ups: about his unhappy boyhood (he finds Dartmouth’s naval college so evocative of his 1950s boarding school that he flees); about his rocky relationship with his father, an Anglican priest; and about his own fecklessness as he approaches middle age. 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.I was therefore a bit disappointed that she actually relied very heavily on staying at people’s houses night after night and didn’t actually pitch her first tent up until well over 6months in. Salman Rushdie Coasting round Britain single-handed in an antique two-masted sailing boat, Jonathan Raban conducts a masterly exploration of England and the English at the time of Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War. 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. Constantly crying, phoning her mum 5 times a day to moan, not bothering to learn to read a map… she improved as the journey went on, so this must have been her coming of age journey.

Running away from your problems doesn’t solve anything - but sometimes it’s more fun than dealing with them. Occasional binge drinking alongside of a breakup with an abusive boyfriend features prominently in the narrative. A hugely enjoyable jaunt around Britain, that proves that you can find adventure right on your doorstep.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. 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. This whole book is a moan fest about an over privileged young girl who has everything given to her and so can't handle any adversity and by the end still doesn't seem to have learnt anything. She had just graduated from university; she had a shiny new flat, her first proper job and a budding relationship - and they were all making her utterly miserable. She admits this herself and considers herself lucky, despite the constant negativity and self doubt (of which there was a lot).