An inspiring biography . . . infused with his characteristic humour and common sense

The awesome history of reproductive medicine from myth to the latest breakthroughs ... magisterial in its unfolding of the science for a lay audience

Anyone who cares about the coast should read this book - before it is too late.

Scarcely pausing for one slow and adoring gaze across the Norfolk coast he loves, Richard Girling plunges off from the first page into the most brilliant and devastating attack yet written on bungling, political weakness, incompetence and sheer slowness of those who are meant to be in charge of the seas around our shores.

Richard Girling calls the sea our civilisation's "amniotic fluid". His story of its violation by oil pollution, over-fishing, climate-change-driven erosion and our belief that we have the wisdom to "manage" the marine environment is shocking. It's a story of arrogance, ignorance and greed, and in Girling's electrifying prose it becomes a parable of wilful matricide.

For centuries our sea, less our lands, was what characterised us as a people. Now we fly over it, seek it less for work and play, and fail to recognise that it is in crisis. Richard Girling's wonderfully informed, hard hitting and inspired account of what is happening on our shoreline shatters this ignorance. Sea Change is a book which seems to be energised by the ocean itself and one which could bring us back - just in time - to face the gains and losses of our coast.