Author:Charles Rangeley-Wilson
‘A wonderful and important book, that from its first pages draws the reader along on a fascinating, gripping, often funny journey.’ Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of Underland.
An idiosyncratic history of our island story told through five iconic fish
On these rain-swept islands in the North Atlantic man and fish go back a long way. Fish are woven through the fabric of the country’s history: we depend on them – for food, for livelihood and for fun – and now their fate depends on us in a relationship which has become more complex, passionate and precarious in the sophisticated 21st Century.
In Silver Shoals Charles Rangeley-Wilson travels north, south, east and west through the British Isles tracing the histories, living and past, of our most iconic fish – cod, carp, eels, salmon and herring – and of the fishermen who catch them and care for them.
In the company of trawlermen, longshoremen, conservationists and anglers Charles goes to sea in a trawler, whiles away hot afternoons setting eel nets, tries to bag his first elusive carp and drifts for herring on Guy Fawkes night as fireworks starburst the sky.
Underscoring this journey is a fascinating historical exploration of these creatures that have shaped our island story. We learn how abundant and valued these fish were centuries before our current crisis of over-fishing: we learn how eels built our monasteries, how cod sank the Spanish Armada, how fish and chips helped us through two World Wars.
Of course there is a deeper environmental dimension to the story, but Charles' optimistic perspective is this: no one is more invested in fish than the fishermen whose lives depend on them. If we can find a way to harness that passion then the future of fish and fishermen in Britain could be as extraordinary as its past.
At once history and elegy, Silver Shoals leads its readers from silent lakes to roiling seas in search of the fish on which Britain has always depended. A bracingly recounted and often melancholy quest, ending on a note of optimism.
—— Luke JenningsRangely-Wilson, an angler and East Anglian, reconnects us though this enjoyable fish-catching pilgrimage to the vast plenty of herring, cod, eel and salmon that once existed around Britain's shores and in our rivers; a plenty which can return to a significant extent if more people are conscious of that past, understand its lessons and take the common-sense steps necessary to bring abundance back again.
—— Charles CloverA wonderful and important book, that from its first pages draws the reader along on a fascinating, gripping, often funny journey. It binds this wide, wise book too tightly, I think, to call it "nature writing" (whatever that is these days anyway). Many kinds of writing shoal together here - cultural history, natural history, travelogue, ecology, politics - to form a brilliant and glittering whole.
—— Robert Macfarlane[Charles Rangeley-Wilson] summarises the individual fish biographers with wonderful clarity while also managing to illuminate how gloriously entangled his subjects are with human history… [a] wonderfully insightful book
—— Mark Cocker , New StatesmanSilver Shoals glints with lovely details… And any book that can come up with the precise date when the first pan of fish and chips was served gets my vote
—— Jonathan Tulloch , The Tablet[Charles Rangeley-Wilson] is a vivid, exuberant writer, and a highly articulate and committed champion of his cause
—— Tom Fort , Literary ReviewThis is a great read for all your fishing mad and conservationist friends
—— Merryn Somerset Webb , Financial TimesIrreverent
—— iNews, The best Christmas car giftsPlato is adept at telling a story. Totally authentic. There's plenty of laughs to be had and insight on offer
—— AutosportIt makes for one of the great sporting life stories . . . Forget everything you thought about sports stars and any expectations of sports autobiographies. Plato is truly an unconventional sportsman, and this is truly an unconventional autobiography, but it is all the better for being so
—— NB MagazineThe frank autobiography of British Touring Car Championship legend
—— Motorsport News, Christmas Gift GuideThere's plenty of laughs to be had and insight on offer
—— Motorsport NewsAn account of a larger-than-life character whose life outside of the car is just as exhilarating as in it
—— NB MagazinePraise for The Nowhere Men: A magnificent book, full of extraordinary characters and beautifully told
—— Guardian
zpostcode
Recruit
weather
mreligion
Yellowpages
sport
constellation
shopping
name
game
directory
literature
Word
tour
furnish
Lottery
tftnews
lyrics
News
digital
car
dir
Edu
Finance
