An alternative perspective, telling the stories of the fishermen who work on this treacherous stretch of coast, tales gathered over two years of interviews, many conducted in the Swordfish and Star of the title

A terrific new book about a hard and dangerous way of life

Knight has gone in search of old smells and danger and found them in spades. There are extraordinarily evocative stories here, of the mad bravado of scarred, de-fingered fishermen and the stoicism of their women... As a cross-section of west Cornish lives, a celebration of brave eccentricity and a prose illustration of the way those lives overlap and interrelate, The Swordfish and the Star takes some beating

Knight recounts fascinating detail, but also shows a novelist's skill in painting a vivid picture of real Cornwall and real Cornish people: Shane Meadows meets The Perfect Storm

[Knight] is as adept with words as his hero Nutty Noah the Cadgwith ring-netter is with a shoal of pilchards ... exhilarating

The Swordfish and the Star gets top rating for its often searing honesty and its portrayal of fallibility in a harsh, unforgiving world... a terrific read... remarkable

The reading public has become interested in the social anthropology of our relationship with nature and a slew of authors has explored the interdependence of people and the natural world. The best give us a language to read the world around us... This helps explain what's different and admirable about The Swordfish and the Star... Knight does immersive journalism. This account of the lives of the fishing community on both sides of the Penwith Peninsula is driven by personal anecdote... the obsessive, personal tangle with the sea in search of fishy riches, the fortunes made, the lives lost, the courage and recklessness

A hugely refreshing dunk in the ocean ... fascinating

A genuine and powerful insight into the lives of people who brave the sea for a living

An immersive account... It is an eye-opening, dramatic and poignant account of life on Cornwall’s most dangerous coast and the people who fish it.

The Swordfish and the Star is a fine, and at times really beautiful, book. It has a tough no-nonsense prose style that I very much admire. A style that entirely fits the lives of the people it is about, people who live tough lives where the land meets the sea at the far end of Cornwall. There are too few books that tell, so respectfully and truthfully, the stories of the men and women that make a living from the land and the sea

This is a marvellous and humane book about Cornwall -- and unusual: a travel book with no 'I' -- rather the traveller as a silent observer and patient listener. It is Cornish life as told by its people -- fishermen, farmers, publicans, singers, brawlers, historians, drunks, old-timers, newcomers and even D H Lawrence and King Arthur

Wonderfully evocative, from the title to the last line. Knight has condensed the detailed tales and tragedies from decades of fishing, to produce a real insight into those who brave the sea. Full of brotherhood and triumph, loss and sadness

Plaudits will arrive faster than an incoming tide.

In her memoir Leap In, Alexandra Heminsley gives an eloquent exposition of the painful, powerful but ultimately exhilarating effects of wild swimming throughout the winter.

Haunting and beautiful

Like father, like son, for both come across as hugely talented, hugely driven misfits.

The Marches marks him [Stewart] out not only as a writer but as a political force rooted in geographies so different to London as to shed new light on politics itself… [A] serious politician, social critic, and practical ethnographer at work. As such The Marches is a book for walkers, for those who love the Borders, and for fathers seeking inspiration in their family responsibilities… If this is the polymath as politician, then we need more of them.

This is so much more than the story of their journey – it’s a superbly written, endlessly fascinating book encompassing history, geology, landscape, family memories, wars experienced and lives well lived.

One of the most unexpected and enjoyable reads of 2016… The book fizzes erudition and is delightfully leavened by the companionship of his aged and doughty father.

A very funny book - not jovial in the post-Wodehouse Boris mode but something more taught and Caledonian... The politician in Stewart never had a chance against the writer, a reliable adversary of consensus and cant.

Beautiful, evocative, and wise.

The Marches is a transporting work from a powerful and original writer.

This beautifully written account is a moving memoir of tales from along the route but also reflections on life and relationships – father and son on this their last journey together.

Rory Stewart is one of the most talented men of our era. The Marches takes us from Rory’s constituency to his family house is an attempt to understand the bloody history of the Scottish borders… The quest is fascinating even if the answers are elusive.

As the book unfurls, the march along the marches turns into a eulogy to his father, part memoir, part biography, always a love story. It also contains one of the most unflinching, moving descriptions of death I have read.

This beautifully written book is a haunting reflection of identity and our relationships with the people and places we love.

Stewart provides much food for thought about how we value our past history