- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: HarperPress (9 Jun 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007174535
- ISBN-13: 978-0007174539
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.6 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 179,002 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Levelling Sea
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Product Description
Review
"This is a simply splendid book... Marsden’s writing is delightfully honed as well as being profoundly well-researched. The Levelling Sea is a microcosm of British history, contained within its covers like a ship in a bottle... Marsden takes a spyglass to the past and shows us it in vivid colour. Convincing in its detail and exciting in its sweep, this portrait of a port and its people sails deep into the reader’s imagination."--Philip Hoare, Sunday Telegraph
"A swashbuckling, but not unserious exploration of bravery, politics and 'fortunes...as liquid as the sea that yielded them.'”--Financial Times
"Outstanding...his pitch-perfect feel for a phrase, plus a gift as sublime as James Hamilton-Paterson or Jonathan Raban’s for describing water, lifts The Levelling Sea far above ordinary history towards a state closer to poetry. This is the best of our island’s liquid tale, told the way it should be."--Bella Bathurst, Sunday Times
"...Had Philip Marsden simply used his travel-writing skills to create a hymn to our surrounding seas, and had he decorated it with magical vocabulary alone, the book would have surely been a flawless triumph. But Mr Marsden has done a great deal more than that."--Simon Winchester, We Love This Book
"The outstanding read of the season... This is a strange, absorbing story, brilliantly told... The best non-fiction expands the particular to the general, and perpetually discovers the marvellous in the ordinary. Marsden pulls this off every time... Read for a good story and beautiful, unpretentious writing. Read it for its introduction, a brilliant essay on seagoing, or for no particular reason. But read it."--Marine Quarterly
"A swashbuckling, but not unserious exploration of bravery, politics and 'fortunes...as liquid as the sea that yielded them.'”--Financial Times
"Outstanding...his pitch-perfect feel for a phrase, plus a gift as sublime as James Hamilton-Paterson or Jonathan Raban’s for describing water, lifts The Levelling Sea far above ordinary history towards a state closer to poetry. This is the best of our island’s liquid tale, told the way it should be."--Bella Bathurst, Sunday Times
"...Had Philip Marsden simply used his travel-writing skills to create a hymn to our surrounding seas, and had he decorated it with magical vocabulary alone, the book would have surely been a flawless triumph. But Mr Marsden has done a great deal more than that."--Simon Winchester, We Love This Book
"The outstanding read of the season... This is a strange, absorbing story, brilliantly told... The best non-fiction expands the particular to the general, and perpetually discovers the marvellous in the ordinary. Marsden pulls this off every time... Read for a good story and beautiful, unpretentious writing. Read it for its introduction, a brilliant essay on seagoing, or for no particular reason. But read it."--Marine Quarterly
Product Description
The story of Britain’s colourful maritime past seen through the changing fortunes of the Cornish port of Falmouth.
Within the space of few years, during the 1560s and 1570s, a maritime revolution took place in England that would contribute more than anything to the transformation of the country from a small rebel state on the fringes of Europe into a world power. Until then, it was said, there was only one Englishman capable of sailing across the Atlantic. Yet within ten years an English ship with an English crew was circumnavigating the world.
At the same time in Cornwall, in the Fal estuary, just a single building – a lime kiln – existed where the port of Falmouth would emerge. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century, Falmouth would be one of the busiest harbours in the world.
‘The Levelling Sea’ uses the story of Falmouth’s spectacular rise and fall to explore wider questions about the sea and its place in history and imagination. Drawing on his own deep connection with Cornwall, award-winning author Philip Marsden writes unforgettably about the power of the sea and its ability to produce greed on a piratical scale, dizzying corruption, and grand and tragic aspirations.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I've read all of Marsden's books and each one compels the reader in a different way. The Levelling Sea combines the history of a unique corner of England with consummate story telling. This is a fascinating and highly readable account of the birth of the thriving port of Falmouth in Cornwall as England grew to be a dominant naval and maritime trading power.
With great skill, Marsden explores the rich lives of the diverse and colourful characters drawn to Falmouth during its boom years including smugglers, pirates and talented misfits from all parts of society. Through painstaking research and the discovery of historic gems lying deep in archives, Marsden brings to life the perilous adventures of sailors embarking on arduous voyages to bring home valuable and exotic treasures.
He takes us to places that still exist in modern day Cornwall; be it a Jewish cemetery obscured behind a car showroom or the remains of a manor built by Elizabethan privateers concealed in Falmouth town centre.
A compelling and pitch perfect read.
With great skill, Marsden explores the rich lives of the diverse and colourful characters drawn to Falmouth during its boom years including smugglers, pirates and talented misfits from all parts of society. Through painstaking research and the discovery of historic gems lying deep in archives, Marsden brings to life the perilous adventures of sailors embarking on arduous voyages to bring home valuable and exotic treasures.
He takes us to places that still exist in modern day Cornwall; be it a Jewish cemetery obscured behind a car showroom or the remains of a manor built by Elizabethan privateers concealed in Falmouth town centre.
A compelling and pitch perfect read.
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
While most history tends to be about what happens to people on solid land, Philip Marsden urges us to reflect, more deeply, about what it means to be surrounded - and to have always been surrounded - by so much sea. He begins, quietly enough, with his own childhood memories of sailing around the Cornish coast. From here, he sets off to explore the courageous and often wayward lives of Falmouth's most famous sea farers. The many scrapes, ship wrecks, sudden reversals of fortune, kidnappings and sea battles recounted in these pages remind us how tamed our conception of sea-travel has become since generations of Cornishmen stopped shifting around the world on bits of wood, propelled by the force of the wind. The result is a generously detailed map of reflections and journeys; history, in fact, as conceived by Herman Melville. This is a beautifully paced work too; somehow Marsden manages to combine all this variety of material with a genuine sense of expanse, of life opening out.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is by far the best book I have ever come across detailing the evolving of Falmouth as a town and port and its distinguished maritime history.
The author looks at his subject with a great eye for detail and with the added advantage of being a keen sailor himself. It is written in a very readable way. Unlike some histories which are simply statements of fact, Philip Marsden takes the reader right into the lower decks of the ships as only a mariner can, looking at the life and times of the men who served on them, giving in depth biographical detail of some of the important players and explaining in detail their contribution to the development of Falmouth and indeed of the wider British Empire and setting the whole history of the place in its historical context and significance. He sets the scene in his first few pages and from then the book sails on an enthralling and exciting adventure with Falmouth and its citizens from the days of the Piratical Killigrew family through to their eventual settling down as founders of a town which for generations played a hugely significant role in British maritime history through decades of conflict with France and other European nations and the Glory Years of the Packet Service down to more modern times.
In addition, Philip Marsden weaves into his writing an often quite poignant personal journey, his own voyage of discovery from idyllic days with his grandfather to his own modern sailing and boat owning experiences.
It is often said that once you open a book you can't put it down, this is certainly so with The Levelling Sea and as one who knows the area very well from a lifetime spent here, I find it much more than just a "Story of a Cornish Haven".
The author looks at his subject with a great eye for detail and with the added advantage of being a keen sailor himself. It is written in a very readable way. Unlike some histories which are simply statements of fact, Philip Marsden takes the reader right into the lower decks of the ships as only a mariner can, looking at the life and times of the men who served on them, giving in depth biographical detail of some of the important players and explaining in detail their contribution to the development of Falmouth and indeed of the wider British Empire and setting the whole history of the place in its historical context and significance. He sets the scene in his first few pages and from then the book sails on an enthralling and exciting adventure with Falmouth and its citizens from the days of the Piratical Killigrew family through to their eventual settling down as founders of a town which for generations played a hugely significant role in British maritime history through decades of conflict with France and other European nations and the Glory Years of the Packet Service down to more modern times.
In addition, Philip Marsden weaves into his writing an often quite poignant personal journey, his own voyage of discovery from idyllic days with his grandfather to his own modern sailing and boat owning experiences.
It is often said that once you open a book you can't put it down, this is certainly so with The Levelling Sea and as one who knows the area very well from a lifetime spent here, I find it much more than just a "Story of a Cornish Haven".
Most Recent Customer Reviews
History of Falmouth
I practically grew up in Falmouth and spent four years at the art school there, yet I learned something new and fascinating on almost every page.
Published 17 days ago by Malcolm Ross-macdonald
"The permanence of the coast is an illusion created by the brevity of...
In essence, this book appears a history of Falmouth's relationship with the sea in the thousand or so years before steam finally took over from sail. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Nicholas Casley
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