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The Turning Tide

A Biography of the Irish Sea

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The Turning Tide

By: Jon Gower
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An immersive history of a pivotal stretch of water

‘Fascinating, spellbinding, erudite and great fun.’ Roddy Doyle

‘Remarkable. Lively … Gower writes beautifully [and] the book is profoundly popular.’ Times Literary Supplement

The Turning Tide is a hymn to a sea passage of world-historical importance. Combining social and cultural history, nature-writing, travelogue and politics, Welshman Jon Gower charts a sea which has carried both Vikings and saints; invasion forces, royals and rebels; writers, musicians and fishermen.

The divided but interconnected waters of the Irish Sea – from the narrow North Channel through St George’s Channel to where the Celtic sea opens out into the wide Atlantic – have a turbulent history to match the violence of its storms. Jon Gower is a sympathetic and interested pilot, taking the reader to the great shipyards of Belfast and through the mass exodus of the starving during the Irish Famine in coffin boats bound for America. He follows the migrations of working men and women looking for work in England and tells the tales of more casual travellers: sometimes seasick, often homesick too.

The Irish Sea is also a place with an abundant natural history. The rarest sea bird in Europe visits its coasts in summer while the rarest goose wings in during winter.

The Turning Tide navigates waters teeming with life, filled with seals and salt-tanged stories and surveyed by seabirds. Lyrically written and fizzing with curiosity, this is a remarkable and far-reaching book.

©2023 Jon Gower Europe Great Britain Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Science
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Critic reviews

‘Fascinating, spellbinding, erudite and great fun.’ Roddy Doyle
‘Remarkable. Lively … Gower writes beautifully [and] the book is profoundly popular.’ Times Literary Supplement
‘An enjoyable trawl through the miscellaneous histories of the communities that have passed through the Irish Sea from deep time until now. … Enjoyably idiosyncratic. … A welcome and wandering reminder of the sea beyond our door.’ Irish Times
‘The book equivalent of being hosted by a travelling storyteller around a fire.’ Gwenno
‘As full of life and vitality as the sea itself.’ Nicholas Crane
‘The Irish Sea has found her bard. This is a dazzle of storytelling, an enthralling trove of history and a joyful work of travel and reportage, singing with the love of the sea.' Horatio Clare
‘A beautifully absorbing read encompassing aeons of human and natural histories. What a remarkable, generous, compendious achievement.' Neil Hegarty
‘Contagious with delight and fascination. The seeming informality, the twinkle-in-the-eye in the telling, the gentle provocation make it a joy to read. Jon's perhaps brought into a being a new class of book, for it's nothing if not a “Racontography.”’ Cynan Jones
‘In prose as glittering as the ocean itself, Gower unearths the saints and smugglers, the birds and bards that have inhabited this salty kingdom. In The Turning Tide, the Irish Sea roars with a unique passion and character.’ Mike Parker
‘An elegant, engrossing portrait of the turbulent Irish Sea. Bursting with detailed natural history and stories of conquest, love, tragedy, and poetry alike, and so teeming with life, you can’t stop reading.’ Bathsheba Demuth
'A master storyteller, Gower takes us to his hinterland with the excitement of a rockpool explorer … A stunning object.' Nation.Cymru
'A book full of sounds and sensations … Entertaining.' New Welsh Review
‘Riveting.’ Independent.ie
All stars
Most relevant
A beautifully written and performed portrait populated by shearwaters, geese, lighthouse keepers, shipbuilders and saints. This book places the Irish Sea at the heart of the British Isles.

Beautifully written and read

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About a third of the way through this book I seriously thought that I was listening to the birdwatchers guide to the Irish Sea. This part of the book is crammed with ornithological facts and behavioural traits and it is clear that the author John Gower is a keen twitcher. It is not what I bought this audiobook for.

Nonetheless I perservered and I am glad I did. I couldn’t help but like John Gower’s enthusiasm for his subject, his keen delivery and mellifluous tone, even if he is rather partial to using words like “fecund” and “quotidien” rather liberally.

He packs in so many facts and stories into this book it could easily have been three times the size and still have made good listening. Sadly some stories were skimmed over and others missed out altogether. I was disappointed not to hear more about the adventures of Moelfre Lifeboat Coxswain Dic Evans and his crew, or those of his Holyhead RNLI colleague Will “bach” Jones. Indeed the wartime exploits of the legendary Norman Warden Owen DSM (read his obituary on line) were omitted altogether, as were the stories of so many seafarers throughout the ages, including Irish Sea mercantile marine icon Captain Macgregor Skinner and the many world-class yachtsmen who hail from these seas.

Gower also dusts over the fascinating stories of the various private lighthouses that were purchased under Acts of Parliament and omits altogether the story of the telegraph system that was able to send notice of ships arrival to Liverpool within minutes of being sent from North Stack. This is a rich vein that is worthy of a lot more research.

Here’s hoping John Gower writes another book on this subject, there is so much to cover.

A charming potted history of The Irish Sea.

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Although a fairly interesting history, this book should be sub titled ‘a Biography of the Celtic Sea’ as there is almost nothing about the Irish sea north of Wales. Disappointing

Misleading title

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You would think the Cumbrian coast didn’t exist. John Paul Jones raid on Whitehaven? No.

This doesn’t cover the Irish Sea. It’s about Pembrokeshire with a bit about Ireland.

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