Rod Edmond

So rich in literary references, many I had never come across before. The author seems so well read, I can't help but wonder how much of an influence Scarlett Thomas as his partner had on this book, that is so well constructed, starting with personal experience of playing cricket on the Goodwin sands, before delving into the history of the area, with seemingly the most up-to date historical facts (landing of Romans at Ebbsfleet). He describes old events, such as in 5000BC Thanet broke away from mainland until silted Wantsum Channel in the middle Ages; to usage of modern slang "planet Thanet", and descriptions of contemporary border force patrols and far right group rallies in Dover. He describes how the first scientific survey of the Goodwin sands was in 1840. Evidence suggests the sand slowly cut Sandwich off from the sea and silted the Wantsum in the late Middle Ages, and explains puddles on the sands are termed "foxholes", deeper water filled holes are termed "swillies". Experiencing the controlled explosion of the cooling towers (nicknamed "The Three Sisters" of Richborough Power station, he describes the festive atmosphere he felt. He describes viewing France from the Kent coast, seeing striations on the white cliffs of France at Cap Gris-Nez. He describes The Cave of Vortigern/Vortigern's Cavern, Northumberland House Margate. Vortigern was the British king said to have granted Thanet to the Saxon invaders Hengist and Horsa. Said to have a Lido tunnel attached to it (not discovered), and I enjoyed the fabricated myth retelling of the Shell Grotto (the myth dispelled by Margaret Bolton in her plausible history, but history is what you choose to believe). The mixture of personal experience, occasional colour pictures, travelling to the places described and writing the history of the places is what makes the book so interesting. At Fan Bay, volunteering to help unearth the Sound Mirrors, he recalls his ancestor's letter home from WW1, and feels an affinity with the people who sheltered there. Borderland describes how the author grew to love the underground spaces which develops with his writing as the book progresses. I was expecting more of the geology of Thanet, but nonetheless enjoyed travelling and exploring the places. The ending of the book describes his personal experience of the system applications for asylum seekers, how The Citadel on Dover's Western Heights became a detention centre for immigrants, the text seems more political (including Ukip's billboard 2014 depicting an escalator up cliff) than the rest of the book. It has an extensive bibliography.
Below are a few of the references I enjoyed:
The merchant of Venice (Goodwin sands)
Turner Painting of cricket on the sands
1854 London illustrated news woodcut captain Pearson "the Spartan" lugger cricket on the sands
W H Auden "in sickness and in health" Goodwin sands
"The Saxon Shore Way" Alan Sillitoe & Fay Godwin (shape of Kent coast is like a chin)
Will Self article The New Statesman June 2015 description of Kent coast
Thomas Treanor Heroes of the Goodwin Sands
Ian Fleming Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (picnic on the sands)
John Conrad (Joseph's son) description of the sands when taken there as a schoolboy "that damn piece of mother earth that has claimed so many wrecks".
Isle of Lomea
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes the Goodwin island being inundated by sand after 1099 storm.
Charles Lyell author dispelled myths in 1830s (Principles of Geology?)
Daniel Defoe The Storm.
1979 The Stirling Castle reappeared on the sands preserved.
William Cobbett Rural Rides (description of Deal)
Douglas Jerrold Black-Ey'd Susan (romantic melodrama Nelson living in Deal)
R.M. Ballantyne The Lifeboat (1864, set in Deal)
Ballantyne The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands (1870)
Wilkie Collins The Moonstone (Goodwin sands)
Ford Madox Ford The Cinque Ports (human bones stuck out of the hillside at Reculver.
A sixteenth century writer Oysters from Reculver "reputed as farre to passe those of Whistaple..."
Juvenal poet oyster from the "Rutupian shore"
Monumental arch seventy-five feet high at Richborough
Charlotte Higgins "Under Another Sky" describes Richborough power station
Defence: William Cobbett, visit in 1823; Alan Sillitoe in 1951; Matthew Arnold Dover Beach; Auden Dover; Daljit Nagra Look We Have Coming to Dover.
Dickens Sketches by Boz
Rosemary Hill
Jane Carlyle
Spencer Thomson "Health Resorts of Britain" 1860
William Powell Frith Ramsgate Sands painting
Queen Victoria's journal
A Guide to the Coast of Kent 1859
William Dyce painting Pegwell Bay (Donati's Comet in the sky)
Vivien Eliot letter 1921
AG Bradley England's Outpost (1921)
T S Eliot The Waste Land
David Seabrook All The Devils are Here
John Betjeman "Margate 1940"
Lindsay Anderson 1953 O Dreamland
Hamish Fulton's Walk
Tracey Emin She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea
Karl Marx letters
Turner painting
John Buchan The Thirty-Nine Steps
Clare Ungerson Four Thousand Lives: The Rescue of German Jewish Men to Britain
Richard Aldington Death of a Hero , Sandwich he calls Hamborough
Ford Madox Ford (Sandwich)
Tom Paine Rights of Man inspired American Declaration of Independence, lived in Sandwich and Margate
Chalk: Jacquetta Hawkes A Land
Carol Ann Duffy White Cliffs
Auden In Praise of Limestone
Noel Coward painting of St Margaret's Bay
Derek Leach Dover's Caves & Tunnels (2011)
Fleming Moonraker, nuclear warhead set into the white cliffs
Mary Shelley The Last Man , near story ending a tsunami approaches the Beach at Dover
Sally Minogue Shell Grotto (poem)
Sonia Overall The Realm of Shells (2006 novel) fictional Margate shell grotto
Kathleen Jamie (author) describes entering a body and moving through it's chambers.
David Seabrook All the Devils are Here
East Kent coalfield "Kent's short lived industrial phase" "1896-1989"
Gina Harkell The Migration of Mining Families to the Kent Coalfield Between the Wars (1978)
George Orwell The Road to Wigan Pier describes the world of the miner (but not set in Kent)
Pawel Pawlikowski (Film) Last Resort, imagines whole of Margate as a detention centre
Migration: Abdulrazak Gurnah (Nobel laureate and teacher in Dover) Pilgrim's Way, By the Sea, The Last Gift.
Coda: King Lear scene from the top of a cliff… (more)