THE DRAW OF THE SEA

BY WYL MENMUIR, AURUM, £12.99 (HB)

There is something about this book that brings Alan Yentob’s BBC One art series Imagine to mind. In each programme, Yentob showcases a successful artist, and through an interviewing technique that reveals his own admiration, curiosity and wonder, gently reveals the artist’s inspirations, theories and processes.

Wyl Menmuir’s subjects are people who are intimate with the sea around the Isles of Scilly and Cornwall where he lives. The activity of surfers, boaters, divers, fisher-folk and scientists are carefully described in a collection of essays. Like Yentob, Menmuir’s own rapport with the sea – particularly through wrecking and cowrie-shell hunting – grants him a respect for the people he documents, and an understanding from which he can better reveal their craft.

These essays are loosely connected, and the narrative is richer for it. For instance, the chapter documenting the sand artist also references surfing and a marine biologist. They are also bound loosely by themes: the climate crisis, plastic pollution, the housing situation, the role of the sea in our mental and physical health. “I was daydreaming again, the seascape bringing back memories within memories like matryoshka dolls, each thought revealing another within.”

The writing is meditative but insistent, like calm seas at low tide. On finishing the book, I feel an Imagine-esque enlightenment and respect, but there is something else too: thoughtfulness, and an impression of quiet empowerment. Julie Brominicks, outdoors writer