Searching for Doggerland

A renowned writer is set to introduce her new book as part of an event to celebrate the east coast of England.

Hosted by Waveney and Blyth Arts, Searching for Doggerland – further thoughts will take place on March 14 at The Cut in Halesworth.

Internationally-acclaimed author Julia Blackburn will be joined by film maker and writer Hugh Brody to explore the area known as Doggerland.

In 2015 Julia attended a symposium on the actual and imagined history of Doggerland organised by Waveney & Blyth Arts where she became fascinated by the huge fertile area that once connected the east coast of England with mainland Europe until it was submerged by rising sea levels.

Four years on Julia, who has been described as ‘one of the most original writers in Britain’, will introduce her new book Time Song – Searching for Doggerland as part of a morning of talks and film about this extraordinary place.

The book is an inspiring mix of the factual and the personal, with each of its pages ‘bringing a surprise, an epiphany, a phrase of such beauty and simple profundity you can only gasp’. It combines fragments from her own life with a series of eighteen ‘songs’ and stories about the places and the people she met in her quest to get closer to an understanding of Doggerland.

She will be joined by the renowned anthropologist, film maker and writer Hugh Brody. He will present a film, Fishing at the Stone Weir, about the Canadian Inuits, whose lives in the early 20th century relate to all hunter gatherers, from the Neanderthals to the Mesolithic people who inhabited Doggerland a mere 7,000 years ago.