Whipping Up a Storm

Available for over a year

In this series of Essays writer Jon Gower explores the patches of sea water around Wales, sailing past Viking slave traders, soft crumbling coastlines, industrial scale smuggling, marathon chess matches between lighthouse keepers, ghost ships, whales and walruses along the way. For the country of Wales, surrounded on three sides by the sea, that sea has always been important – a trade route, a means to export ideas such as Christianity, or as a source of fish - especially herring, so many herring. Whipping Up a Storm - Jon charts the way the water out west is a bringer of bounteous gifts but a shipwrecker too, a creature of wild mood swings where a calm surface can summarily change as the wind gets up and erupts into a wild and avenging anger. The waves and the wind are able to lick the very land into shape, and occasionally reveal the ancient landscapes embodied in Welsh myths. Produced by Megan Jones and Philippa Swallow.