The Cruise of the Nona: The Story of a Cruise from Holyhead to the Wash, with Reflections and Judgments on Life and Letters, Men and Manners

In The Cruise of the 'Nona,' Hilaire Belloc sets off "to sail the English seas again, and to pursue from thought to thought and from memory to memory such things as have occupied one human soul." On one level a breezy record of an adventurous journey; underneath the surface, a wise and insightful study of modern life, particularly in its transition from the Victorian to the early modern period. Belloc's prose glitters and crashes like ocean breakers.

Belloc sees sailing as an analogy to life...