A Celebration of the Shipping Forecast

Forties, Dogger, German Bight, Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight… These words speak to us like a spell, cast like a safety net, enchanting in their delivery. Since its first BBC broadcast 100 years ago, the Shipping Forecast has captured the nation’s heart. Its thirty-one areas take us on a virtual voyage from the Shetlands and Norway, down the North Sea, along the English Channel to the nearest shard of Iceland. Join Kathy Clugston and Rob Stepney for a love letter in poetry and prose from Britain’s literary landscape to this iconic radio broadcast.

No Alibis Bookstore will be selling copies of the new book by Kathy and Rob, Good, Occasionally Rhyming: A Celebration of the Shipping Forecast in Poetry and Prose, at the event and the authors will be happy to sign copies.

Kathy Clugston was a continuity announcer and read the Shipping Forecast hundreds of times. She now chairs Gardeners’ Question Time on BBC Radio 4.

Writer Rob Stepney has contributed to Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent and has co-written two books of poetry.