An In Conversation with Dominic Gregory - Canterbury

On the empty shingle beach of Dungeness, the volunteer crew of the lifeboat await her next launch. It might come in another week. Or it might even happen in the next few seconds…

For two hundred years, the Dungeness lifeboat has launched in storms and heavy seas to frigates and barques, trawlers and dinghies. Like all lifeboat stations in the British Isles, it is led by a coxswain and staffed entirely by volunteers. Dominic Gregory volunteers as part of her crew. Dungeness is itself a place apart. An ever-shifting expanse of shingle jutting into the English Channel, it is overshadowed by its nuclear power station and made famous by Derek Jarman’s flotsam garden. Dungeness is also where millions of migrating birds and insects first make landfall in the British Isles. A small place perhaps, but one that finds itself now at the centre of one of the biggest political stories of modern times.

At the heart of this wonderful book is the lifeboat crew with whom Dominic Gregory serves, many of them from families who have crewed the lifeboat for generations.