Time Song

Time Song

Searching for Doggerland

Summary

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE AND THE HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE

A journey told through stories and songs into Doggerland, the ancient region that once joined the east coast of England to Holland


Time Song tells of the creation, the existence and the loss of a country now called Doggerland, a huge and fertile area that once connected the entire east coast of England with mainland Europe, until it was finally submerged by rising sea levels around 5000 BC.

Julia Blackburn mixes fragments from her own life with a series of eighteen 'songs' and all sorts of stories about the places and the people she meets in her quest to get closer to an understanding of this vanished land. She sees the footprints of early humans fossilised in the soft mud of an estuary alongside the scattered pockmarks made by rain falling eight thousand years ago. She visits a cave where the remnants of a Neanderthal meal have turned to stone. In Denmark she sits beside Tollund Man who, despite having lain in a peat bog since the start of the Bronze Age, seems to be about to wake from a dream...

'This book is a wonder' Adam Nicolson, Spectator


'A clairvoyant and poetic conversation with the past' Antony Gormley

Reviews

  • A poetic and fascinating exploration of life on Doggerland... This is one of the only books I've ever read that has made me feel better about climate change.
    Olivia Laing, Guardian *Book of the Week*

About the author

Julia Blackburn

Julia Blackburn has written ten books of non-fiction, the most recent of which, Time Song, was shortlisted for the 2019 Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize. Her family memoir The Three of Us won the 2009 J.R. Ackerley Award, and her two novels, The Book of Colour and The Leper’s Companions, were both shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She lives in Suffolk and Italy.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more