Salt On Your Tongue: Women and the Sea

Salt on Your Tongue begins with Charlotte Runcie discovering she is pregnant just as her longing for the sea becomes impossible to ignore. What follows moves between approaching motherhood and the women who have worked beside, sung about and been written out of maritime history.

I was especially taken by the Scottish coastline running through it, from childhood rockpools at Elgol to Cramond, St Monans and the lighthouse at Neist Point. Runcie gathers sea shanties, selkie stories, fishwives, salt workers and memories of her formidable grandmother, letting each lead naturally into questions of birth, grief and belonging.

This is a curious, personal book rather than a straightforward history, and that is where its charm lies. The sea becomes adventure, danger, home and inheritance all at once. I finished it feeling that women had always been present in our sea stories, even when the familiar versions left them ashore.