

The Swordfish and the Star: Life on Cornwall's Most Treacherous Stretch of Coast
The west of Cornwall is remote. It's the end of the train line. Newlyn, near the southwestern tip of the peninsula, is the largest deep sea fishing harbour in England. It's a place of contrasts, picture-postcard perfect, with some of the most violent pubs in the country and boxes for disposal of used heroin-needles in every public toilet. Since the late nineteenth century, the fishing industry there has been dominated by a single family, the Stevensons, who run the tiny city like a feudal port, and own the fish auction as well as the largest fleet of beam trawlers.
As Gavin Knight says in the introduction to his extraordinary new book, we associate Cornwall with myths and legends and holidays by the seaside. But the place we escape to is also the place where we confront things about ourselves, both individually and collectively. Cornwall has a huge percentage of second homes, and some of the highest house-prices in the UK, despite being the country's poorest region. The area also has the highest incidence of death from heroin overdose of anywhere in the country outside Liverpool.
In The Swordfish and the Star, Gavin will tell the stories of Cornish people from every level of society. A crabber sets sail for France with an aristocrat on board, who turns out to be a fugitive from justice. Spanish drug dealers leave smack in lobster pots off the coast for collection. A painter who messed around with a fisherman's wife is found dead at the bottom of a tin mine. In the harbour, homeless squatters live on the forgotten cruisers of far-away city traders. These stories build into a vivid evocation of life under a huddle of grey roofs at the edge of the sea at the beginning of the 21st century.