The subject of this book is that stretch of water generally called the Irish Sea, and its shores, considered as a place of exchange and meeting, as a zone of interaction, as a fact of geography and history that precedes mere nations. We are accustomed to the idea of a Mediterranean culture, so why not to a culture and history of our own inland sea? Perhaps because the idea of nationality gets in the way. This book has no single historical focus, but a central question: what is it to live and die along these shores?

This book challenges many notions of identity and encourages a look at the coastlines around the Irish Sea from the perspective of that sea, rather than national identity. Such a way of thinking - by way of shorelines - precedes the nations that squat along the shores