From the maritime bookshelf
Julia’s Yachting Monthly book reviews are a selection of nautical literature, both fiction and non-fiction, chosen for their insights, information and likely relevance to the interests of Yachting Monthly readers.
Sailors need pilotage information for unfamiliar harbours, practical handbooks to help them manage the systems of their yachts and books about nature, seas and coastlines.
Founded in 1906, Yachting Monthly is one of the oldest surviving yachting papers. Because it has always been aimed at the cruising rather than the racing sailor, book reviews have always formed part of its service to readers.
We are committed to sharing Julia’s new book choices here on Golden Duck every month.
Loading reviews…
Loading reviews
In this issue
Julia, Peter Duck and
Julia’s relationship with Yachting Monthly goes back well beyond her own work for the magazine.
Her father, George Jones, was a yacht broker and her uncle, Jack Francis Jones, was a naval architect. Both contributed to Yachting Monthly before Julia was born. George was also, for a time, the magazine’s Suffolk coast correspondent. The magazine played a small part in bringing Julia’s parents together too, after her mother answered a Yachting Monthly advertisement for the East Coast Yacht Agency while looking for her first small yacht.
Julia grew up sailing aboard Peter Duck, the yacht built for Arthur Ransome in 1946 and later bought by her father. Ransome’s writing repeatedly drew on his own sailing experience and Yachting Monthly has continued to write about his boats, his work and the sailing history around them.
Her bunk aboard Peter Duck occupied the space originally intended for Arthur’s typewriter, making it an ideal place to curl up with a book.
Read more about Peter Duck and her place at the heart of Golden Duck.Today, Julia is Yachting Monthly’s literary contributor, choosing books she thinks will be of interest to its readers and writing about them while drawing on her own experience as a lifelong reader and sailor.
Julia’s contributions continue a family connection with the magazine that now spans several generations.
We are proud to share that work here on Golden Duck.
