People of the Sea

James Wharram with Hanneke Boon

Lodestar Books

£25

92 year old James Wharram’s autobiography offers fascinating individual insight into post-war social history, design history and changing attitudes.  It’s both a record of voyaging and an advocacy for a different way of living. As an intercultural document it combines insight into the ‘deep mystical strand’ in the German subconscious, with his own pragmatic north of England background. Wharram was inspired by a need to prove that Polynesian double canoes were capable of ocean-crossings, including reliable performance to windward.  His more spiritual ‘people of the sea’ concept is a challenge to the harsh doctrines of ‘landmass man’ and a celebration of the ‘universal female aspect’ that comes as a breath of warm scented air in this harsh winter of 2020