'And Now The Shipping Forecast' by Peter Jefferson

Subtitled 'A tide of history around our shores', the book does just what it says on the tin. Written interestingly and accessibly by actor, presenter and newsreader Peter Jefferson, who has vocalised weather on the BBC for forty years, its importance to shipping is rivalled only by the hordes of people who ritually stay up just to listen to the final forecast of the day which follows the musical prelude 'Sailing By', and who might fail to sleep without his dulcet tones intoning its reassuring rhythmic mantra. A voice sounding like, perhaps in a crazy world, things are under control.