FBF Damian Le Bas: The Drowned Places

Damian Le Bas explores the meaning we find in sunken ruins around the world in this spellbinding love letter to diving.

Thousands of years ago, an island off the Straits of Gibraltar went to war with ancient Athens. The battle was lost, and an earthquake cleaved the land in two. Overnight the island sank beneath the waves – or so legend tells.

As a young boy, Damian Le Bas was captivated by the story of the lost city of Atlantis. As an adult, he dreams of diving to discover its ruins. After the death of his father, torn between his lifelong desire and the taboo his Romany culture places on the ocean, he comes by chance across a dive shop. He can’t help but go in.

Under the waves, Damian enters a breathtaking world. As he masters the skills of this exhilarating sport, diving with seals in the Farne Islands, exploring submerged Roman ruins in Naples and mapping the sunken city of Port Royal in Jamaica, he is entranced anew, by wonders both man-made and natural.

Plato’s writings on Atlantis were a parable about the hubris of humankind; in witnessing our effects on oceans and ocean communities, Damian finds echoes of this in the modern world.

“Beautifully written… The Drowned Places is one of the best books on diving that I have ever read” — Literary Review

“Literary and learned. It goes deep” — Amy Liptrot

“The most compelling and evocative of underwater odysseys” — Kate Humble

“The most captivating book on diving that I have ever read” — Mensun Bound

About Damian Le Bas

Damian Le Bas is a writer, filmmaker and visual artist. His first book The Stopping Places won the Somerset Maugham Award, a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award, and was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year. Damian is widely published as a journalist and poet and is a member of the European Film Academy. He holds a First Class degree in Theology from the University of Oxford, and was awarded an honorary Master of Education by the University of Chichester.

Besides getting in the sea he loves music, walking and spending time in the woods and hills with his family and friends. The Drowned Places is his second book.

FBF Damian Le Bas: The Drowned Places

Saturday 25th October 12.00pm

Cost: £6/£7/£9  ON SALE 10AM, 26TH AUG

A £1 Poly Fund payment is added to each ticket sold. A 50p booking fee is also applied per ticket for online and telephone transactions.