Our Bookshelf
Browse our Bookshelves, selected annually by the Exchange as a window to recent Welsh literary works which we recommend for translation.
“I would read anything Horatio Clare wrote. His prose is always brilliant, and by turns funny, furious and heart-piercingly compassionate. He lights up –– no, he scintillates –– any subject that finds itself in receipt of the gift of his attention.”
Robert Macfarlane
“What Horatio Clare demonstrates, even beyond his undoubted gifts as a writer, is his basic humanity.”
Philip Hoare
“It feels comforting and right to have a writer of Clare’s skill turn attention to this topic, and he does not avoid referencing corruption and other wrongdoing by those in power.”
Sally Hayden, The Irish Times
“[Clare’s] job, executed wonderfully well, is to help us to think calmly and intelligently about those arriving in small boats, to consider giving them a chance and to recognise that we have more in common with them than we might imagine.”
Maggie Fergusson, The Spectator
“Horatio Clare’s We Came by Sea goes beyond these click-baiting headlines, and shines an informative, much-needed light on a situation shrouded in hateful darkness. ... Clare ensures a detailed understanding of the care taken by good Samaritans to ensure the safety of refugees in distress, both on land and at sea.”
Elena Gower, Nation.Cymru
We Came By Sea: Stories of a greater Britian
We Came By Sea is an untold story of Britain’s small boats crisis, a story which shows the best of us. It is the story of the volunteers who help thousands of refugees in Calais, of the lifeboat crews mounting one of the great search and rescue operations of all time, of an unrecognised, uncelebrated, all but unknown Britain which is giving its all to help the vulnerable and desperate. It is a journey through an unexamined nation, a nation which is as truly great and good as the people in the dinghies believe Britain to be. It is not the story we have been told, and it is a true story.
With the openness and lyricism that we have come to expect from Clare’s work, We Came By Sea centres the human experience of a crisis too often pushed to extremes, and through his exceptional talent as a writer of people and place reveals the beating hearts behind the headlines.
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Little Toller Books (2025)
978-1915068453
176pp
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Little Toller Books (2025)
Zoë Waldie, RCW Literary Agents: zoewaldie@rcwlitagency.com
c/o assistant Phoebe Wyatt: phoebe@rcwlitagency.com
Reviews
“I would read anything Horatio Clare wrote. His prose is always brilliant, and by turns funny, furious and heart-piercingly compassionate. He lights up –– no, he scintillates –– any subject that finds itself in receipt of the gift of his attention.”
Read more reviewsRobert Macfarlane