Authors Electric

Outside the 2 sisters arts centre Meg Reid of the Felixstowe Book Festival brought a new word into my vocabulary when she asked me to ‘curate’ a day’s events at the Two Sisters’ Arts Centre on Saturday June 25th 2022. The title of the event would be Suffolk and the Sea - the vital words, for me, were books and boats..  I soon realised that the two were already linked by a footpath running from Suffolk Yacht Harbour at Levington, where I could moor my boat  Peter Duck, to Trimley St Mary, location of the arts centre where we would talk about books. The event began to take a yet more appealing shape when I realised how close we were to Broke House, Levington, where Arthur Ransome lived when he was writing his masterpiece We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea . Our first festival guest should be Nancy Blackett – ‘Goblin’ from the story – who could come and join Peter Duck in the yacht harbour. Book festival attendees could come and meet the boats as well. Perhaps some of them will arriv...

  The River Deben from Kyson Point by John Roberts I edit a small, local, bi-annual magazine for the River Deben Association in Suffolk. It’s the river’s parish magazine so (in the manner of parish mag editors) I take as much time and trouble as if it were Country Life or the National Geographic .  My son Bertie manages the layout and we publish articles about birds and boats, people and paintings, saltmarshes and seawalls. I realise now that I was destined for the Deben from the day that my father (to be) returned from his RNVR service in World War 2 declaring that he never wanted to go anywhere else. So he set up a yacht agency. Less than two years later, my mother (to be) found her way to the river wanting to buy a boat… Skip along a few more years and a larger boat was purchased as my brother and I were demanding more space. Enter Peter Duck. In 1960 a young artist named John Roberts arrived in Woodbridge on the River Deben, planning to buy a boat and sail away. He was ...