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As an island nation the sea has exerted a powerful influence on some of Britain's best known artists. It has led to some of the finest British paintings from the likes of Constable and Turner and continues to be fertile territory for prominent artists today. Poet and author Owen Sheers examines our changing relationship to the sea over the last four centuries and how this is reflected in the work of artists who have tried to capture its ever-changing essence in the stillness of a canvas, sculpture or photograph.

Novelist Joseph Conrad described the sea as another planet. Majestic, dramatic and sometimes terrifying, the sea has held a real fascination for British writers. From Shakespeare to Coleridge, Robert Louis Stevenson to Patrick O'Brian, it has inspired some of our most gifted authors. Poet and novelist Owen Sheers sets off to discover whether there is anything that unites the great British sea stories. In the company of both seafarers and sea writers, he explores the transformative effect that the sea has had on the human mind.