Julia Blackburn

Writer Julia Blackburn talks about her exploration of the lost place of Doggerland that once connected England to Holland and reflects on how remembering and embracing history can change thinking about the present.

Doggerland was home to our ancestors and to giant elephants and rhinos before it was submerged by rising sea levels 7,000 years ago. Blackburn celebrates her life and her search for this lost land in a series of stories and songs. She sees footprints of early humans fossilised in the sand, visits a cave where remains of a Neanderthal meal have turned to stone and sits beside Tollund Man, who has lain preserved in a peat bog since the start of the Iron Age.

Blackburn has written six works of non-fiction, including family memoir The Three of Us,  and two novels, The Book of Colour and The Leper’s Companions, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize.