Artistic and academic perspectives meet in this discussion on the history of fishing industries in Suffolk, featuring artist Mark Požlep and Dr Tom Johnson, Associate Professor of Medieval History at Oriel College, Oxford.

One of Dr Tom Johnson’s current projects is a trade book entitled The Fishermen's Church: Reckoning and Ruin in a Medieval Fishing Village, under contract with Allen Lane.

It is a microhistory of Walberswick, a fishing village on the Suffolk coast, in the fifteenth century. In the later Middle Ages, this coastline was devastated by the North Sea: floods, storms, and siltation destroyed towns, harbours, and livelihoods. Yet in the midst of this upheaval, the fishermen of Walberswick set out plans to build a magnificent new church – a nave that could hold a thousand souls – a project that would take over a century to complete. The book explores what it means to live, work, and even build something new in the face of environmental collapse, and what kind of history can be salvaged from the ruins.