Diving in Search of Atlantis

The Drowned Places

An enthralling exploration of the liminal by one of the most exciting writers around. A breathtakingly good book

TRISTAN GOOLEY, author of How to Read a Tree

The most captivating book on diving that I have ever read. But it is not about diving as a sport; it is about diving as an accessway to submerged landscapes, the festival of life that inhabits them and, above all, the drowned ruins of lost civilisations

MENSUN BOUND, author of The Ship Beneath the Ice

Damian Le Bas is a writer, filmmaker and visual artist. His first book The Stopping Places won the Somerset Maugham Award, a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award, and was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year. Damian is widely published as a journalist and poet and has taught for the Arvon foundation. A recipient of a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship, he is a member of the European Film Academy, holds a First Class degree in Theology from the University of Oxford, and was awarded an honorary Master of Education by the University of Chichester. Besides getting in the sea he loves music, walking and spending time in the woods and hills with his family and friends. The Drowned Places is his second book.

'A breathtakingly good book' TRISTAN GOOLEY 
'The most captivating book on diving that I have ever read' MENSUN BOUND 
 
Immersed in history and myth, Damian Le Bas explores the meaning we find in sunken ruins around the world 
 
Thousands of years ago, an island off the Straits of Gibraltar went to war with ancient Athens. The battle was lost, and an earthquake cleaved the land in two. Overnight the island sank beneath the waves – or so legend tells. 
 
As a young boy, Damian Le Bas was captivated by the lost city of Atlantis. Even as an adult, he dreams about diving amid its ancient ruins, observing with his own eyes the remnants of an era that still reverberates in our own. 
 
After the death of his father, torn between his lifelong desire and the taboo his Romany culture places on the ocean, he comes by chance across a dive shop. He can’t help but go in. 
 
Under the waves he enters a breathtaking world. As he masters the skills of this dangerous sport, diving with seals in the Farne Islands, exploring submerged Roman ruins in Naples and mapping the sunken city of Port Royal in Jamaica, he is entranced anew, by wonders both manmade and natural. 
 
Atlantis – from its first account by Plato, to the explorers who searched in vain and the discovery that might finally solve its mystery – takes on a new shape in Damian’s quest. At once a spellbinding love letter to diving, The Drowned Places is also a profound examination of the power that myth has over us, and what happens when it crosses over into reality.

Damian Le Bas

A Journey Through Gypsy Britain

'I needed to get to the stopping places, so I needed to get on the road. It was the road where I might at last find out where I belonged.' 
 
Damian Le Bas grew up surrounded by Gypsy history. His great-grandmother would tell him stories of her childhood in the ancient Romani language; the places they worked, the ways they lived, the superstitions and lores of their people. 
 
In a bid to better understand his heritage, Damian sets out on a journey to discover the stopping places – the old encampment sites known only to Travellers. Through winter frosts and summer dawns, from horse fairs to Gypsy churches, Damian lives on the road, somewhere between the romanticised Gypsies of old, and their much-maligned descendants of today. 
 
‘A beautiful writer who seems born to tell this fascinating story’ Amy Liptrot 
 
Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award 
Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award 
Longlisted for the Wainwright Prize

Damian Le Bas

The Stopping Places

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