Gavin Knight is the author of two acclaimed non-fiction books: “The Swordfish & The Star” (Penguin Random House) is about the life of Cornish fishermen. It was voted Book of the Year by the Financial Times & Esquire. His first book “Hood Rat” (Picador 2012) is about gun and gang crime in Britain's inner cities. It was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and CWA Non-fiction Dagger Award. It was serialised in the Telegraph and was BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. He lives in Cornwall with his family.
Praise for The Swordfish & The Star:
"This is a marvellous and humane book about Cornwall -- and unusual: a travel book with no 'I' -- rather the traveller as a silent observer and patient listener. It is Cornish life as told by its people -- fishermen, farmers, publicans, singers, brawlers, historians, drunks, old-timers, newcomers and even D H Lawrence and King Arthur" (Paul Theroux)
"Knight has gone in search of old smells and danger and found them in spades. There are extraordinarily evocative stories here, of the mad bravado of scarred, de-fingered fishermen and the stoicism of their women... As a cross-section of west Cornish lives, a celebration of brave eccentricity and a prose illustration of the way those lives overlap and interrelate, The Swordfish and the Star takes some beating" (Patrick Gale Guardian)
The Penwith Peninsula in Cornwall is where the land ends. In The Swordfish and the Star Gavin Knight takes us into this huddle of grey roofs at the edge of the sea. He catches the stories of a whole community, but especially those still working this last frontier: the Cornish fishermen. These are the dreamers and fighters who every day prepare for battle with the vast grey Atlantic. Cornwall and its seas are brought to life, mixing drinking and drugs and sea spray, moonlit beaches and shattering storms, myth and urban myth. The result is an arresting tapestry of a place we thought we knew; the precarious reality of life in Cornwall today emerges from behind our idyllic holiday snaps and picture postcards. Even the quaint fishermen’s pubs on the quay at Newlyn, including the Swordfish and its neighbour the Star, turn out to be places where squalls can blow up, and down again, in an instant.
Based on immersive research and rich with the voices of a cast of remarkable characters, this is an eye-opening, dramatic, poignant account of life on Britain’s most dangerous stretch of coast.
His first book “Hood Rat” (Picador 2012) is about gun and gang crime in Britain's inner cities. It was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and CWA Non-fiction Dagger Award. It was serialised in the Telegraph and was BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. It is currently being adapted for television by Emmy award-winning producers Cuba Pictures.
Praise for Hood Rat:
'A gripping novelistic immersion' Louis Theroux
'A must-read' Owen Jones
'Britain's Gomorrah' Independent
Over the two years prior to the publication of Hood Rat he was regularly embedded with frontline police units in London, Manchester and Glasgow as well as spending time with dozens of violent criminals involved in gun and gang crime. He accompanied detectives on a manhunt, firearms and drugs raids and was embedded with a CID unit over a lengthy drug surveillance operation. To source the powerful human stories at the centre of Hood Rat, he spent time with criminals, inmates, gang members, heroin addicts, social workers, youth workers, charities, trauma surgeons, victims of violent crime and their families.
