A rollicking read that traces a voyage made to Newfoundland in my 1911 pilot cutter, Hirta, via Norway, Iceland and the Greenland Sea. My crew are a vivid reflection of the Viking pirates and colonists who made the same voyage a thousand years previously.

If you’ve read Chris Stewart’s new book, ‘Three ways to capsize a boat’, you’ll want to read this. Chris, author of best-selling lifestyle book, ‘Driving over Lemons’ was one of the reprobates on the trip. The story follows the Norsemen and women with their trials and tribulations as closely as it does our own. Thus, you get two tales for the price of one. The reader joins my own group of ‘chancers’ hacking westwards into the teeth of some awesome weather in a very old boat indeed, while enjoying a full-blooded account of the activities of the ‘rape and pillage’ boys based on the Icelandic Sagas.