Combining history and travel narrative, Nicholas Woodsworth journeys around the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, the sea which gave birth to Western civilisation. This sea, he says, should not be seen as an empty space surrounded by Europe, Asia and Africa, but as a continent in its own right, a place from whose coastlines people look, not outwards to distant countries or that capitals but inwards across the water to each other. The Mediterranean has its own culture, its own life, its own way of being. Setting out from Alexandria, in a journey marked by lively and unpredictable encounters, Woodsworth discovershidden corners of Venice, before arriving at Istanbul, where he installs himself in a former Benedictine monastery. In all these places he finds traces of a vibrant and cosmopolitan heritage, and asks what these cities and their inhabitants owe to the sea.