The Flood

What is it like to experience a flood? The answers that Michael Brown comes up with are surprising. His house was underwater for several weeks during the inundation of the Somerset Levels. He decided to stay on through it, and he was amazed at the ensuing chain of events as he, along with his local community, first fought the water, pumping and sweeping and panicking - then came acceptance of the inevitable defeat, and finally there came an unexpected wealth of emotions as the waters - and the locals - had to settle into a strange and ultimately rewarding state of marooned calm. This well-written series of highlights of Michael's diary are very real: the account is funny, observant, honest and unpredictable.

Michael and his wife, Utta, spent most of their working lives on the Somerset Levels, Michael involved in elvers and eels and establishing a smokery and later a smokery restaurant. Now retired they still live in the same house on the river Parrett where they stayed dry for over thirty years. Until January 2014 when one of the biggest floods ever seen on the Levels inundated their house and several others in the village of Thorney. They were to remain under water for over seven weeks.