'A truly unusual and strangely revealing lens through which to view music and history and the dark life of the sea' Brian Eno

'As memorable, pleasurable and irrational as all the highest quests' John Higgs

'A perfect example of the power and beauty of industrial music' Cosey Fanni Tutti

What does the foghorn sound like?

It sounds huge. It rattles. It rattles you. It is a booming, lonely sound echoing into the vastness of the sea. When Jennifer Lucy Allan hears the foghorn's colossal bellow for the first time, it marks the beginning of an obsession and a journey deep into the history of a sound that has carved out the identity and the landscape of coastlines around the world, from Scotland to San Francisco.

Within its sound is a maritime history of shipwrecks and lighthouse keepers, the story and science of our industrial past, and urban myths relaying tales of foghorns in speaker stacks, blasting out for coastal raves.

An odyssey told through the people who battled the sea and the sound, who lived with it and loathed it, and one woman's intrepid voyage through the howling loneliness of nature.

"Original and absorbing. . . this kind of obsession is transporting, there is escape to be found in getting lost in a subject. The book is a lament for a disappearing way of life - numbers of former lighthouse keepers diminish each year - but also an appeal to listen deeply. It shows how there can be "a whole world to discover in just one sound"" - Guardian

"Alluring, haunting... [The Foghorn's Lament] examines the music, history and the dark life of the sea through the foghorn, a nostalgic link to our industrial past." - The Sunday Post

"It all coalesces to form a wonderfully original maritime journey that's both a contemplation on Britain's wildest coastal reaches and a reminder of how deeply sound and imagination shape our sense of place." - GEOGRAPHICAL

"A fabulous book about a unique sound, and a valuable addition to the literature that seeks to explain the function and meaning of sound in all our lives." - Caught By the River, Book of the Month