The whales are coming…
…Actually they are already here. With us. On land.
When Peter Riley was 13, a young, blue-haired woman asked him to help her lift a freshly-hacked sperm whale jaw into her Volvo 245.
Pursuing whale remains across the UK, author Peter Riley unravels what these magical creatures might be revealing about who we are, what we’ve become and where we might be headed.
That night in Norfolk when Peter met the blue-haired woman marked the beginning of his lifelong fascination with whales. Now, as an author and a Herman Melville scholar, Peter is seeking to understand the ancient and complex relationship between humans and whales.
According to the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, there are approximately 550-800 strandings of whales, dolphins and porpoises in the UK every year. Although no one is completely certain why this happens, we do know they’ve been doing it for thousands of years.
For as long as there have been stranded whales, there have been humans drawing meaning from their arrival – a warning, a symbol of hope, endings or new beginnings. So what news might they be bringing us now?
In our current state of unprecedented abundance and advancement, in our pandemic of isolation and individual “strandedness”, the whales seem to be calling us again. As Peter speaks with cetacean experts, chases down whale remains and witnesses a whale stranding himself, he discovers what these magical creatures might be revealing about who we are, what we’ve become and where we might be headed.
‘Strandings’ premiered on 28th April 2024 at 19:15 GMT on BBC Radio 4
About Dr Peter Riley
Peter Riley‘s research examines nineteenth- through early twentieth-century American literature in relation to labour history, poetry and poetics, and archival studies, with developing focuses on German American literature, abolitionist politics, and race and ethnicity in the United States. He also writes non-fiction, and is interested in the relationship between creative and critical prose.
His most recent book Strandings: Confessions of a Whale Scavenger won the Ideas Prize for Non-Fiction. An experimental memoir, the book explores his involvement in one of Britain’s most bizarre subcultures: each time a whale washes up on our shores, a fugitive community of human scavengers descends to claim its trophies. Some are driven by magical beliefs; some are motivated by profit. For others, the need is much stranger.
Mixing natural history, conspiracy theory, politics, and gore, Strandings was described by Iain Sinclair as “a brave, reckless and engaging performance”, and by Jean Sprackland as a “glorious rollercoaster of a book, whose twists and turns take us again and again to the dissolving edges between reality and mirage.” The book was recently featured as the cover story of the Financial Times Weekend Magazine, and adapted by us for BBC Radio 4.
