Lifeboat volunteer Dominic Gregory presents a truly remarkable and powerful account of the realities of volunteering for the RNLI off the coast of Kent.

While most of us will never serve in a lifeboat, we might well find ourselves thankful for their unquestioning and dauntless assistance at sea.

Dominic Gregory’s Lifeboat at the End of the World is the first book to depict the experience of what it is like to volunteer on a lifeboat; the smells of the station, the emotions when the call to ‘a shout’ comes, how the crew is trained, the teamwork and trust, the ethos of the service.

For two hundred years, the Dungeness lifeboat has launched in storms and heavy seas to frigates and barques, trawlers and dinghies. Like all lifeboat stations in the British Isles, it is led by a coxswain and staffed entirely by volunteers.

Dominic Gregory volunteers as part of her crew and comes to Step into Spring to tell their story – remarkable yet ordinary men and women who, in their different ways, give up their time, livelihoods and safety to brave wind, tide and storms, not to mention the peril of navigating between the vast floating skyscrapers that make up so much of modern shipping.