The sailmaker

With his red neckerchief, crisp white shirt and tan waistcoat, Jim Lawrence cuts a distinctive figure and at 88 he’s a fit and active one too. Sailing from his home in Brightlingsea, Essex every day – “well, not in winter any more” – he stops off for a chat and a song at the pub midday, then he’s home to work on his second volume of memoirs, this time recalling his sailmaking career – volume one was about Thames sailing barges.

“I thought that would be a modest little book just of interest to a few barge enthusiasts,” he says, “but it sold like wildfire and it’s