` My grandmother bought the isl&. The year was 1947 & she was thirty-three, a couple of years older than I am now. She was the visionary sort of person who can make something magical out of very little.` From the moment that Tilly`s grandmother, Mor-mor, set eyes on the rocky outline of Smaholmene, it captured her imagination. Legend has it that she bought the island in exchange for a mink coat. Every summer from then on, she & her young family would escape from their life in the English countryside to its rugged outcrops & sparkling waters. Mor-mor loved Smaholmene fiercely. Lean & chic, she smoked voraciously & would scandalise the local islanders by roaming around naked, flanked by her standard black poodle, Cheri. Her children spent their days running wild, thieving for gull eggs, rowing on the lagoon, & foraging for island raspberries, which Mor-mor would sandwich together with whipped cream to make into a sukkerkake. Thirty-five years later, Tilly spent her first summer on Smaholmene. Her Mamma kept up the rituals that she herself had learnt from Mor-mor, & Tilly discovered in the island a living link between her family`s past & its present. Glittering & bittersweet, this is the captivating story of the women who made Smaholmene their own: a land of childhood adventures, of magical summers, & of Tilly`s first romance. ...

Two classic stories about the Isle of Scilly from Britain`s best-loved children`s author, Michael Morpurgo. The Wreck of the Zanzibar: Life on the Scilly Isles in 1907 is bleak & full of hardship. Laura`s twin brother, Billy, disappears, & then a storm devastates everything. It seems there`s little hope...that is until the Zanzibar is wrecked on the island`s rocks & everything changes. Why the Whales Came: Gracie & her friend, Daniel have always been warned to stay away from the Birdman & his side of the isl&. They find a message in the sand & discover the Birdman is not who they thought. Then the children get stranded on Samson Isl&... Former Children`s Laureate & award-winning author of War Horse, Michael Morpurgo, demonstrates why he is considered to be the master story teller with these engrossing Island Tales. ...

My childhood socks were always white, my frocks ironed. Each day predictable, safe. I escaped. Aged 19, I was swept off my feet by a wild adventurer & married within months. Two small children later (with three more to come) complete with Labradors, cats, a heavy horse & hearts full of dreams, we arrived on a remote Hebridean island to begin our life on the Tapsalteerie Estate. Nothing was ever predictable again. ISLAND WIFE tells the story of Judy, who, at 19, met her Wild Pioneer. He whisked her off into an adventure, a marriage of forty years, & a life on a remote Hebridean isl&. Along the way she bears five children, learns how to run a rocky hill farm, a hotel, a recording studio & the first whale watching business in the UK
- all the while inventively making fraying ends meet. When her children start to leave home, things fall apart & there is sadness & joy in how she puts things back together. Judy tells her story in a clear & unique voice, in turns funny, unforgettable & intensely moving. br
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Unhappily l&-locked in his early adult life, Frank Fraser Darling`s fortunes changed when he began visiting Scotland`s west coast in the 1930s. Surviving treacherous boat journeys, a broken leg, & hell-bent storms, he made temporary homes with his family on some of the remotest Hebridean islands so he could study the habits of grey seals & seabirds. The family finally settled on an abandoned croft in the Summer Isles, on Tanera Mor, & started farming the barren l&. They repaired a ruined herring fishery & its stone quay. They fertilized the ground with seaweed, cut peat for the fires, & planted a garden behind sheltered walls. Slowly, they brought life back to the isl&. Island Years first published 1940 by G. Bell & Sons, Island Farm first published in 1943 by G. Bell & Sons. ...

Ever since the dawn of human history, islands have been at the heart of our desires
- & our fears. Drawing on anthropology,
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Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2018 Shortlisted for the BBC Countryfile Magazine Country Book of the Year 2018` For all the islomaniacs out there, Patrick Barkham`s Islander looks unmissable` Robert Macfarlane` Brimming with nature, this is a fitting tribute to the strangeness & beauty of our British isles` Financial Times The British Isles are an archipelago made up of two large islands & 6, 289 smaller ones. Some, like the Isle of Man, resemble miniature nations, with their own language & tax laws; others, like Ray Island in Essex, are abandoned & mysterious places haunted by myths, ghosts & foxes. There are resurgent islands such as Eigg, which have been liberated from capricious owners to be run by their residents; holy islands like Bardsey, the resting place of 20, 000 saints, & still a site of spiritual questing; & deserted islands such as St Kilda, famed for the evacuation of its human population, & now dominated by wild sheep & seabirds. In this evocative & vividly observed book, Patrick Barkham explores some of the most beautiful landscapes in the British Isles as he travels to ever-smaller islands in search of their special magic. Our small islands are both places of freedom & imprisonment, party destinations & oases of peace, strangely suburban & deeply wild. They are places where the past is unusually present, but they can also offer a vision of an alternative future. Meeting all kinds of islanders, from nuns to puffins, from local legends to rare subspecies of vole, he seeks to discover what it is like to live on a small isl&, & what it means to be an islander. ...

This compelling book explores the lived experience of empire in the Pacific, the last region to be contacted & colonized by Europeans following the great voyages of Captain Cook. Unlike conventional accounts that emphasize confrontation & the destruction of indigenous cultures, Islanders reveals there was gain as well as loss, survival as well as suffering, & invention as well as exploitation. Empowered by imaginative research in obscure archives & collections, Thomas rediscovers a rich & surprising history of encounters, not only between Islanders & Europeans, but among Islanders, brought together in new ways by explorers, missionaries & colonists. He tells the story of the making of empire, not through an impersonal survey, but through vivid stories of the lives of men & women
- some visionary, some vicious, & some just eccentric
- & through sensuous evocation of seascapes & landscapes of the Pacific. A fascinating re-creation of an Oceanic world, Islanders offers a new paradigm, not only for histories of the Pacific, but for understandings of cultural contact everywhere.

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” Islands” covers the first half-century or so of Dutch settlement at the Cape, opening with a view from the inside of a Khoi nation, the Goringhaicona, under the leadership of Autshumao, dubbed ”chief Harry” by early English visitors. For the indigenous people, it is the beginning of the end of a way of life in close interaction with the subcontinent, its seasons & rhythms, its harshness & abundance. It was during Autshumao`s time that the first key woman of South Africa`s post-colonisation story makes her appearance: she is Autshumao`s niece, Krotoa, brought into Commander Van Riebeeck`s household as Eva, go-between & interpreter between the Europeans & the Khoi. When she is drawn into the first `mixed` marriage of the new colony, one of her children is Pieternella, who becomes the pivot of all the action in this unforgettable epic. Each of the sections of the novel is focused on a man involved in one way or another with Pieternella. Through the life stories of these key figures
- all of them men, but all defined in one way or another by the central female character
- the reader is offered an understanding of the vast historical forces at work in the shaping of the world in the late 17th & early 18th centuries. Each of these brings a whole new geography, a new dimension of experience, into the novel. Behind these `little men`, who are not allowed any choice by history, loom the ones who apparently take the decisions, the commanders & governors & captains & the still greater, more shadowy, potentates, the Lords Seventeen who are in charge of the Dutch East India Company. For, it is the Company that ultimately decides the fate of all the millions ruled by it; it is as inexorable, & as mindlessly cruel, as Nature itself. ” Islands” is too crammed with characters & events, too gripping in its unpredictable turns & contortions, too rich with lived experience, too staggering in the scale of its adventures
- from the unimaginably cruel to the profoundly moving to the outrageously burlesque
- to let go for a moment.



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Like most journeys this book moves between light & shade, funny & deadly serious, mundane & inspirational. It reflects on some common themes, such as childhood, schooling, & the unique good fortune of the post war generation
- & how it played its h&.
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Peter Conrad, who was born in Tasmania, has produced an original & highly personal account of the role islands play in our dreams & nightmares. With his customary wide range of reference & quick wit, he visits every corner of the globe to explain why islands appeal to us, & on the way covers everything from the myth of Atlantis to Watteaus erotic Cytherea, from Prosperos magical kingdom to Nelson Mandelas prison. Whether we live on an island or merely fancy escaping to one, we can all learn something from this thought-provoking book. ...