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 a 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award. 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. ...

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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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. ...

Everyone has to learn to see the West Indies tropics for himself, wrote V.S. Naipaul in The Middle Passage. The landscape has never been recorded...the depth of sky, the brilliancy of light, the insubstantiality of colour in the tropics. The more gifted painters have ceased to record the landscape: the patterns of the leaves are too beguiling. The Islands & the Sea

Includes:: dozens of writers--poets & novelists, naturalists & explorers--who, like Naipaul help us to see the beguiling Caribbean through their eyes.
Editor John Murray opens this anthology, the first of its kind, with an informed essay that provides a perspective on the region in history & literature. Murray then presents writers ranging from Daniel Defoe to Barry Lopez, from Charles Darwin to Edward O. Wilson. In these selections, one can step ashore with Columbus on San Salvador Island in 1492, travel up the forbidding Orinoco River with Sir Walter Raleigh, & explore ancient Mayan ruins along the coast with swashbuckling John Stephens in 1843. Ernest Hemingway, writing to Maxwell Perkins from Key West, Florida, describes the aftermath of the famous Matecumbe hurricane: Indian Key absolutely swept clean, not a blade of grass, & over the high center of it were scattered live conchs that came in with the sea, craw fish, & dead morays. The whole bottom of the sea blew over it. Other contemporary writers include Barry Lopez, Derek Walcott, Rachel Carson, Jamaica Kincaid, & Roger Caras. With each selection Murray

Includes:: an informative introduction.
A Republic of Rivers, John Murray's anthology of nature writing on Alaska & the Yukon, was hailed for its judicious selections, deft editing, &, most importantly, its ability to capture & communicate a sense of place. In The Islands & the Sea, he once again gathers an enthralling collection of writings that convey the beauty Caribbean's luminous waters, its rich, green hillsides, teeming reefs, & remarkable varied people.





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Serenity now
- & all year long. Showcasing hundreds of lush island retreats photographed in vibrant full colour, Islands celebrates
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Thailand’s 13 island destinations, from Phuket & Samui to less well known islands, presented on a double-sided map from Thinknet highlighting sights, accommodation & other tourist facilities, plus ferry timetables, etc. The map presents each island as a separate panel, covering: Samet (1:29, 000), Lan (1:30, 000), Chang (1:100, 000), Kood (1;90, 000), Mak (1:50, 000), Phuket (1:100, 000), Phiphi Don (1:40, 000), Phi Phi Islands (1:150, 000) Lanta (1:140, 000), Yao Noi & Yao Yai (1:200, 000), Tao (1:48, 000) Phangan (1:100, 000) & Samui (1:57, 000). Each map shows the island’s road network & highlights local sights, tourist accommodation & restaurants, public institutions & various facilities, etc. A separate index lists selected locations on each isl&. Also provided are information/timetables for ferry services between the mainland & the islands or within island groups, accompanied by an overview map of the Thai coast & insets for various groups. All the information is in Thai & English. PLEASE NOTE: print size, of both names & symbols, is smaller than usually found on maps. ...

This is the last book Hemingway wrote before he died, the story of Thomas Hudson, an artist & adventurer. Living a bacherlor`s life on an island in the Gulf Stream during the thirties, Hudson`s existence is dictated by the waves & tides. But when his sons come to visit, Hudson must grapple with the role of father & the unfamiliar demands of family. A late work by one of America`s greatest writers. ...