James Hamilton-Paterson
Exit, Coral
The Reef: A Passionate History – The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change
By Iain McCalman
Scribe 336pp £20 order from our bookshop
Since 1770, when Captain Cook blundered into it in Endeavour and came to grief, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has gone from a navigator’s nightmare through being a World Heritage treasure to its present status of moribund paradise. On the way it had to overcome its early 19th-century reputation as the lair of savage Aboriginals. Thanks to Cook’s murder in Hawaii and lurid stories of cannibalism by survivors of shipwrecks on the Reef, the newspaper-reading public was cheerfully predisposed to view the 1,400-mile length of the Reef and the Torres Strait as a death zone to sailors, as fatally treacherous to ships as the spear-throwing locals were to their crews.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'In 1938, Alma Fielding, a 34-year-old housewife from the south London suburb of Thornton Heath, apparently became possessed by a violent spirit.'
🎃@LucyLethbridge on a true ghost story. 🎃
http://ow.ly/TVhm50C6Vbj
'The Craft’s first martyr', John Coustos 'became a celebrity and a sensational symbol for the causes it would claim: tolerance, rational inquiry, cross-border cosmopolitanism, relative equality and enlightened faith.'
@darrin_mcmahon on the freemasons.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/with-a-nudge-a-wink
'"Dutch Light" roots its subject in his local environment, explaining, for example, how an abundance of sand for making glass led naturally to a thriving business in optical instruments in Holland.'
Patricia Fara on the life & work of Christiaan Huygens.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/through-the-magnifying-glass