Ariane Bankes
Otter Spotter
Island of Dreams: A Personal History of a Remarkable Place
By Dan Boothby
Picador 241pp £14.99
This is the story of an obsession. Dan Boothby enjoyed (or endured) a fatherless, gypsy childhood, and subsequently drifted for years before fetching up at the Kyleakin Lighthouse, off the coast of Skye, last home of Gavin Maxwell. It was Maxwell – that inspired but tortured writer – who was the lodestar of Boothby’s wanderings, the focus of his thoughts and dreams. For a boy brought up on the fringes of society, it is not hard to see why: Maxwell was the quintessential outsider, almost feral in his likes and dislikes and his love of the wild, notwithstanding his privileged background. The sanctuary he created at Camusfeàrna (in reality Sandaig), where he would hole up with his beloved otters and a series of young boys, has exerted a magnetic fascination for generations of would-be naturalists and fugitives from urban life.
It was the discovery of Maxwell’s Raven Seek Thy Brother that set the teenage Boothby on his fitful course. The final volume of the trilogy begun with Ring of Bright Water, it had at its dark centre a curse laid upon Maxwell by the poet Kathleen Raine, disappointed in her love for the writer. It was to this curse that he ascribed the grave misfortunes that subsequently befell him. Raven Seek Thy Brother was an elegy for a lost idyll, one
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
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk