Sea Room: An Island Life
£8.70£9.50 (-8%)
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be given your own remote islands? Thirty years ago it happened to Adam Nicolson.
Aged 21, Nicolson inherited the Shiants, three lonely Hebridean islands set in a dangerous sea off the Isle of Lewis. With only a stone bothy for accommodation and half a million puffins for company, he found himself in charge of one of the most beautiful places on earth.
The story of the Shiants is a story of birds and boats, hermits and fishermen, witchcraft and catastrophe, and Nicolson expertly weaves these elements into his own tale of seclusion on the Shiants to create a stirring celebration of island life.
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Additional information
| Publisher | HarperCollins, Reprint edition (17 Jun. 2004) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 400 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0006532012 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0006532019 |
| Dimensions | 12.9 x 2.54 x 19.81 cm |
by Rod Parsons
Fascinating account of Adam Nicholson’s inheriting the Shiant Isles and all that entailed. The passages about finding and getting along with a boat builder etc are unsurprisingly reminiscent of those in Annie Proulx’s “The Shipping Report”, but this is not a criticism.The Shiants and Nova Scotia have a lot in common and the theme of novice client meets master builder is the same.
Vivid descriptions giving a strong sense of place, some accounts of the Clearances, a little archaeology and probably as much as you need to know about sheep, rats and gulls, or the perils of taking a small boat out on the Minch, or of dealing with the unwanted bureaucratic attentions of the RSPB.
by Iain
This is a magnificent book, beautifully written with many excellent illustrations, likely to be the definitive volume on the Shiant Islands for years to come. More, it provides the benchmark for what is required for a study of all Scotland’s outlying islands; all previous studies will be found wanting after this exemplary model.
The book consists of sixteen chapters fundamentally dealing with the geology, wildlife and archareology of three uninhabited islands lying five miles or so off the coast of Lewis. But this is no dry history. The back cloth is a dazzling concentration of towering basaltic cliffs, crowds of guillemots, razorbills, great skuas and 240,000 puffins; the violence and danger of the surrounding seas; the songs and verse which encapsulate former island life, accounts of attempted murder, witchcraft and catastrophe and the treasured place the Shiants still hold in the Hebridean mind. The stage is a microcosm of richness: Bronze Age gold, the memory of sea eagles, an 8th century hermit and his carved stone pillow, memories of cruel clearances soaked up by the landscape and tales passed down from generation to generation.
This is not another ‘happy-clappy’ saga written by a romantic, weekend recluse but a powerful baring of the soul by a man who has earned the admiration and friendship of his fellow islanders intertwined with his love of the past and a deep understanding of the rocks from which these islands have been hewn. For the first time since he inherited the Shiants from his father twenty years ago, Adam Nicolson tells the full story of his own experiences there in a style no other writer of the Hebrides has ever attempted before or since.
Overall SEA ROOM is a stimulating book and one I read pleasurably and admiringly from cover to cover, non-stop. For this well written, well researched and scholarly work, Adam Nicolson has placed all students of the Hebrides in his debt. It deserves to be read by all involved in the contemporary study of Scottish life.
by yachty1949
I loved the book to start with but after about half way through I started to struggle with comprehending the book. I suspect this is because I was intellectually out of my depth, not a fault with the book. I will return to the book after a ‘rest’ and hopefully finish it.
by Foz
A friend gave me a copy of this book years ago. I loved it and gave it to another friend who enjoyed it. I bought this copy to give to a friend as a gift. He loves it!
If you enjoy the escapism of finding out about the history of a remote dramatic Scottish island, the people and the wildlife then you’ll love this!
by Richard Genner
I enjoyed reading this book which is full of all sorts of information about a remarkable set of islands. It got a bit heavy on archaeology at one point but I skipped that section, and then decided to go back and read it to get the full picture. It’s great to read also about the owner’s thoughts on how such a trio of islands should be treated and managed. Congratulations to Adam on putting pen to paper to produce such an authorative but readable account.
But a measure of any good book is whether it opens up further enquires. This one does. Using the internet and Wikipedia, I led on the read about some of the other remoter Hebridean islands, and using Ancestry.co.uk (I’m into family history), I also researched and read up on the Nicholson family and earlier generations through the 19th century – equally interesting, a touch of scandal here and there, and a totally different aspect of life!!
by Amazon Customer
Very drawn out book
by Jago Wells
This is an intriguing book. Not a five star epic travelogue…it gets a bit too dry and academic in places…but lovers of the Scottish west coast with its unique socio/economic, cultural and natural history will find themselves well and truly sated by this near 400 page tome.
Adam Nicholson can count himself one of the luckiest people on the planet to have inherited the wild and savagely beautiful Shiant Islands.
Fortunately AN is hardly blase about his wonderful gift and has obviously burnt the midnight oil delving deep in every aspect of Shiant life.
What comes through is the sheer savage beauty of the islands. Wild in tooth and claw and the arena for some truly heartbreaking tales of love and loss.
The islands are not a place where dreams and fortunes are made. Rather they are a place of harsh reality and stuggle.
Death haunts the barren land and stormy seas surrounding the islands but in the midst of death,living breathing human beings have conspired to steal a living off the land and the sea.
Of course eventually,like gnats living on a Elephant, islanders are shaken off and the Shiants return to their lonely granduer.
It’s a tribute to Adam Nicholson that he records the reality and doesn’t water it down with roseate impressions.
by G.I.Forbes
This is the interesting story of a young man,who at the age of21,inherited 3 small islands- namely the Shiants and two decades later he recorded his experiances.
The history,flora,fauna,ecology,geology and humanity relating to the islands cover 300 yearrs and indicate the extensive research was required to write the book but the author is inclined to pass from topic to topic there being little connection between them.
The major fault of the bookare the atrocious pictures which are printed on the same dull paper as the text-a great pity.