ISLANDER: A JOURNEY AROUND OUR ARCHIPELAGO
PATRICK BARKHAM , GRANTA, £20 HB
Who hasn’t dreamed of owning an island? Patrick Barkham claims not to, but his tremendous island-hopping book is full of people who have and did – or at least moved to one. Chief among them is longforgotten novelist and sometime spy chief Sir Compton Mackenzie, who inspired his pal DH Lawrence to write The Man Who Loved Islands. A romantic, island-infatuated dandy, Mackenzie bought the Shiants in the Hebrides and Herm and Jethou in the Channel Islands, and inhabited a veritable archipelago of other small islands too. He pops up throughout Islander, as Barkham explores the mindset of those living off the mainland, on the fringes.
The narrative is structured as a journey around the 6,300-odd islands that make up the British Isles. Barkham stays on 11, from the Isle of Man to tiny Ray Island – 110 acres off the Essex coast, “an island for one”. On these little worlds, life can be tough but also freer than in the ‘centre’ (and sometimes quite hedonistic); usual rules don’t apply. You have to be resourceful to survive, and over the centuries many haven’t.
Surprises emerge. Islanders may be insular or eccentric, but others are outwardlooking and innovative. Old and unique ways of life are being lost, yet numbers of schoolchildren (an index of island health) are growing – on St Martin’s in the Scillies and Rathlin in the Irish Sea, for example. Barkham’s journalistic background no doubt helped him persuade so many islanders – by nature wary of outsiders – to open up to him. Their stories, so beautifully told, are the lifeblood of this wonderful book. Ben Hoare, BBC Wildlife features editor