Sea Room: An Island Life (Hardcover)

Biographies are supposed to deal with people, not places, but Adam Nicolson's lyrical new book, Sea Room, is best seen as a biography. Dealing with the geology, history, natural history, sociology, and emotional resonance of the Shiants--a trio of Hebridean Islands between Skye and Harris --Nicolson's book is an all-encompassing characterisation of this remote corner of the British Isles.

Nicolson begins by describing how, inheriting the islands from his father as a young man, the islands have come to have an unusually deep meaning for him. This comes out in his painstaking reconstruction of the geological formation of the islands, of their ancient bronze and iron age settlements, and of the harsh lives of the families that lived here until large-scale economies destroyed traditional Hebridean life.

There is much sadness and anger in Nicolson's account of these changes, but also joy--joy at the richness of life in such a place, and joy that these changes have allowed Nicolson himself to experience the Shiants' beauty. The precision with which almost every inch of the islands' physical and historical identities are described is, literally, marvellous; Nicolson eschews generalities, and writes with a love of detail that is increasingly rare. Although the book is a little maudlin at times, this is only the reflection of Nicolson's own sensitivity to the place. The Shiants are anthropomorphised, becoming a character in their own right, proof that the tiniest place can reflect the passage of time. --Toby Green

Praise for Adam Nicolson's Perch Hill: 'A delight, beautifully written, acutely observed and laced with self-mockery' Jonathan Dimbleby in the The Times 'By turns ecstatic, elegant, subtle and philosophical' Richard Mabey 'A timely reminder that the very best writing starts at home.' Robert McCrum in The Observer

Everyone dreams of owning an island, but very few people ever do. Hollywood actors have purchased Pacific hideaways and millionaires set themselves up on outcrops in the Caribbean, but for ordinary mortals the dream usually remains unrealized. Adam Nicolson is the exception. He doesn't just own an island. He owns three. In the 1980s, aged 21, he inherited the tiny Shiants from his father, who had bought them 50 years earlier at the bargain price (even then) of ?1400. Nobody lived there, and the only dwelling was a dilapidated rat-infested house where Nicolson's wife still refuses to sleep. The Shiants are not palm-fringed and sun-soaked; they sit in the cold seas off the Outer Hebrides, and their geography is bleak. They are surrounded by mighty cliffs, home to razorbills and puffins. Seals play in the frothing seas. Yet Nicolson, like his father before him, believes they are one of the most beautiful places on the planet. The book opens defensively; Nicolson realises that absentee English landlords are not popular in the Hebrides. But he manages to convince the local Hebrideans, his readers and himself that the islands are his in name only. They are, in a sense, independent, continuing to survive in the fierce swell whoever's name is on the land deeds. With great affection and minute detail, he takes us over every nook and cranny of the islands - their unforgiving geology, their wildlife, their modest place in history and legend. Mirroring the unfolding of the islands' life is Nicolson's own personal history, from young man to husband and father. The result is a poetical, romantic homage to a remote place, told from the heart. Even if few of us can live the dream of owning our own Lilliputian kingdom, at least in this book we can read about it. Review by Dea Birkett (Kirkus UK)

A lovely biography of a place: the Shiants, in the Hebrides, are an island threesome of grass, wind, and birds that have had a long human presence and are sometimes the home of travel and environmental writer Nicolson. When Nicolson was 21, his father gave him the Shiants, which he had purchased years before. The fact of ownership doesn't sit comfortably with the author-though he may lay claim to descent from the chiefs of Lewis-but he won't part with the islands, for his love of them is keen and deep. Nor will he fence them off, choosing rather to make them available to those drawn there. Matters of private property aside, this is his gift to the islands, a rangy exploration of their human past, a delineation of their prospect, an overview of their natural history. Nicolson has listened hard to the men who have experience with the Shiants, has become familiar with the campions and flag iris, the puffins and shearwaters, and the seeps where fresh water is gathered. He has pondered the possible histories behind ruins on the islands-a Norse house? a hermit's retreat?-and he is as hungry to know about the glories of a workaday boat he has made for the local waters, fit for the teeth of the breaking seas, as he is to hear any of the tales, tall or true, that speak of the islands' past. His writing is clear-as sharp, informative, and exact as the explanation he gets from the shipwright-but it's also sensitive to the hauntings and holiness of the islands: They're "a place in which many times coexist, flowing at different speeds, enshrining different worlds." Nicolson's love letter to the Shiants is a summing-up, rich with history and curiosity, that is itself now also a part of the place. And the Shiants are the better for it. (58 b&w illustrations, 4 maps) (Kirkus Reviews)