Sea Room

"Yes, it’s another ‘in the wild’ book. Nicolson inherited these tiny islands called the Shiants, which are in the Hebrides in Northwest Scotland. They belonged to his father and Nicolson has now given them to his son. Over the years he has spent a lot of time there, obviously, and this is the book he wrote about them. I like it because these islands at first sight appear to be in the absolute back end of nowhere. They are difficult to get to, way out in the wild and dangerous sea, and they are also really hostile, tiny and rocky. And yet Nicolson has found layer upon layer of history there, evidence of people being there for many different reasons. Some of them have been hermits, but also he has found evidence of farming and even settlements. Another reason I think I like it so much is because it’s actually very similar to what I do. He has had a prolonged experience with the islands, like I have with the moors where I live now. This kind of relationship affects the way you feel about a place, built up over time. It’s a fascinating relationship."

"It was given to me when it was first published in paperback around 2002. It’s about the Shiant Isles, on the eastern edge of the Outer Hebrides. I can see them from my house on a good day. Adam’s father bought the Shiants maybe 80 years ago. When Nicolson was 21, his father gave them to him as a gift. And he began a love affair with these islands. The book is the result of all those years of loving these islands. I didn’t imagine for a moment, when I read the book all those years ago, that I’d end up living opposite them. The books is filled with the most beautiful and elegant prose. It has geography, geology, history, ecology. It talks about the weather, the sea, his own relationship with the land. It’s beautiful. But I chose it not just because it’s a beautifully written book, but because it gives us a little sliver of the Highlands. The islands are not big, but they are the Highlands encapsulated. The story of the Highlands —the geology, maritime history, Clearances, agricultural history—can be found there. There were many trading routes undertaken by sea, from the Mediterranean around the coasts to Shetland and the far north beyond. The passed up and down through the islands. That makes you look at Scottish history in a slightly different way: the real story might lie in the edges, along those sea routes and coast roads. These edgelands as a kind of heartland. There are a lot of treasures in the island landscapes."

"Because it’s a beautiful read and because it conveys in spare, unromanticised prose the lifelong love affair that Nicolson has with these islands in the Minch, between the Scottish mainland and the Isle of Lewis – which were given to him by his father. Nicolson’s father had bought them from a man who bought them from Compton Mackenzie of Whisky Galore fame. Along the way Nicolson digs down into the cultural origins of all that fascination we’ve been discussing, and he ranges over the history , geography, archaeology , biology , and politics of the tiny little archipelago itself. It opens with a discussion of the question, ‘who can say they really own the land?’ And then moves on into an examination of a question very close to my heart: what the word ‘remote’ really means in the context of islands, and what can we say of isolation, when an ‘isolated’ community in such a place has to be very close-knit in order to survive."