Tag: Gavin Francis

Six Degrees of Separation: From Wild Dark Shore to Island Dreams

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

This month’s chain starts with Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy.  I’m fourth in a queue of readers at the library waiting to borrow this book.  Here’s the first sentence of the book’s resume. ‘Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world’s largest seed bank.’ 


So I’m going with the sea for all the books in my chain this month.  I’m going to try to dodge books I’ve showcased before, and that I know many of you have also recommended.  So no Clear by Carys Davies, no Seascraper by Benjamin Wood.  Or James Rebanks’ The Place of Tides, which Kate has just reviewed.

In fact, let’s not start with a novel at all.  Let’s celebrate the fish that so often feed us – specifically here, the fish round the British coast, in Silver Shoals by Charles Rangeley- Wilson. I was entirely and unexpectedly engaged by this book, an exploration of our nation’s iconic fish: cod, carp, eels, salmon and herring. This is a story of the fish themselves; of fishermen; of the consequences of greed and the way back from it; of geology; meteorology; our nation’s social history as it relates to food and farming; of corruption and political will. It combines serious discussion of issues with good yarns about the fishermen who took Rangeley -Wilson fishing with them, whether on week-long voyages on trawlers, or half day sorties to the local river bank. He travelled north south east and west in quest of fish and their stories, and produced an absorbing account which I read in record time because I was so enthralled by all the threads of the story Charles Rangeley-Wilson told. 

Those Silver Shoals don’t include tuna.  Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna, Obsession, and the Future of Our Seas by Karen Pinchin talks of little else. This is quite a story. It details the history of man’s love of eating tuna, from way before Roman times, to the present day, when the Japanese have cornered much of the market, while teaching the world to enjoy their own particular obsession with the freshest, choicest tuna flesh. The book details a history of overfishing, of trying to understand the tuna’s migration patterns, of political interests and manoeuvres and focusses on particular individuals who have been prominent in the story, such as tuna-tagging supremo Al Anderson. An engaging book, reeling in this non-scientist who has no prior knowledge of the industry: and who doesn’t even eat tuna (even less likely to now). 

So now to a novel about fishing.  About whaling to be exact. The North Water by Ian McGuire.  This is a gritty story set largely in a 19th century whaling ship. There’s violence, brutality, bad language, bowel movements a-plenty, but it doesn’t feel gratuitous. Patrick Sumner has – we eventually discover – left the British Army in disgrace and his options are few. He becomes a ship’s surgeon on the whaling ship, and finds that a hard and desperate life becomes even worse as the ship and its crew battle against an arctic winter and a particularly brutal and amoral member of the crew. An involving and gripping story that recreates a world I can only be grateful not to be a part of. I saw a good and faithful  TV adaptation of this book some years ago.  Recommended.

Audrey Magee’s The Colony might have been a good choice to begin my chain. We’re in Ireland in 1979, on a small, sparsely populated and isolated island, whose inhabitants have only recently started to learn and use English. Two visitors come to spend their summers there. Mr. Lloyd is a painter who wants to explore the landscape. He’s rude and entitled, but interesting to young islander James who has ambitions to go to art school. Masson, known as JP, is a French academic, keen to preserve and promote the Irish language, whether the inhabitants want it or not. Each chapter is interspersed with a terse newspaper-like account of a sectarian murder on the mainland, whether of a Catholic or a Protestant. At first these almost seem an irrelevance. Gradually, the penny drops that these incidents are deeply rooted in the history of the English towards their Irish ‘colony’, and do much to explain the largely hostile feelings both of the islanders and its two visitors. The book paints a picture of an island in many ways left behind, whose characters still struggle to find their place in the world, as indeed do the two visitors. A book to provoke thought long after the last page has been turned. 

Let’s turn to another Irish island in John Boyne’s Water, part of his Elements quartet. We meet a woman in middle years who has just fled to live on a fairly remote Irish island, changed her name and as far as possible her appearance.  Why?  Only slowly do we find out.  Her husband’s crimes reflect on her: the world assumed she had enabled them – and, she believes, one even greater tragedy. She has done her best to vanish. She meets a few characters who are also uncomfortable with their lives, making relationships with some.  Slowly she regains the strength of character necessary to reject her husband and to renew her relationship with her daughter.  This book deftly charts her slow, but steady steps to recovery.

I’ll finish where I began, with non-fiction.  And with the subject of the starter book and two of my other choices:  islands, in Island Dreams, by Gavin Francis.This is a beautifully produced book. On heavy paper, with blue and black ink, the text is allowed generous space to breathe. As well, the text is interspersed – also generously – with maps old and new illustrating the outlines of islands he visits and discusses. These are the only illustrations. Often the subject of the map will be – for instance – the usual trade routes using the islands illustrated. So this is a book to savour and linger over, returning several times to the maps on display. Gavin Francis has often been able to combine his passion for island-hopping with his career, working in those places he has most wanted to visit. He appreciates the way that islands can offer both isolation, and yet a sense of community with those who call it home. This is a book that’s both very personal, yet also universal. It encompasses myth, psychology, philosophy, literature and straightforward travel writing. Quickly read, it demands to be looked at again and again. It will stay in my mind for a long time.

So there we have it. My sea-related chain. Our next book is Stefan Zweig‘s The Post-Office Girl. Will my next chain be post office related? Now that would be a challenge.






My Favourite Non-Fiction Reads of the Year

It’s that time of year, The endless lists. I’m joining in too. Next week, I’ll write about my favourite fiction. But this week, I’ll instead focus on my 10 favourite non-fiction reads of 2025. I’m not ranking them. I’ll start with my most recent read, and reach back towards January. ‘Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin’. (who’s old enough and British enough to remember this welcoming formula introducing Listen with Mother on the Home Service at 1.45 every weekday in the early 1950s?)

A Short History of America: from Tea Party to Trump: Simon Jenkins. Jenkins puts right my formerly really rather sketchy grap of American history in a highly readable account of its early days as a barely inhabited continent, through its early discovery by Asiatic peoples on the one coast, and Vikings and similar on the other. Native American; intellectual and economic development; the long history of slavery; the Civil War; and right up to more recent history and the emergence of Trump. It’s lucid, informative and useful.

The Lie of the Land: Guy Shrubsole. This is a book that should be read by every sitting MP, particularly those Tory MPs anxious to preserve the status quo as far as our countryside is concerned. It is about our countryside and who gets to decide how it’s used: about the way the countryside has been treated has made the UK so nature-impoverished. It’s about how our history has give much of our countryside over to the landowner. It’s about the shooting industry; the draining of the fens; the Enclosure Acts. And it’s a Call to Action.

Island Stories – An Unconventional History of Britain: David Reynolds. In this book, Reynolds demonstrates how England (not to be confused with Britain) has, from the earliest years, even before the Roman Empire took this island under its wing, been inextricably bound to mainland Europe and beyond in dozens of ways, both political and social. He shows how our Glorious Past, our days of Empire grew up in conditions that can never be repeated, and how in any case had many aspects – slavery, subjugation of indigenous peoples – of which we cannot be proud. He looks at the Brexit delusion of making a ‘clean break’ from Europe and demonstates its impossibility, especially in the context of the four nations that currently constitute the British Isles. A thought-provoking read.

And now for something completely different. Raising Hare: Chloe Dalton. Dalton finds a small, apparently abandoned leveret. This is her story. Of how she treads a difficult path of wishing to help it survive to adulthood, while respecting its wildness. But the creature has a profound effect on Dalton. She strives, as she describes in this book to restore a sense of the sacred and to meet an animal on its own terms. Its part in her life changes her forever.

Stuffed: Pen Vogler. This is a book to relish, as it journeys through the history of eating, in good times and in bad, in the British Isles. It doesn’t begin at the beginning, then go on until it comes to the end, and then stop. Instead it works thematically, focussing in turn on some of the foodstuffs that perhaps define us:for instance, bread & ale; turnips (yes, really!); herring; Yorkshire pudding; gruel … and several more. She tells a good story, bringing it right up to date by mentioning the campaigns by Marcus Rashford and Jamie Oliver, and comparing child poverty and malnutrition as it presents now, with Victorian and even earlier times. A well-researched and highly readable book.

Bird School: Adam Nicolson. Nicolson was not a birder. But he decided to change that, and had a rather superior bird hide built in a wild corner of his Sussex farm. And there, all manner of birds come, and he learns. And teaches us: about surviving; singing;breeding; flying; migrating – every aspect of bird life. The story however, turns somewhat depressing. Birds here are in decline, because the natural world is generally in decline. Nicholson tells us why, so we can join the fight for the natural world in our turn.

Let’s go indoors now, and off to America: All the Beauty in the World: Patrick Bringley. I loved this book. Here is a highly educated man who left his start-of-a-glittering-career in a period of grief following the death of his 27 year old brother, to become a museum attendant at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. He spent ten fulfilled years there. In his book he talks about the works of art he spent his day with; the collections themselves; his colleagues; the visitors; his personal life. He’s perceptive, likeable and tells a good story. The accompanying illustrations by Maya McMahon tantalisingly suggest the works we can see when we get there.

The Meteorites: Helen Gordon. I picked this up in the library on a whim. I knew little about Deep Space, and next to nothing about meteorites. Not only do I now know more about the rich variety of forms they take, how they are formed and where they might come from, but I’ve met the dealers, hunters academics and geologists involved in the meteorite community across the world. I now have a whole new perspective on our planet and outer space,and a hunger to know more, by reading this engaging and enjoyable book.

A little Book of Language: David Crystal. Here’s a book which with a broad brush, discusses all kinds of aspects of language: How a baby learns to communicate; how sounds are made; languages and dialects; writing; changing and evolving and disappearing languages; slang and style … and so much more. Not all of this was new to me – this is not the first Crystal book I’ve read – but all of it is told in a lively and engaging way, encouraging thought and discussion. 

And finally … Island Dreams: Gavin Francis. This is a beautifully produced book. On heavy paper, with blue and black ink, the text is allowed generous space to breathe. As well, the text is interspersed – also generously – with maps old and new illustrating the outlines of islands he visits and discusses. These are the only illustrations. It encompasses myth, psychology, philosophy, literature and straightforward travel writing. So this is a book to savour and linger over, returning several times to the maps on display.

And if you’re going to push me into naming a favourite? Raising Hare, no question. Heartwarming, thoughtful, highlighting the tension between the natural world and our own, beautifully written.

I’m not going to be able to respond to any comments this weekend. Family Official Christmas, ahead of the usual date. But replies will happen.