Nicolson, Adam

Nicolson’s instinctive love of his islands only grew with time, and he bequeathed them to his son Adam as a twenty-first birthday present. Sea Room is Adam’s own love letter to the Shiants, written after more than two decades of growing intimacy with these stark, indifferent rocks, as he prepares to hand them on in turn to his own son Tom, just coming of age. This is no romantic evocation of a Rousseau-like idyll, but a raw appraisal of a place of infinite riches yet grinding poverty, of songs and stories, strife and struggle – yet his account is imbued  with such passion that it left me almost feeling homesick for somewhere I’m unlikely ever to visit.