Modern Robinson Crusoe Who Found Dream Island

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 31, 13 January 1939, Page 14

Modern Robinson Crusoe Who Found Dream Island

He Lived There Away From The World

fOST of us have dreamed, at some time or another, of living our lives, peacefully and undisturbed by outside influences, on an island of our own. We have known "the longing to live in quiet on a plot of land gurrounded by the sea, some island which we might learn to know thoroughly, that would be not too large to be explored easily and small enough to be loved dearly." We Can Share To few of us has come realisation. Islands are not to be picked up for the choosing, nor do circumstanees make it easy for us to put into effect the Robinson Crusoe part of our make-up. . But, thanks to a new book, "# Know An Island" we can at least share in the adventures and the enthusiasms of one modern Robinson Grusoe who did find the island of his dreams. Hie is R. M. Lockley’s leading English ornithologist and writer on the open-air life, whose love of birds puts him into the class of another island-dweller, Dr. Axel Munthe. in "| Know An Island," Mr. Lockley telis how, in 1927, he found the island he had been looking for for years. He settled, with his young wife, on Skockholm, a ceserted Welsh island, which had Jain derelict for at least 20 years. He began immediately to study the bird and plant life on Skokholm. Later, he made extensive visits to other little-known islands round the British coast, and he describes the haunts and customs of the many rare birds he discovered. Most interesting section of the

book concerning birds is that in which the author deals at length with the gannetry of Grassholm, "the small green islet some eight miles away, west by north of Skokholm -the only gannetry in England ind Wales. He tells how, with the aid of Professor Julian Huxley and the co-operation of London Film Productions, Ltd., he made the famous Nature film, "The Private Life of the Gannet"’; (it followed "The Private Life of Henry VIII’!}. Mr. Lockley has a delightful flair for easy descriptive writing. For example, thus he describes his first sight of Grassholm and its thousands of gannets: "We struggled to the highest rock of the island. From this point the gannets are spread below you like some rare ballet in blue and silver and gold. .... It is impossible for. me to describe, as it deseryes to be described, that sight of ten" thousand or so big white birds spaced so closely and evenly over two acres of sloping ground. Hach bird, or pair of birds, was guarding a hummock crowned with a nest of seaweed and dead grass, and each bird was as beautiful to look at as the whole colony itself, the white head tinged with golden yellow, the bill plumbeous and bayonet-like, the eye pale as silver, the plumage snow-white except for the black wing-tips, and the legs and the toes of the webbed feet black with unreal, longitudinal stripes of blue-green." ‘TI Know An Island" is profusely and beautifully illustrated with photographs. It will be read with delight, not only by bird and nature-lovers, but by all who relish well-written stories and descriptions of peoples and things hidden in the by-ways of the world

A.R.

M.

"1 Know An Island’ R. M. Locks ley. Harrap, London. Our copy from the publishers.