Harpoon at a Venture

Harpoon at a Venture
Author: Gavin Maxwell
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2013-08-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0857907042

In this memoir, the Scottish naturalist and author of Ring of Bright Water recounts his post-World War II life as a shark fisherman in the Hebrides. A shark fishery based on the tiny Hebridean island of Soay was the beginning of Gavin Maxwell’s enduring love affair with the west coast of Scotland. This, his first book, tells the whole story—the challenge and drama of the shark hunt, the development of catching techniques and equipment, the men who worked with him, and some of the frustrations of starting a new enterprise in post-war Scotland. Every chapter is packed with action and anecdote. In each there are also beautifully observed descriptions of sky, sea and the individual islands of the Hebrides as well as their wildlife—from gannets, puffins, Manx shearwaters, and fulmars to seals, dolphins, and whales.

Ring of Bright Water

Ring of Bright Water
Author: Gavin Maxwell
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1567924840

This volume weaves together the Scottish otter stories from Gavin Maxwell's three non-fiction books, Ring of Bright Water (1960), The Rocks Remain (1963), and Raven Meet Thy Brother (1969). Maxwell was both an extraordinarily evocative writer and a highly unusual man. While touring the Iraqi marshes, he was captivated by an otter and became a devoted advocate of and spokesman for the species. He moved to a remote house in the Scottish highlands, co-habiting there with three otters and living an idyllic and isolated life – at least for a while. Fate, fame, and fire conspired against this paradise, and it, too, came to an end, though the journey was filled with incident and wonder. Maxwell was also talented as an artist, and his sinuous line drawings of these amphibious and engaging creatures, and the homes they occupied, illustrate his story. This book stands as a lasting tribute to a man, his work, and his passion. It was received and has endured as a classic for its portrait not only of otters but also of a man who endured heartaches and disappointments, whose life embodied both greatness and tragedy. He writes with rare eloquence about his birth, his devotion to the beloved Scottish highlands, and the wildlife he loved, while refusing to ignore the darker aspects of his nature and of nature in its larger sense.

Ring of Bright Water

Ring of Bright Water
Author: Gavin Maxwell
Publisher: Longman
Total Pages: 42
Release: 1999
Genre: Country life
ISBN: 9780582416888

This is the story of the author's life in Camusfearna, a wild and remote area of Scotland, and of three otters, Chahala, Mijbil and Edal, who became his constant companions.

Gavin Maxwell

Gavin Maxwell
Author: Douglas Botting
Publisher:
Total Pages: 658
Release: 1994
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

A Sea Monster's Tale

A Sea Monster's Tale
Author: Colin Speedie
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-06-08
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0691232458

There are few marine creatures as spectacular as the Basking Shark. At up to 11 metres in length and seven tonnes in weight, this colossal, plankton-feeding fish is one of the largest in the world, second only to the whale shark. Historically, Basking Sharks were a familiar sight in the northern hemisphere – off the coasts of Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and the USA, for example. In an 18th Century world without electricity, they became the focus of active hunting for their huge livers containing large amounts of valuable oil, primarily used in lamps. Catch numbers were small enough to leave populations largely intact, but during the 20th Century a new breed of hunter joined the fray, some driven as much by a need for adventure as for financial gain. With improved equipment and experience, they exploited the shark on an industrial scale that drastically reduced numbers, leading to localised near-extinction in some areas. From the 1970’s onward a new generation took to the seas, this time with conservation in mind to identify where the shark might still be found in the waters around the British Isles, employing new technologies to solve long-standing mysteries about the behaviour of this elusive creature. Using the best of both old and new research techniques, the case was built to justify the species becoming one of the most protected sharks in the oceans. Today, the Basking Shark is a much-loved cornerstone of our natural heritage. There are positive signs that the population has stabilised and may even be slowly recovering from the damage of the past, proving that timely conservation measures can be effective. Join us on a journey amidst wild seas, places, people and conservation history in the battle to protect this iconic creature – a true sea monster’s tale.

British Literature in Transition, 1940-1960: Postwar

British Literature in Transition, 1940-1960: Postwar
Author: Gill Plain
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2019
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1107119014

Examines debates central to postwar British culture, showing the pressures of reconstruction and the mutual implication of war and peace.

Loneliness and Time

Loneliness and Time
Author: Mark Cocker
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 320
Release: 1992
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

""Refreshing, original and eminently readable" (The Literary Review), Loneliness and Time is a pioneering study of travel writing as a literary form and of travel as a cultural phenomenon. Mark Cocker offers a fertile mixture of biography, history, and literary criticism in his portraits of some of the most prominent twentieth-century British explorer-writers - including Wilfred Thesiger, Laurens van der Post, Gavin Maxwell, and Lawrence Durrell - and of the places - Greece, Tibet - that obsessed them." "In scrutinizing the deep drives that impelled these men to the outer reaches, Cocker makes clear the immensely powerful idea of the journey as quest, as pilgrimage, and how it has come to carry mythological and spiritual import. In each portrait, the journey's meaning is unearthed layer by layer, and we see not only how it operates in the lives of the travelers themselves but its importance to the modern industrial and largely secular societies from which these figures emerge." "Cocker shows how foreign landscapes and their inhabitants have been used by travel writers as a means to self-definition as well as a source of image, fantasy, even self-image. Loneliness and Time illuminates the appeal of travel - the desire to explore the unfamiliar and the strange - that captivates us all."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Submergence

Submergence
Author: J. M. Ledgard
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2013-03-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1566893194

Award-winning foreign correspondent’s cerebral spy novel-cum-love story exposes humanity’s tenuous hold on a vast and relentless world.

Anthracite

Anthracite
Author: Matt Thomas
Publisher: Unbound Publishing
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2021-08-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1789651484

Deadbeat Kevin Jones finds himself kidnapped to an alternative reality where Wales is the single global superpower. Abducted from his mundane existence by the mysterious Gwen, she tells him there are forces seeking his destruction – he has to run or die. It turns out Kevin’s story holds the key to why all worlds but ours turn out the way they do – Pax Cambria. Featuring a host of mysterious characters, cheese-on-toast based fast food, alt-right druids and the deadly all-knowing Taffia, Anthracite begins the battle to address the woeful lack of Welsh themed comedy cyberpunk. The fearsome Jones-Corporation might run the world but they have a dirty little secret they don't want to get out. Swansea has never looked more like near-future LA. It's already got the rain.