Book 69 - Coastlines: The Story of Our Shore

Coastlines: The Story of Our Shore by Patrick Barkham - first published in 2015

This book takes a thematic approach to the coast of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  Each chapter covers a different them e.g. childhood, A Better World, War and Faith.  It feels slightly odd because it only covers the parts of the coastline owned by the National Trust.  I believe that Patrick Barkham was commissioned by them to write the book.  This means however that although England, Wales and Northern Ireland are included, Scotland's extremely long and beautiful coastline is not because the National Trust for Scotland is a separate and independent organisation.

Patrick Barkham did visit all the places mentioned in the book and I particularly enjoyed reading about his own experiences as a visitor.  It is an interesting and informative read but for me at times there was just a bit too much detail about the history of some of the places.  The thematic approach means that the book jumps around geographically, which I found a bit confusing.

At the end of each chapter there is information for visitors on how to get to the places mentioned in that chapter, Ordnance Survey maps needed to explore the area, websites and a bibliography of suggestions for further reading.

Happily the National Trust owns several islands and this is why I have decided to include it as one of my 80 books. 

I particularly liked the quote from Issie Winney, a PhD student on Lundy conducting research into house sparrows:

"If you stay here for any time, you have this immense feeling that this small lump of granite in the middle of the ocean is the world.  Your mind changes."

Islands covered: Scolt Head Island, Isle of Wight, Lundy, Brownsea, the Farnes, Lindisfarne, Northey and the Goodwin Sands (a part time island).

 Brownsea Island, Dorset

 Lindisfarne Castle

 The Needles, Isle of Wight

 Causeway to Northey Island, Essex

 North side of Scolt Head Island, Norfolk

 Brownsman Island from Staple Island, Farne Islands

Old Light, Lundy, Devon

Book 68 - The Bed I Made

The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse - first published in 2010

The fact that it took me over a year to finish this book, says it all.  I did read plenty of other books during that year but rarely felt inclined to pick this one up again.

Kate flees to the Isle of Wight from London to escape her ex-boyfriend, Richard, who is violent and manipulative.  As she is a professional translator, she can carry on working from the Isle of Wight.  She had holidayed on the island as a child and settles down in a rented house in Yarmouth.  she makes a few friends and starts a relationship with Peter, whose wife has recently disappeared and is presumed drowned.  However Richard tracks Kate down and begins to stalk her.  The book is slow moving apart from the last few pages and I didn't really like Kate - she spends too much time feeling sorry for herself.

 Compton Chine on the south coast of the Isle of Wight

 Yarmouth Harbour - Gribble Seat

Islands covered - Isle of Wight

Book 67 - Lundy, Rockall, Dogger, Fair Isle

Lundy, Rockall, Dogger, Fair Isle: A Celebration of the Islands around Britain by Mathew Clayton and Anthony Atkinson - first published 2015

I desperately wanted to love this book and I do like the idea of it: the book is divided into sections: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Isles of the Imagination.  There is a page or two about each chosen island.  The print is made to look like handwriting, almost as if the book were a diary or journal and the rest of the space is taken up with black and white line drawings.  The drawings are the best bit.  I would agree that in many cases less is more.  However in this case there is so little text about each island that it gives only a faint taste of the history, customs, natural history or landscapes of each one.  I could forgive this too, if only it were accurate.  Without trying hard I spotted 5 glaring errors:

• Farne Islands - it says that Grace Darling and her father William rescued 9 people from a shipwreck in 1838 but that she died aged 26 in 1942.
• Rathlin is wrongly spelt Raithlin in the index and on the page heading.
• Eilach an Naoimh is wrongly spelt Eilach an Naomih in both the index and the on the page heading.
• The section on the Orkney Islands starts with Hoy and Papa Westray, then goes on to Rockall (300 miles west of mainland Scotland) and then on to the Shetland Islands before inexplicably returning to pages about Stenness, Skara Brae and Scapa Flow, all of which are on Orkney.  It then goes back to the Shetland Islands.  I thought maybe the pages had been bound in the wrong order but the page numbers are correct.
• The entry for Yell mentions the memorial at Gloup to the 58 fishermen who perished out at sea in a storm in 1881.  However the drawing is of the statue of Our Lady of the Isles many miles away from Yell and in the Outer Hebrides on the island of South Uist.  Both statues are of a woman holding a small child.  However there are quite different:

 Gloup Memorial, Yell

Statue of Our Lady of the Isles, South Uist

The islands chosen for inclusion in the book were a good cross section of the islands around the British Isles.  I did enjoy the section on the Islands of the Imagination.  However the book is written in the third person and it doesn't feel like the author has actually visited the islands himself: there are no personal recollections and nothing about any of the current residents.  I don't think I have ever said this before, but I think I could write a better book than this.

Islands covered: Brownsea, Burgh, Channel Islands, Farne Islands, Foulness, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Lindisfarne, Lundy, Piel Island, Scilly Isles, Steep Holm, St Michael's Mount, Aran, Blaskets, Clare, Copeland, Dorinish, Rathlin, Skellig Michael, Ailsa Craig, Aran, Bass Rock, Bell Rock, Colonsay, Eilach an Naoimh, Eilean Ban, Eriskay, Flannan Isles, Jura, Lewis, Luchruban, Rum, Skye, Staffa, North Rona, Hoy, Papa Westray, Rockall, Fair Isle, Foula, Out Stack and Muckle Flugga, Papa Stour, Whalsay, Yell, St Kilda, Anglesey, Bardsey, Caldey, Puffin Island, Ramsey, Skokholm + imaginary islands: Avalon, Doggerland (not really imaginary as it did once exist), Hy Brazil, Kirrin Island, Sodor, Summerisle, Tir na nog and Utopia

Book 66 - Blood on the Sand

Blood on the Sand by Pauline Rowson - first published in 2010

This is the 5th in the series of Detective Inspector Horton novels but it is also a stand alone novel. DI Andy Horton is on holiday in the Isle of Wight when he finds a young woman on a golf course early one morning.  She is holding a gun and bending over a dead man, who turns out to be her brother.  The local detective Birch believes she is mentally deranged and guilty.  She is taken to hospital but absconds and then more murders are committed and she is suspected.  However it is of course not that simple.  The dead man was working on a European environmental project and the conspiracy around it goes back decades.  The book is a bit dull to be honest. 

Islands covered - Isle of Wight 4/10

Book 65 - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer - first published in the UK in 2008

This book is written wholly in the form of letters sent mainly between writer Juliet Ashton and her publisher Sidney, friend Sophie and various members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.  Apparently this makes it an epistolary novel - a term I had not come across before.  The book is set in 1946.  The story of how the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society came into being during the German occupation of the Channel Islands in the Second World War and what happened to its founder Elizabeth McKenna gradually unfolds.  The book is moving and heartwarming but at the same time it doesn't shy away from describing some of the awful things that the Germans did on Guernsey to the islanders and their forced and slave (Todt) labourers who they brought from all over Europe to build up the island's defences to repel an Allied invasion that never came.

Elizabeth had a relationship with a decent German officer called Christian.  She got pregnant and gave birth to their daughter Kit.  However by this time Christian had been killed when the ship he was travelling in to France was bombed and sunk by the Allies.  Elizabeth was later deported to a concentration camp in Germany for helping a friend to shelter a starving Polish Todt worker.  Kit is left behind in the care of the society members.

After corresponding with the members of the society for a while, Juliet travels to Guernsey to visit them.  She falls in love with the island, the way of life, the society members and Elizabeth's daughter Kit.

This is Mary Ann Shaffer's only published book.  She sadly died in 2008, so never knew how popular her novel would be.

Islands covered - Guernsey 9/10

L'Ancresse - German Watchtower

 Moulin Huet, Guernsey

Book 64 - We couldn't leave Dinah

We couldn't leave Dinah by Mary Treadgold - first published in 1941

The story is set on the fictional island of Clerinel in the English Channel in 1940.  Its location is somewhere between the Channel Islands and England.  The Germans have invaded the Channel Islands but on Clerinel life is continuing as normal despite the threat of invasion due to the island's strategic importance.

13 year old Caroline and her 14 year old brother Mick are enjoying their summer holidays with their father and younger brother Thomas at their home on Clerinel.  They are enthusiastic members of the local Pony club, which has just moved to a new headquarters in a cave near the sea.  Peter Beaumarchais is the Pony Club President and he holds a fancy dress/masked carnival party (on horseback of course).  Caroline and Mick don't like dressing up and they attend reluctantly.  However in the middle of the party they learn that the Germans are about to invade Clerinel and they are to be evacuated.  In the confusion of the evacuation Caroline and Mick get left behind on the quay while their father and Thomas sail to England.  They return to their home but soon realise that they cannot stay there as it has been requistioned by a German officer and his granddaughter.  They move to the Pony Club's HQ in the cave, taking Mick's pony Punch with them.  They are assisted by Peter Beaumarchais whose family decided to stay on Clerinel and whose father tries to arrange for them to be evacuated.  A few days later they realise that they can be of great assistance to the British intelligence service in foiling German plans for an invasion of Britain.  Despite being the title of the book, Caroline's pony Dinah doesn't play a huge role in the story.  Being a children's book there is a happy ending.

The book was written in 1940 when the threat of a German invasion was very real and the outcome of the war was by no means certain.  The book is a cross between a Famous Five adventure and the dozens of pony stories I read as a child.  It does feel a bit dated in some of the attitudes to social class but it is still a good yarn.

Clerinel is a fictional island but the descriptions match the rockier parts of the coast of Jersey and Guernsey.  6/10

 Bonne Nuit Bay, Jersey

 

 La Greve de Lecq, Jersey

La Prevote, Guernsey

Book 63 - Bergerac and the Fatal Weakness

Bergerac and the Fatal Weakness by Andrew Saville - first published in 1988

This book is a novelization of the BBC TV series Bergerac, which starred John Nettles in the title role and ran from 1981-1991.  His character Jim Bergerac was a Detective Sergeant in the States of Jersey Police Bureau des Etranger.  This department investigated crimes committed by foreigners on the island of Jersey.  Bergerac is a divorced recovering alcoholic with a very rich ex-father-in-law and a teenage daughter.

A young boy called Matthew comes to the police station and says he has been kidnapped but no one believes him.  A short while later a Portuguese waiter goes missing from Bergerac's friend Diamante Lil's bar and then Lil is attacked at the bar after she disturbs a burglar.  Bergerac investigates and eventually realises that the 3 incidents are linked.  Matthew's father is the Chief Planning Officer for an English council and he is currently writing a report about the merits of different bids for a tender for a large development.  His wife and son are kidnapped and taken to Jersey so that he will recommend a particular bidder.  Bergerac rescues them.

This isn't great literature but it is fast paced and very readable.

Islands covered - Jersey   6/10

Matthew and his mother are kept hostage in a tower like this one.  This one is at Ouaisne Common.