beauty, discovery, moments
A magical description of ephemeral islands rising and sinking with time and tide. From Maxwell’s fine account of time spent on a Scottish island, anything but ephemeral. Sand bars as white as snow-drifts and jewelled with bright shells rise between the islands...
colour, discovery, enchantment, inspiration
A lyrical commitment to his own odyssey, self-promised the first time the author sailed past Ithaca. He made it, a mere three or four decades and a war later. How could he not, a ‘blue and golden world’ would exercise a strong hold on the soul (mine,...
beauty, colour, discovery, enchantment, happiness, inspiration
A subtle portrayal of the enduring enchantment of sea shores, whether through the richness of their treasures or their simple liminality. I like the combination of a child and an adult response, though isn’t much of the charm due to the shore’s invitation...
beauty, colour, discovery, enchantment, happiness, moments
A blazingly limpid landscape on the island of Thera, plunging down to the sea, with flashes of passing birds and lizards over patterned stones and anchored plants. But there is a delicate order, too, imposed by tracery of asphodel and grape-hyacinth, purple mallow and...
beauty, colour, discovery, moments
After about three decades and three months, Golding finally realized his war-postponed dream of visiting Ithaca. With such a level of high expectation and anticipation, you might expect the reality of the place to disappoint. Anything but, it transported him and was...
beauty, discovery, freedom, moments
Golding took several decades to realize his dream of visiting Ithaca, and a few months to make his own odyssean journey there by way of Troy. Many of his descriptions of this and other Greek islands are intoxicating in their brightness and warmth, particularly as one...
enchantment, memory, sleep
Are those legends still alive or did they die with the war, or with the people who told them? And what if we made our own mental – or real – ‘many-legended island’ to walk in? Or created legends for the real world? If you have a memory or idea...
