Ring of Bright Water

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The story of the curse put upon Maxwell by poet – and friend, until a blazing row – Kathleen Raine overshadows Maxwell's final years: the otter Mijbil was killed, a fire destroyed his home and he was taken by cancer. Do you think he believed in the curse?

Film helps Ring of Bright Water to shine again". Sunday Herald. 21 February 1999. Archived from the original on 29 March 2015 . Retrieved 18 November 2014.Finally I got to this first book, not really knowing what to expect, other than the short crossover in A Reed... where he obtains his first otter cub. There are a few spoilers below, so if you are put off by these, then perhaps curtail your reading now... I first read Ring of Bright Water in high school, as a Reader's Digest Condensed Book. Then I came upon the trilogy (I had not known until recently that there were two other books).

Rare Gavin Maxwell LORDS OF THE ATLAS, House of Glaoua 1893-1956, 1st Ed in DJ, 1966 [Hardcover] Gavin Maxwell Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth Condition: Very Good. Peter Scott, Michael Ayrton & Robin McEwen (illustrator). First thus. 3rd Ptg 1964 Pan M36 212pp, 12pp b/w plates, b/w illustrations True story of Gavin Maxwell's life in a remote cottage in the Highlands of Scotland with his Otter companions. To me there is always something a little stifling in this enveloping green stain, this redundant, almost Victorian drapery over bones that need no blanketing, and were it not for the astringent presence of the sea I should find all that verdure as enervating as an Oxford water-meadow in the depths of summer. Perhaps ‘depraved’ is the right word after all’. Amongst the otter stories, Maxwell shares more of his own thoughts, and his other numerous animal adoptions, including a lemur, a bushbaby, 4 geese, and a wildcat!

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This book, as delightful as it is, reinforced my perception of humans that we are nothing but utter shit and that deep inside some people is such an abyss of darkness, a darkness I will never understand how it drives a person to hurt an innocent animal. In the post-Savile era, an air of unease hangs over aspects of Maxwell’s life; while in Sandaig he hired two adolescent assistants – Terry Nutkins (who went on to become a well-known TV naturalist) and Jimmy Watt – to help look after the otters. Both under-age, they moved into his home and he became Nutkins’ legal guardian. It was a set-up discomfiting to modern sensibilities, though no allegations have ever been made against Maxwell and those who knew him best believe his desire to be around young boys was merely a product of his stunted emotional development. There is a degree of public ambivalence towards Maxwell’s “conservation” work too. Looked at from a 21st century perspective, his attitude towards animals is distinctly dubious. As a member of the landed gentry, he learned to hunt at an early age; one of his many failed ventures was a fishery for basking sharks; and, far from encouraging the otters to live wild, he anthropomorphised them, giving them their own rooms and feeding them eels shipped in from London. Can we ever truly know anyone, even oneself? Especially at second hand. I wrote something about this in Island of Dreams,

Along the way Mijbil's sub species is clarified as not previously named, and so it became Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli. Two Wisconsin otters owned and trained by Tom and Mabel Beecham of Phillips, Wisconsin [4] portrayed Mij the otter.Orchards and places by Common Ground In fact, many of the well known varieties have grown-up purely by chance, from discarded pips or stones. His writing is lyrical, on the nature-ish side. Here is his reason for writing Ring of Bright Water, taken from his foreward, written in October of 1959: