Dream Island: A Record of the Simple Life

by R.M. Lockley

Lockley was a hugely influential figure in natural history and was lauded by Sir Peter Scott and Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down , who also used him as a character in his book The Plague Dogs . Amy Liptrot, the author of The Outrun , has written the introduction.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Memoir

166 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1988

About the author

Ronald Mathias Lockley, known in his published works as R. M. Lockley, was a Welsh ornithologist and naturalist. He wrote over fifty books on natural history.

Read more about him from this BBC profile:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entr...

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who out there hasn’t had that dream of living on their own on a remote island, getting away from the chaos of life and not only surviving but actually thriving…I have, but the issue for me is that an island isn’t the best environment for storing all my books and I go where they go. Lockley is one of those rare people who successfully followed their dreams when he became custodian of an island just off the Pembrokeshire coast, it is a rugged place inhabited by a large colony of birds, a derelict farmhouse and incredibly difficult to access via boat…for Lockley this was perfect.

His first job was to get the island liveable for himself and his new wife, buildings needed to be fixed, walls rebuilt and gardens prepared, a huge undertaking…made all the more easier with a fortuitous ship wreck filled with a lot of the stuff he needed. Once the island is ready his wife moves in and they work together to become self sufficient which requires a huge amount of hard graft and they still find time to document life on the island, both theirs and the natural world…and when they need a break from island life there is the odd storm to go sailing in.

The writing here is spectacular, Lockley is a natural entertainer on the page, he can ramp up the excitement during a storm one moment then describe some tedious hard work cutting peat and instantly change the mood as he stops work to admire some young fledglings taking shelter near him. He saw beauty in everything on the island and it was so easy to get caught up in his enthusiasm…at one point he was looking for help and I almost had me bags fully packed before I realised I’d missed my chance. One amusing quirk to his writing is how little time was spent describing his wife and daughter whilst the shipwreck takes up a large number of pages, you can still see that he adores his wife, anything she requires doing he jumps right on it and gets it done…nothing like how my dad deals with my mum’s demands.

This was a wonderful book, filled with excitement, bravery, humour and a proper love of nature, highly recommended for an adventurer out there.

Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2023...

[Rose Stanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a delight - like stepping back in time.

Lockley is a natural storyteller - I can recommend escaping into this tale of how he came to move to the remote-ish island of Skokholm, and the joys and challenges of living and working there any time modern life feels overwhelming.

Also, the descriptions of the wildlife are perfect.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the late 1920s, Ronald Lockley took out a 42 year lease on Skokholm, an island 5 miles off the Pembrokeshire coast. This book tells of how he found the island and of his first couple of years living there.

Lockley is an engaging writer, whether he is talking about setting up his farm, renovating the old house, catching lobsters and rabbits to boost his income or observing the varied wildlife on the island. Midway through the book, he gets married to Doris ("Even now, I sometimes wonder if it was because I had an island to offer...") and the remainder of the book tells of their new life together and of the research they undertake into the life of the shearwater, a bird about whom little was known at the time.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Living in such an exposed location, there are some moments of drama, such as when a ship is wrecked on the rocks around the island or when Lockley nearly loses his own boat in a storm (Lockley opens one chapter by casually referring to "an ordinary gale"!), but mostly, he writes about the routine, everyday life on the island. It is beautifully written, and we can see the development of the passion for wildlife that resulted in his career as a naturalist.

It made me a little sad to read the last words of the book, "happily ever after" and to reflect that within 10 years, World War II would force the Lockleys to leave their island paradise and that the world would have changed forever when they returned. But within the pages of Dream Island, is a record of a simpler, happier time, preserved forever for us to enjoy. A book I will definitely reread.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting