Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides

“No other book has given me as rich a sense of what makes a small island so revelatory of our life on earth.” —David Craig, London Review of Books

In 1937, Adam Nicolson’s father answered a newspaper ad—”Uninhabited islands for sale. Outer Hebrides, 600 acres . . . Puffins and seals. Apply . . .” In this radiant and powerful book, Adam describes, and relives, his love affair with these breathtakingly beautiful islands called the Shiants. Crowned with huge cliffs of black basalt and surrounded by tidal rips, they are wild, dangerous, and dramatic—with a long, haunting past. Sea Room celebrates this extraordinary place and shares with us the greatest gift an island can bestow: intimate and profound engagement with the natural world.