The Island First edition.<br />Illustrated by C. F. Tunnicliffe.

London: Andre Deutsch, 1969. First edition. Hardback. 192pp. Publisher's original brown cloth with gilt to spine. Tope edge of text block tinted. Dust jacket in a protective sleeve. The island is Skokholm, tiny and remote, off the coast of Pembrokeshire. It was there that Ronald Lockley went as a young man, to study the tens of thousands of wild creatures that lived 'within the compass of one small plot of land surrounded by the sea'. The author tells of the demons that drove him to wrest a home and a living from this desolate place. For 13 years, at first alone, later with his wife and daughter, he lived on what he could grow or catch with his own hands, in a house built largely by his own labour. There were pieces of luck, like the wind that drove an abandoned schooner ashore, loaded with coal, visitors like the bird-loving ex-king of Bulgaria who came to inspect this small and untroubled realm. There were the rabbits, 10,000 strong, like a resident plague of locusts, multiplying invincibly in the face of every human attack: a fascinating study for the naturalist, and a perpetual danger to the farmer. But it is the birds that are at the centre of this book: 80,000 bredding birds on a mere 240 acres - shearwaters, puffins, guillemots and petrels. In describing his life on the island, the author totally involves the reader, not only in what he saw and heard, but also in how he felt - we share his excitement and awe as he came to understand the lives of his fellow islanders. Skokholm has become a nature reserve and an observatory of international importance. Illustrations and jacket design by Charles Tunnicliffe. Book in very good condition. Upper corner of front free endpaper snipped off. Tope edge tine a little faded. A very clean and bright copy. Dust jacket good. Price clipped and with some residual biro marks to adjacent area. Minor edge wear. A little chipping to extremities of spine. Some light soiling (mainly to rear). Spine slightly faded.