Fringed With Mud & Pearls

An English Island Odyssey

Ian Crofton author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Birlinn General

Published:6th May '21

£20.00

Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.

Fringed With Mud & Pearls cover

One of the Daily Telegraph's 20 Books Perfect for Travel

Scotland has its rugged Hebrides; Ireland its cliff-girt Arans; Wales its Island of Twenty Thousand Saints. And what has England got? The isles of Canvey, Sheppey, Wight and Dogs, Mersea, Brownsea, Foulness and Rat. But there are also wilder, rockier places – Lundy, the Scillies, the Farnes.

These islands and their inhabitants not only cast varied lights on the mainland, they also possess their own peculiar stories, from the Barbary slavers who once occupied Lundy, to the ex-major who seized a wartime fort in the North Sea and declared himself Prince of Sealand.

Ian Crofton embarks on a personal odyssey to a number of the islands encircling England, exploring how some were places of refuge or holiness, while others have been turned into personal fiefdoms by their owners, or become locations for prisons, rubbish dumps and military installations. He also describes the varied ways in which England's islands have been formed, and how they are constantly changing, so making a mockery of human claims to sovereignty.

'A fascinating and charming reverie on the impermanence of our Island’s islands'

-- Tony Robinson, star of Blackadder and Time Team

'There is real poise and poetry in [Crofton's] writing, sentences that lift the reader's spirit like the extraordinary power of the birds'

-- Donald S Murray * Stornoway Gazette *

'In 2014 Ian Crofton followed England’s northern frontier with Scotland. Now he turns to the country's other edges, specifically to those parts that have become detached – including Lindisfarne and the Isle of Wight, Eel Pie Island and the Isles of Scilly'

* Telegraph *

'a fascinating study about what it means to exist on the fringes'

* Coast Magazine, Book of the Month *

'A really engaging…armchair-travel read'

* BBC Countryfile Magazine *

'A companionable and oddly compulsive book... Ian Crofton throws himself into this eclectic collection of islands with gusto, finding fascinating tales to share even from the most benighted urban backwaters.'

* The Scottish Mountaine

ISBN: 9781780276656

Dimensions: 234mm x 156mm x 24mm

Weight: 620g

288 pages