The Summer Isles: A Voyage of the Imagination

Philip Marsden

Granta

£20

The Summer Isles are an archipelago in the North West Highlands of Scotland. Writer Philip Marsden and his aunt Bridget used to look across the deceptively short expanse of water from her home in Sutherland planning to explore them ‘one day’. After Bridget’s premature death Marsden buys the Alan Buchanan-designed Tzambika and sets out from his home on the Fal. His ambitious route takes him up the west coast of Ireland where his passion for Celtic mythology and the Irish language has full play. He’s as interested in imaginary islands as in real ones and this long summer’s voyage is as thickly littered with poets and singers as with rocks and headlands. Only the weather proves unaccommodating.