“…it is a bad policy to take a return ticket anywhere.” #michaelwalmer #anislandrooing #20BOS26 Book 38

If there’s ever a book which had me wanting to rush off to northern climes, it’s “An Island Rooing” by Joan Grigsby! The latest release from Michael Walmer in his Northus Shetland Classics series, it’s a fascinating work which was first published in 1933, and thoroughly deserves to be reissued. Grigsby was a young English sailor and journalist, and in 1931 she managed to persuade the documentary film maker Jenny Brown to let her tag along on a trip the latter was making to a remote Shetland islet. Brown was intending to film birds, and the Shetlands were full of them; Grigsby just seemed to long for adventure. After agreeing to play Friday to Brown’s Crusoe, the women headed north, and the first section traces their adventures filming on the Isle of Stenness. The conditions, needless to say, are primitive and remote; yet both women seem to relish this, with Jenny filming away while Joan paints the boat, and the windswept landscape around them seems to free them from the everyday cares…