Scottish Authors > Gavin Maxwell Writer & Naturalist 1914-1969

Gavin Maxwell (1914-69) has a distinctive place in the succession of British writers who have communicated a passion for the environment in a way that surpasses mere description. He may be mentioned in the company of Gilbert White, of W.H. Hudson, and of Edward Thomas. His lifestyle and his love of nature might be more readily accepted now than it was, indeed he might have fitted more comfortably into any other age than the years following the Second World War. His great book, Ring of bright water (1960), brought him enormous literary success, yet it described a life doomed to destruction.

His grandfather, Sir Herbert Maxwell, was a fine topographical writer, but Gavin Maxwell's books enjoyed a much more universal success, perhaps because he combined his eye for nature with impossible dreams and a determination to live life in his own way which he communicated in elegant, readable prose, close, at times, to poetry. Maxwell was a manic-depressive minor aristocrat, both talented and charming, but selfish. He might have been a diplomat; he strove to be an explorer, a shark-fisherman, a painter, and a poet. Although handicapped he served as an instructor with SOE in the Highlands during the war.

His first book Harpoon at a venture (1952) described a characteristic Maxwell enterprise: commercial shark fishing from Soay in Skye (1945-48). The enterprise failed partly because it was undercapitalised, and partly because the sharks were more elusive than he supposed they might be. However, the book established his love affair with the Hebridean seas, and his career as a writer. His books are essentially about places: his description of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq in A Reed shaken by the wind (1957) has a distinctive position in the literature of exploration, and was hailed by the New York Times as "near perfect". As he had accompanied one of the most famous Arabian explorers, Wilfred Thesiger, who also wrote in the same genre, this was praise indeed.

In all Scotland there is nowhere more evocative of a particular author and a specific book than Sandaig where his ashes were scattered and there is a memorial to Edal, his otter. He disguised its name he said, not because it is difficult to find, but because such places should stay in the imagination. After the success of Ring of bright water - the unforgettable title, which Maxwell did not acknowledge, is from a poem by Kathleen Raine - he was inundated with visitors with no respect for his privacy, but nowadays it must resemble the place which fired his imagination. The Rocks remain (1963) is a darker sequel, and The House of Eirig (1965) describes his passion for his calf-country, Galloway where he was born.

In Gavin Maxwell - a life (1993) Douglas Botting, a latish member of Maxwell's entourage, has written a fine biography, perceptively dealing with his tempestuous relationship with Kathleen Raine and many others, including Peter Scott and Richard Frere, and faithfully bringing this exasperating, but exhilarating person to life.

Louis Stott

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