---
product_id: 5124142
title: "Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides"
price: "523.85 DT"
currency: TND
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.tn/products/5124142-sea-room-an-island-life-in-the-hebrides
store_origin: TN
region: Tunisia
---

# Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides

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## Description

Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides [Nicolson, Adam] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides

Review: Reading this book is a very good use of time - This book delivered what I’d hoped for - a vicarious living, study and attempt at understanding a land and life I can never know. The best books do this: they impart from the author an account and accounting of their own experiences, life, perspective, and conclusions. You’ve succeeded at leaving your mark in the effort of storytelling your love and interest in something larger than yourself, Mr. Nicolson. Thank you for telling such a worthwhile tale.
Review: A Man And The Shiants - This book is, as one reviewer accurately puts it, a "scattershot" account of one man and his deep, abiding love for the Shiants (pronounced "Shants"), the three barren islands he has inherited in the Outer Hebrides. The man is Adam Nicolson (Baron Adam Nicolson, mind you, though he never mentions the title here, in keeping with his ambivalence toward "ownership" of them, described quite thoroughly herein). This love and attachment to place and his experiences - sometimes quite harrowing - constitute the theme of the book in the first several chapters and the last. N.B. - The web page here, for some reason, puts the book's length erroneously at 256 pages. My copy and those of other reviewers with different editions who mention the length all seem to have the correct page number: 391. The middle of the book - especially compared with the poetic prose of the first chapters - is a bit weighted down for my tastes with geological, socio-economic and historical minutiae about these islands. It's all quite interesting at first. But, caveat lector, Nicholson does go on a bit. In fact, the middle of the book would serve quite well, I think, as the foundation for a doctoral dissertation. But let me get on with what I loved about the book. Nicolson is a highly reflective, poetic and yet dogged writer who writes with a lovely relish about the desolate, frequently perilous beauty of these islands. He describes - better than I can - his instincts in life and writing beautifully: "One of the reasons I loved the Shiants was that they were away from the world of definition.....I never think things through. I never have. I never envisage the end before I plunge into the beginning. I never clarify the whole. I bank on instinct, allowing my nose to sniff its way into the vacuum, trusting that somewhere or other, soon enough, out of the murk, something is bound to turn up." He goes on to quote some lines from poet Denise Levertov: "There's nothing The dog disdains on his way, Nevertheless he Keeps moving, changing Pace and approach but Not direction - every step an arrival." He also mentions Emily Dickinson and quotes Yeats and Shelley. These are the sections I truly loved. Other reviewers have tended to dwell on the last chapter and the question of whether Nicolson should "own" the islands. The question is very much a non-starter for me. He should. In his passage describing medieval solitaries, Nicolson writes: "All the solitaries of the past have lived with that intense inner sociability. Their minds are peopled with taunters, seducers, advisors, supervisors, friends and companions. It is one of the tests of being alone: a crowd from whom there is no hiding." It is the great wonder of the best parts of the book that the reflective Nicolson describes his own inner personae, but that also the reader meets actual people - fulfilling these same roles - whom Nicolson has encountered during his long enchantment with the Shiants.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #3,973,718 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #241 in Scotland History #414 in General Great Britain Travel Guides #11,210 in Traveler & Explorer Biographies |
| Customer Reviews | 4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (360) |
| Dimensions  | 5.31 x 1.04 x 8 inches |
| Edition  | Revised |
| ISBN-10  | 0061238821 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0061238826 |
| Item Weight  | 1 pounds |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 416 pages |
| Publication date  | August 14, 2007 |
| Publisher  | Harper Perennial |

## Images

![Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51r71CZwCEL.jpg)
![Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61zcSY-HI6L.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reading this book is a very good use of time
*by K***T on June 27, 2020*

This book delivered what I’d hoped for - a vicarious living, study and attempt at understanding a land and life I can never know. The best books do this: they impart from the author an account and accounting of their own experiences, life, perspective, and conclusions. You’ve succeeded at leaving your mark in the effort of storytelling your love and interest in something larger than yourself, Mr. Nicolson. Thank you for telling such a worthwhile tale.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Man And The Shiants
*by D***S on March 18, 2010*

This book is, as one reviewer accurately puts it, a "scattershot" account of one man and his deep, abiding love for the Shiants (pronounced "Shants"), the three barren islands he has inherited in the Outer Hebrides. The man is Adam Nicolson (Baron Adam Nicolson, mind you, though he never mentions the title here, in keeping with his ambivalence toward "ownership" of them, described quite thoroughly herein). This love and attachment to place and his experiences - sometimes quite harrowing - constitute the theme of the book in the first several chapters and the last. N.B. - The web page here, for some reason, puts the book's length erroneously at 256 pages. My copy and those of other reviewers with different editions who mention the length all seem to have the correct page number: 391. The middle of the book - especially compared with the poetic prose of the first chapters - is a bit weighted down for my tastes with geological, socio-economic and historical minutiae about these islands. It's all quite interesting at first. But, caveat lector, Nicholson does go on a bit. In fact, the middle of the book would serve quite well, I think, as the foundation for a doctoral dissertation. But let me get on with what I loved about the book. Nicolson is a highly reflective, poetic and yet dogged writer who writes with a lovely relish about the desolate, frequently perilous beauty of these islands. He describes - better than I can - his instincts in life and writing beautifully: "One of the reasons I loved the Shiants was that they were away from the world of definition.....I never think things through. I never have. I never envisage the end before I plunge into the beginning. I never clarify the whole. I bank on instinct, allowing my nose to sniff its way into the vacuum, trusting that somewhere or other, soon enough, out of the murk, something is bound to turn up." He goes on to quote some lines from poet Denise Levertov: "There's nothing The dog disdains on his way, Nevertheless he Keeps moving, changing Pace and approach but Not direction - every step an arrival." He also mentions Emily Dickinson and quotes Yeats and Shelley. These are the sections I truly loved. Other reviewers have tended to dwell on the last chapter and the question of whether Nicolson should "own" the islands. The question is very much a non-starter for me. He should. In his passage describing medieval solitaries, Nicolson writes: "All the solitaries of the past have lived with that intense inner sociability. Their minds are peopled with taunters, seducers, advisors, supervisors, friends and companions. It is one of the tests of being alone: a crowd from whom there is no hiding." It is the great wonder of the best parts of the book that the reflective Nicolson describes his own inner personae, but that also the reader meets actual people - fulfilling these same roles - whom Nicolson has encountered during his long enchantment with the Shiants.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A glorious trust
*by J***R on October 1, 2011*

Reminiscent of Heat-Moon's PrairyErth: A Deep Map Nicolson's work is also a map in depth of the Shiants; tiny islands off the coast of Skye, in the Hebrides that his father gave him. Nicolson, born in 1957, lives with his family in Sissinghurst Castle, and is the 5th Baron Carnock, although we are told he never uses the title. (Can I borrow it then please Adam?) His father author Nigel Nicolson who gave the islands to Adam, bought the islands when his mother, authoress, Vita Sackville-West found them listed for sale by author Comptom McKenzie! All this talent, Nicolson claims, descended from an early branch of marauding Hebridean pirates and shepherds. Indeed, the Shiants were actually owned by the Nicolson clan centuries before his father's gift but were lost to one of those perpetual clan wars and raids the featured in this glorious region's long history. Adam decide on conservation and archeology, not profit, eventually opening up the isles to scholarly research international archeology teams and camping Boy Scouts. He has the honour of preserving these wonderful, floating, tiny bits of man's history but later argues against his own `ownership' in context and principle. Early in his ownership, whilst visiting his mentor and tenant he meets a typical "Jock of the North', looming over the author he challenges; "Ar yew the man who says he owns the Shiants?' "Yes," I said, smiling charm, the English defence, "I am actually". "Will, yer a sackful o' shite". Adam commissions an appropriate boat, a sixteen-foot, clinker built replica of the ancient boats with a Viking heritage. Declaring her a beauty he hesitating asks the dour, neat Hebridean builder if he will be able to become a proper sailor of her. "Aye, if you had another life" is his reply. But, in fact, he is a quick learner and studies his craft as closely as his windswept and near-barren islands, uses his `little ship' well, joins the shepherd's in their annual roundup and gets the local accolade of knowing "every inch, rock and pebble' of his glorious heritage. He notes that ladies never find the `house island' (Eilean an Tighe) a welcoming environment and later archeology reveals a valid reason for such feminine detection of vibes - a limpet pile in the byre that shows the famine years, even decades, of starvation and hardship when the residents were reduced to eating this, the island's most repellent resource. Adam has deeded his islands to his son in turn and they remain a glorious resource in trust for us all (...).

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*Last updated: 2026-09-10*