Celebrating the paperback release of Stephen Rutt’s prize-winning debut, which attracted comparison to the likes of Amy Liptrot, Adam Nicholson and Tim Dee.
It was also named The Saltire Society’s First Book of the Year in 2019, longlisted for the Highland Book Prize and was recipient of a Roger Deakin Award.
This event took place on Wednesday 10 June, 2020 as part of our #WigtownWednesdays programme.
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In 2015 Stephen Rutt escaped his hectic, anxiety-inducing life in London to spend seven months at the bird observatory on North Ronaldsay, the most northerly island in the Orkney archipelago. His time there among the seabirds changed him. In thrall to these windswept havens and the people and birds that inhabit them, he began a journey to the edges of Britain.
From the storm petrels of Mousa, gannets of Orkney, Manx shearwaters of Skomer and the terns of the Farnes of Northumberland, the British Isles are remarkable for the extraordinary diversity of seabird life that they support. Often found in the most remote and dramatic reaches, these colonies are landscapes shaped not by us but by the birds. Exploring what these seabirds have meant to us in the past, and how our current actions are impacting them, The Seafarers brings these vibrant birds and their habitats to life.
The Seafarers is a love letter – written from the rocks and the edges – for the salt-stained, isolated and ever-changing lives of seabirds. This beguiling book reveals what it feels like to be immersed in a completely wild landscape, examining the allure of the remote in an over-crowded world. In the face of a looming environmental crisis and the ways in which we are seeing the natural world anew in these strange times of ‘lockdown’, his investigation is both personal and passionate.
“I could taste the salt on my lips and smell the perfume of storm petrels,” John Dunn, BBC Wildlife.
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