The Britannias: An Archipelago's Tale [Paperback]

Longlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and the Womens Prize for Non-Fiction Albinia is an intrepid, imaginative guide, an adventurer for our more environmentally conscious age. She chooses to accentuate female perspectives in this account, but why shouldnt she? For centuries history and archaeology have defaulted to the masculine. [Albinia is] skilled at uncovering these islands forgotten histories.& [T]he main impression given by In How greatly this land has been loved, [Albinia] writes, how dense it is with meaning. Can you resist a book with lines like that? Sparkling.& Rooting [her] stories in rigorous research&Albinia realizes her quest with panache. She inverts long-held assumptions about the periphery versus the centre and creates a history that is richer and stranger the further it travels from seats of power. Despite the mainlands constant co-opting of island cultures over the centuries, her brackish motherlands still burst with poetic life. US