Gavin MaxwellFRSLFZSFRGS (15 July 1914 – 7 September 1969) was a British naturalist and author, best known for his non-fiction writing and his work with otters. He became most famous for Ring of Bright Water (1960) and its sequels, which described his experiences raising Iraqi and West African otters on the west coast of Scotland. One of his Iraqi otters was of a previously unknown sub-species which was subsequently named after Maxwell. Ring of Bright Water sold more than a million copies and was made into a film starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna in 1969.[2] His other books described sharking in the Hebrides and his travels in Iraq, Morocco, and Algeria, as well as studies of recent history in Sicily and Morocco.
Early life
The "House of Elrig" – Gavin Maxwell's childhood home. Arylick farm to right and Elrig Loch in the background.
Maxwell was born at The House of Elrig near the small village of Elrig, near Port William, in Wigtownshire, south-western Scotland. Maxwell's relatives still live in the area and the family's ancient estate and grounds are in nearby Monreith.
Former HQ of The Island of Soay Shark Fisheries Ltd, started by MaxwellA blue plaque commemorating Maxwell as a writer and naturalist at the house where he lived in Paultons Square in Chelsea, London
During World War II, Maxwell served as an instructor with the Special Operations Executive. He was invalided out with the rank of Major in 1944. After the war, he purchased the Isle of Soay off Skye in the Inner Hebrides, Scotland. According to his book Harpoon at a Venture (1952), bad planning and a lack of finance meant his attempt to establish a basking shark fishery there between 1945 and 1948 proved unsuccessful and the island was sold to his business partner, Tex Geddes. Living in London, he became a close friend of British-Swiss Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti.
Career
In 1956, Maxwell toured the reed marshes of southern Iraq with explorer Wilfred Thesiger, Maxwell's wife's first cousin once removed. Maxwell's account of their trip appears in A Reed Shaken By The Wind, later published under the title People of the Reeds. It was hailed by The New York Times as "near perfect".[5]
Since 1948, Maxwell had been using a borrowed cottage in Sandaig[6] as a writer's retreat (which he called Camusfeàrna in his books). Sandaig was a small community opposite Isleornsay on a remote part of the Scottish mainland. This is where his "otter books" are set. After Ring of Bright Water (1960), his newfound fame did not sit well with him:
He couldn't cope with it. He wasn't a strong man that way, so he couldn't deal with it. But he didn't want anyone to know that, so he started drinking more; he started smoking more. And the pressures became more because we started spending more money. Next thing, agent was on the phone: 'We're broke; we need a sequel.' So, he wrote The Rocks Remain, the sequel to Ring of Bright Water, which was a disaster because it was written in a hurry. It didn't have the same beauty, it didn't have the same anything as Ring of Bright Water. That was the beginning of the end really. — Terry Nutkins, 2010[7]
In The Rocks Remain (1963), the otters Edal, Teko, Mossy and Monday show great differences in personality. The book demonstrates the difficulty Maxwell was having, possibly as a result of his mental state, in remaining focused on one project and the impact that had on his otters, Sandaig and his own life.
In 1960-1962, he made several trips to Morocco and Algeria. He published accounts of his experiences in North Africa, including his description of the aftermath of the 1960 Agadir earthquake, in The Rocks Remain (1963). In Morocco, he was assisted by the monarchy's head of Press Services and Minister of Information Moulay Ahmed Alaoui, and by the anticolonial activist and journalist Margaret Pope, whom Maxwell referred to in The Rocks Remain under a pseudonym, "Prudence Hazell." Pope recruited Maxwell to travel to Algiers in January 1961 to collect information for the Algerian revolutionary National Liberation Front (FLN). Maxwell also began research for a non-fiction book tracing the dramatic lives of the last rulers of Marrakech under the French, eventually published in 1966 as Lords of the Atlas: The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua 1893–1956.[8][9] During the Moroccan Years of Lead, the regime there considered his book subversive and banned its importation.
In The House of Elrig (1965), Maxwell describes his family history and his passion for the calf-country, Galloway, where he was born. It was during this period that he met ornithologistPeter Scott and the young Terry Nutkins, who later became a children's television presenter.
In 1968, Maxwell's Sandaig home was destroyed by fire, in which Edal perished,[7] and he moved to the lighthouse keepers' cottages on Eilean Bàn (White Island), an island between the Isle of Skye and the Scottish mainland by the village of Kyleakin. He invited John Lister-Kaye to join him on Eilean Bàn to help him build a zoo on the island and work on a book about British wild mammals. Lister-Kaye accepted the invitation, but both projects were abandoned when Maxwell died from lung cancer[10] in a hospital in Inverness[10] the following year.[11]
Eilean Bàn now supports a pier of the Skye Bridge, built during the 1990s. Despite modern traffic a hundred feet or so above it, the island is a commemorative otter sanctuary and houses a museum dedicated to Maxwell. Another memorial is a bronze otter erected at Monreith near to St Medan's Golf Club.
Personal life
Privately homosexual,[13] Maxwell married Lavinia Renton (daughter of The Right Honourable Sir Alan Lascelles and granddaughter of Viscount Chelmsford, Wilfred Thesiger's uncle) on 1 February 1962. The marriage lasted little more than a year and they divorced in 1964.[14]
Statue of Maxwell's otter at Monreith by Penny Wheatley, 1978.
Maxwell's book Ring of Bright Water describes how, in 1956, he brought a smooth-coated otter back from Iraq and raised it in "Camusfearna" at Sandaig Bay on the west coast of Scotland.[16] He took the otter, called Mijbil, to the London Zoological Society, where it was decided that this was a previously unknown subspecies of smooth-coated otter. It was therefore named Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli (or, colloquially, "Maxwell's otter") after him. While it was thought to have become extinct in the alluvial salt marshes of Iraq as a result of the large-scale drainage of the area that started in the 1960s, newer surveys suggest large populations remain throughout its range.[17][18]
Maxwell's memorial boulder on the former site of his Camusfeàrna home
[I]n 1956, Gavin Maxwell, who wished to write a book about the Marshes, came with me to Iraq, and I took him round in my tarada for seven weeks. He had always wanted an otter as a pet, and at last, I found him a baby European otter which unfortunately died after a week, towards the end of his visit. He was in Basra preparing to go home when I managed to obtain an otter, which I sent to him. This, very dark in colour and about six weeks old, proved to be a new species. Gavin took it to England, and the species was named after him.
The otter became woven into the fabric of Maxwell's life. The title of his book Ring of Bright Water was taken from the poem "The Marriage of Psyche" by Kathleen Raine, who said in her autobiography that Maxwell had been the love of her life. Raine's relationship with Maxwell deteriorated after 1956 when she indirectly caused the death of Mijbil. Raine held herself responsible not only for losing Mijbil but for a curse she had uttered shortly beforehand, frustrated by Maxwell's homosexuality: "Let Gavin suffer in this place as I am suffering now." Raine blamed herself thereafter for all Maxwell's misfortunes, beginning with Mijbil's death and ending with the cancer that took him at age 55 his 55 on 7 September 1969.[19][20][2]
Maxwell's ashes were placed beneath a boulder at the former site of his house Camusfeàrna. The boulder marks the position of his writing desk.[7]
Ein Ring aus hellem Wasser - Meine Jahre an Schottlands wilder Westküste, ins Deutsche übersetzt von Iris Hansen, München : Blessing, 2021, ISBN978-3-89667-665-8
The Otters' Tale Longmans (1962; a children's version of Ring of Bright Water)
The Rocks Remain Longmans (1963)
The House of Elrig Longmans (1965)
Lords of the Atlas: Morocco, the rise and fall of the House of Glaoua Longmans (1966)
Maxwell, Gavin, (1914–7 Sept. 1969), Sponsor of the Dolci Cttee; Hon. Life Member: Wildfowl Trust; Cttee, Wildlife Youth Service; Fauna Preservation Soc.; Internat. Cttee, Centro Studi e Scambi Internazionali; Cttee of Honour Nat. Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment; Pres., British Junior Exploration Soc.; writer since 1952; portrait painter, 1949–52, doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U57666Who's Who (published online: 1 December 2007)
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