Dream Island

The introduction to this new edition, comprising Dream Island and Island Days has been written by Amy Liptrot.

Dream Island is an account of how, together with his wife Doris, Lockley moved onto the tiny island of Skokholm, four miles off the tip of Pembrokeshire, and just one mile long at its longest. The island had been uninhabited, apart from lighthouse keepers, since at least the beginning of the century.In 1927, Ronald Lockley took a 21 year lease on the small island of Skokholm, just off the Pembrokeshire coast in South Wales. A keen ornithologist, he began studies of the bird life on the island, and on neighbouring Skomer, famous today for its puffins. In the 1930s he published two books about his life on the island, Dream Island (1930) and Island Days (1934), which are now combined in this one volume. Lockley was a hugely influential figure in natural history and was lauded by Sir Peter Scott and Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, who also used him as a character in his book The Plague Dogs. Today, Dream Island offers an insight into an extraordinary and influential figure, and strongly evoke his island life.