Gwales Review "The island, in spite of all our moves, was where we spent the most time, and most happily. It was where my parents always wanted to be whenever they were elsewhere. I felt I was a princess there; as if the whole island and everything on it was mine."


Island Child is an enchanting account of Ann Lockley's early years on the island of Skokholm with her parents Ronald and Doris (Do). Whilst many will be familiar with the writings of her well-known naturalist father, Ann's autobiography is an endeavour, as she writes in the introduction, to offer her own perspective on their island life. From her early childhood, she draws on her father's diaries, weaving in her own strong and detailed memories, and then goes on to give an account of her later life and her final settling on a farm in New Zealand with her husband.


For the first ten years of her life during the early 1930s, the family dwelt half on the island and half on the mainland. They also had a hut on the mainland at Martin's Haven and moved about to several other houses including one at Dale, Beggar's Reach, Cwmgloyne and Island Farm in north Pembrokeshire. Each abode provided fresh, creative (and not always successful!) opportunities for working on the land, the sea and with wildlife. Whilst describing her parents as 'incurable romantics', she also respects them as 'infinitely resourceful and tough'. This resourcefulness, resilience and passion for the natural world are qualities Ann inherits from them and their itinerant and unconventional family life. Whilst her early years in the company of island wildlife, ponies, goats, sheep, dogs and pet ravens might seem idyllic, she is never sentimental and is exposed to the cruelties of nature from an early age. On the same day her dearest goat Pinknose dies, she watches an oiled guillemot she cannot rescue, washed onto the rocks, 'Life on the island was a hard school'.


With the island, its colonies of birds and her notes made in a leather-bound book as her early experience of 'schooling', it's perhaps not surprising that her first experiences of conventional school are a trial. She copes with later experiences at boarding school with fortitude and includes some touching extracts from her letters home to her parents. With a Diploma in Dairying she travels to New Zealand in 1953 and goes on to buy a sheep and beef farm with husband Jack.


Her account of the separation of her parents and the tensions around it is moving. Whilst their individual lives take them on different paths, both end up moving separately to New Zealand. Her mother builds a cottage on Ann's farm and her father settles permanently in Auckland in 1971. In New Zealand, she writes, 'they made friends with one another again...'. Upon their respective deaths, both their ashes are scattered back on the Pembrokeshire island of her childhood. It is a touching conclusion to her own story, 'Now they are together again on Skokholm. The full circle of their island life is complete'.


A rich, deeply personal account, this autobiography also offers valuable insight into the pioneering conservation work taking place during unsettled times, with war looming. It will appeal, of course, to all lovers of the natural world and, more specifically, of the unique beauty of the Pembrokeshire coast and its islands.


Jane MacNamee


It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.


Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.