Gavin Francis
Gavin Francis is an award-winning writer and GP. He is the author of ten non-fiction books, including Island Dreams which was shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year 2020; Adventures in Human Being which was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the Saltire Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award; Empire Antarctica, which won Scottish Book of the Year in the SMIT Awards and was shortlisted for both the Ondaatje and Costa Prizes; and Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence, which was a Sunday Times bestseller. He has written for the Guardian, The Times, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He lives in Edinburgh , Scotland.
The irresistible lure of island life
Gavin Francis, the author of the beautiful Island Dreams, writes in the Guardian about the fascination that islands exert.
“The love of islands is a widespread affliction – why else are we still reading Robinson Crusoe after 300 years? Why Treasure Island? Why after 75 years and over 2,000 episodes are we still listening to Desert Island Discs? From the blessed isles of Tír na nÓg and Thomas More’s Utopia to the island-dramas of CS Lewis and Enid Blyton, it seems we can’t get enough of them.”
Gavin Francis
Guardian