Gavin Maxwell

Gavin Maxwell FRSL FZS FRGS (15 July 1914 – 7 September 1969) was a Scottish 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.

Gavin Maxwell was the youngest son of Lieutenant-Colonel Aymer Maxwell and Lady Mary Percy, fifth daughter of the seventh Duke of Northumberland. His paternal grandfather, Sir Herbert Maxwell, 7th Baronet, was an archaeologist, politician and natural historian.^[3]

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.

Maxwell's education took place at a succession of preparatory and public schools, including the sporty Heddon Court School^[4] at East Barnet, St Cyprian's School, where he found encouragement for his interest in natural history, and Stowe School. In The Rocks Remain, he relates how family pressure led him to take a degree in Estate Management at Hertford College, Oxford, where he spent his time pursuing sporting and leisure activities instead of studying. He cheated his way through the intermediate exams but passed the final examinations honestly, having crammed the entire three-year course in six weeks.^[3]

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), poor 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 from 1949, Maxwell became involved with a circle of artists, including Meary James Thurairajah Tambimuttu. Tambimuttu in turn introduced Maxwell to Kathleen Raine in August 1949,^[5] and which led to a complex but intermittent friendship that lasted until Maxwell's death. ^[6] Maxwell and Raine became friends of British-Swiss Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti, who advised both of them in navigating some of the emotional difficulties that came between Maxwell and Raine.^[7]

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".^[8]

Since 1948, Maxwell had been using a borrowed cottage in Sandaig,^[9] a house which had been a croft and home to the local lighthouse keeper of the Sandaig Light, southwest of Glenelg. He used this as a writer's retreat, which he called Camusfeàrna, Gaelic for Bay of Alders, in his books. Sandaig was a pair of houses opposite Isleornsay on a remote part of the Scottish mainland. This is where his "otter books" are set. After the publishing success of 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^[10]

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, who 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.^[11][12] During the Moroccan Years of Lead, the regime there considered his book subversive and banned its importation.^[13]

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 ornithologist Peter Scott and the young Terry Nutkins, who later became a children's television presenter.

In the early hours of Sunday 21 January 1968, Maxwell's Sandaig home was destroyed by fire, in which Edal perished and the author lost almost all of his possessions.^{[14][15] [10]} Maxwell 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. Maxwell referred to his new home as Kyleakin Lighthouse.^[16] 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 with Maxwell's death in September 1969.^[17][18]

Maxwell's literary agent was Peter Janson-Smith,^[19] who was also agent for James Bond author Ian Fleming. Maxwell maintained a home in London from 1957 to 1965 at number 9 Paultons Square in London. This was the home of Kathleen Raine, who rented out the ground floor and basement to Maxwell, while she initially retained the top floor as a separate flat.^[20]

The title of Maxwell's book Ring of Bright Water was taken from the poem The Marriage of Psyche published in 1952 by Kathleen Raine. After their first meeting in August 1949, Maxwell and Raine developed a deep friendship, initially over their shared appreciation of Northumberland. But in Raine's case leading to an intense love that Maxwell could not reciprocate, telling her that he was homosexual.^[21] Raine had a significant impact on Maxwell's literary career: she introduced Maxwell to her close friend Janet Adam Smith, who arranged Maxwell's poems to be published in the New Statesman in January 1950; then in November 1950 she introduced him to the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis, which led to Maxwell's first book Harpoon at a Venture.^[22] From 1957 to 1960 Raine and Maxwell lived in the same building in Paultons Square.^[23]

The Lion's Mouth was Raine's memoir of the relationship, that she first started writing in 1962 but published in 1977. Raine's love for Maxwell was all consuming, sometimes obsessive and mostly one-sided.^[24] Maxwell was in awe of her intellect, at times valued their friendship but on other occasions would express his frustration and anger towards Raine. For this she blamed only herself, despite the fact that Maxwell was entirely capable of creating his own calamities.^[25] The relationship was pitted by many arguments, with frequent reconciliations initiated by Raine, who was six years older than Maxwell and a twice divorced mother of two teenage children.^[26]

A pivotal event occurred in July 1956 at Sandaig. After a fierce argument with Maxwell, witnessed by his embarrassed guest Gavin Young, Raine was ejected into a stormy night. Frustrated by Maxwell's homosexuality and mood swings, she returned later that night, grasped the rowan tree, near his home, and uttered a curse: “Let Gavin suffer, in this place, as I am suffering now.”^[27] She came to believe that this curse marked the beginning of Maxwell’s tragic misfortunes, starting with the death of his beloved otter Mijbil in 1957, for which she was indirectly responsible, and ending with the cancer that took his life in 1969.^[28][29]

In November 1961 Maxwell told Raine of his plan to marry Lavinia Renton.^[30] This deeply hurt Raine, with Maxwell seemingly prepared to commit to a relationship with another woman. On the wedding day in February 1952, she saw Maxwell and his bride drive off to church, and compared it to a marriage hearse.^[31] The day after Maxwell's marriage Raine left Southampton on the RMS Queen Mary, to present the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts in Washington D.C., and breaking off contact with Maxwell. By coincidence she discovered that Gavin Young was on the same ship, to take up his new role as The Observer's New York correspondent.^[32]

They next met in July 1966 in Greece, where Raine was staying close to his brother's home. Unexpectedly invited to lunch by Maxwell, Raine handed him a draft of The Lion’s Mouth. Afterwards Maxwell was shocked to discover the details of the 1956 curse and reacted angrily. Days later, he denounced her and their friendship in the strongest terms.^[33]

Maxwell acknowledged the curse's profound impact, and he made his anger public in the opening pages of Raven Seek thy Brother,^[34] where Raine was only referred to as "a poetess". Maxwell's original manuscript had a harsher version of the curse:^[25] "Let him, and the house and all that have to do with it suffer here as I am suffering, for as long as he shall live." Maxwell only learned the details of the curse through Raine's memoir in 1966,^[35] so this wording was his own confection. Raine objected robustly and he revised it before publication to more closely match her original words: "Let him suffer here, as I am suffering." Maxwell’s portrayal infuriated Raine’s father, who considered suing for libel. Biographer Douglas Botting remarked that Maxwell “publicly pilloried” Raine,^[36] straining her ties with Maxwell’s other friends.^[37]

They remained in sporadic contact, including Raine's telegram of sympathy to Maxwell after the fire at Sandaig. She twice visited Maxwell in Eilean Bàn. Her final visit on 2 May 1969 resulted in another argument, regarding Maxwell's inability to recognise Raine's contribution to his literary legacy.^[38] The poem Marriage of Psyche is reproduced prominently at the front of Ring of Bright Water, but not credited to Raine. Instead she is mentioned, along with other names, in an inaccurate acknowledgement of copyright permissions. In the film version, released the previous month, there was no such acknowledgement.^[36] This omission continues to the present: the audiobook of Ring of Bright Water starts with a full reading of Marriage of Psyche by David Rintoul, with the title misstated and Raine uncredited.^[39]

Maxwell's final letter to Raine in August 1969 expressed reconciliation, making her aware of his likely imminent death, and he invited Raine to accompany him in spirit. In her tender reply she said: "I have never been able to say how much I love you - but surely you know."^[40] Raine participated in the funeral events at Sandaig and London. In his will Maxwell bequeathed her a tie pin, from the Order of the Garter, that he frequently wore, and which was originally awarded to Maxwell's great-grandfather George Campbell.^[41] Three years later, Raine met up with the Spiritualist psychic medium Ena Twigg, in an attempt to have a séance with Gavin Maxwell's spirit.^[42]

From June 1969, Maxwell started to complain about persistent headaches and other ailments, and he became increasingly debilitated into the summer of 1969. Initial medical checks were inconclusive. By August 1969 Maxwell was in considerable discomfort and he was taken to hospital in Inverness. On 18 August Maxwell was given a diagnosis of late stage lung cancer. Though his doctors suggested he would have perhaps six months to live, his health then declined rapidly, though he remained lucid throughout.^[43] Gavin Maxwell died at 04:30 on the morning of Sunday 7 September 1969, three weeks after the confirmed diagnosis, at the Royal Northern Infirmary, Inverness.^[44] He was 55 years old. The direct cause of death was coronary thrombosis leading to cardiac arrest. He was a heavy smoker for all of his adult life, sometimes 80 cigarettes a day. Many photographs of Maxwell show him smoking or with a cigarette nearby.^[45][46]

During his last weeks, knowing that death was imminent, Maxwell wrote letters to some of his friends to let them know the prognosis, including one to Kathleen Raine. He arranged to clear his debts and planned his funeral. He also rewrote his will, naming his longest serving otter keeper, Jimmy Watt, as his sole heir, after some bequests. Raef Payne and his agent, Peter Janson-Smith, were appointed as his literary trustees and executors.^[47] His estate was valued for inventory purposes at £8,448 in April 1970, equivalent to approximately £125,000 in 2025 real terms. In addition royalties from Maxwell's books will continue to flow to Maxwell's estate until 2039, under UK copyright laws.^[48] In his will Maxwell expressed the wish that his home on Eilean Bàn would be turned into a wildlife park, however given the state of his finances, this wasn't taken forward and the house was sold to one of his friends.^[49]

In line with his wishes, Maxwell was cremated in Aberdeen shortly after death. Later his ashes were deposited under a boulder, placed on the site of his writing desk, in Sandaig on Thursday 18 September 1969,^[50] in an informal outdoor ceremony attended by relatives, local residents and friends. Kathleen Raine was among those present. On 24 September 1969 there was a church memorial service at St Paul's, Covent Garden in London. Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna were in the congregation.^[51]

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 wildlife sanctuary as well as a museum dedicated to Maxwell, located inside his final home. It is open to the public from spring through to autumn.^[52] Another memorial is a bronze otter sculpture by Penny Wheatley, commissioned in 1978 by the Galloway Wildlife Trust, at Glasserton, Monreith, near to St Medan's Golf Club and overlooking Luce Bay.^[53] There is a plaque on the side - also found at Eileen Bàn - with the words "Gavin Maxwell 1914-1969, author and naturalist, haec loca puer amavit, vir celebravit." which from Latin can be translated as "This place he loved as a boy, made famous as a man".^[54]

Privately homosexual,^[55] Maxwell married Lavinia Renton (daughter of 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.

According to Douglas Botting, Maxwell suffered from bipolar disorder throughout his life.^[56]

• MA (Oxon): Bachelor of Arts in Estate Management when upgraded to MA after graduation.^[57][58]
• Major: Scots Guards. This was Maxwell's honorific rank on discharge from the Army in 1945, he was Acting Major from 1943.^[59]
• Fellow: Zoological Society of London (FZS): Maxwell was a Scientific Fellow from 1940.^[60]
• Fellow: Royal Geographical Society (FRGS).^[61]
• Fellow: American Geographical Society (FAGS).^[58]
• Fellow: Royal Society of Literature (FRSL).^[62]
• Winner: Heinemann Award (1957) for A Reed Shaken by the Wind.^[63]
• President: British Junior Exploration Society.^[58]
• Committee member: Wildlife Youth Service - launched in 1963.^[58]

On 4 December 1945 Gavin Maxwell unsuccessfully stood for election to represent the Mallaig ward on Inverness County Council. In a two candidate contest, Maxwell received 126 votes against a local businessman, Isaac Wallace, who was elected with 187 votes.^[64][65]

Maxwell would regularly speak at universities, schools and other institutions about his experiences with wildlife and exploration.^[66] In December 1960 Maxwell joined the Committee of Honour for the National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment (NCACP) - this committee had a large number of writers, lawyers, academics, actors and other well known figures opposed to the use of the death penalty in the UK judicial system.^[67] He also endorsed campaigns supporting Danilo Dolci, an anti-Mafia social activist in Italy.^[58]

Maxwell's book Ring of Bright Water describes how, in 1956, he brought a smooth-coated otter back from Iraq and raised it in Camusfeàrna at Sandaig Bay on the west coast of Scotland.^[68] 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, though they still remain vulnerable.^[69][70]

In his book The Marsh Arabs, Wilfred Thesiger wrote:

[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.

As of July 2025, the following works are not available as commercial ebooks: God Protect Me from My Friends, The Ten Pains of Death, The Otters' Tale, The House of Elrig, Seals of the World. Two books, The Rocks Remain and Raven Seek Thy Brother are only available as commercial ebooks in abridged form, via The Ring of Bright Water Trilogy. Most of Maxwell's original titles are available as non-commercial online digitalisations as noted above, as part of the Open Library initiative. The one exception is God Protect me from my Friends, which is currently not available as commercial ebook or as an Open Library resource. Currently The Ring of Bright Water Trilogy is available as a commercial ebook, but only a limited access library digitalisation.

• The White Island by John Lister-Kaye. London: Longmans, 1972. Paperback: ISBN 978-0-582-10903-2. USA edition: New York: Dutton, 1973 ISBN 978-0-525-23284-1.
  • Reissued as a paperback: London: Pan, 1976 ISBN 978-0-330-24226-4.
  • Lister-Kaye was asked by Maxwell to help him with wildlife projects on Eilean Bàn, this book covers the events of 1969, including Maxwell's death.
  • Available for online borrowing: The White Island at the Internet Archive. London: Longmans, 1972.

• Maxwell's Ghost - An Epilogue to Gavin Maxwell's Camusfeàrna by Richard Frere. London: Victor Gollancz, 1976 ISBN 978-0-575-02044-3.
  • Reissued (1999) ISBN 978-1-84158-003-6 and (2011) ISBN 978-1-78027-011-1.
  • This book covers the period from 1962 to 1969, when Frere and his wife, Joan Frere, were employed by Maxwell on various building projects and managing his company. It detailed how Maxwell's mood swings could strain his friendships, and contained the first public acknowledgement of Maxwell's homosexuality. ^[71]
  • Available for online borrowing: Maxwell's Ghost at the Internet Archive. London: Victor Gollancz, 1976.

• Autobiographies by Kathleen Raine. London: Skoob Books, 1991. Paperback: ISBN 978-1-871438-41-3
  • This is a collection of four previously published memoirs, edited by Lucien Jenkins. While not a conventional autobiography, Raine does cover her friendship with Maxwell in some detail in The Lion's Mouth. London: Hamish Hamilton, which was first published in 1977 ISBN 978-0-241-89756-0 This was soon after Frere's book, and also confirmed Maxwell's sexuality.
  • Available for online borrowing (USA edition): The Lion's Mouth at the Internet Archive. New York: Braziller, 1978.

• The Adventures of Gavin Maxwell compiled and edited by Richard M. Adams. London: Ward Lock, 1980 Hardback: ISBN 978-0-7062-3894-5; Paperback: ISBN 978-0-7062-3974-4.
  • This relatively short book (144 pages) is part of series from Ward Lock Educational Lives, aimed at teenagers, all with similar formats. Almost all the text in this book was originally written by Maxwell, with long extracts from his books, laying out a sequential biography in mostly Maxwell's own words. Some extracts are from Frere. These sections of text are introduced, and then connected by paragraphs, provided by Richard M. Adams.

• Gavin Maxwell, A Life by Douglas Botting. London: HarperCollins, 1993 ISBN 978-0-246-13046-4.
  • Reissued as The Saga of Ring of Bright Water - The Enigma of Gavin Maxwell Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2000 ISBN 978-1-897784-85-3.^[72]
  • Reissued under the original title: London: Eland, 2017, paperback ISBN 978-1-78060-106-9; ebook: ISBN 978-1-78060-097-0.
  • This is a comprehensive biography, running to 568 pages and covers his whole life. Botting was a friend of Maxwell for the twelve years prior to Maxwell's death, and occasionally worked for him. This biography was authorised by the literary executors of Gavin Maxwell's estate, who as Botting noted in the Preface (page xvii), put some limitations on the book's contents, in return for access to Maxwell's papers and business records.

• Island of Dreams: Stalking Gavin Maxwell's Ghost by Dan Boothby. Self published for Amazon Kindles, 2014.
  • Republished as Island of Dreams: A Personal History of a Remarkable Place. London: Picador, 2015 ISBN 978-1-5098-0075-9. Paperback:ISBN 978-1-5098-0077-3; ebook: ISBN 978-1-5098-0076-6.
  • A personal memoir of the author's time living and working at or near Maxwell's former homes in the Scottish Highlands from 2005 to 2007.
  • Available for online borrowing: Island of Dreams at the Internet Archive. London: Picador, 2015.

• Remember the Rowan by Kirsten MacQuarrie. Glasgow: Ringwood Publishing, 2024 ISBN 978-1-917011-04-4. Originally self-published as The Rowan Tree. Scarborough: Valley Press, 2023 ISBN 978-1-915606-07-5.
  • A biographical novel with a fictional account of Maxwell's relationship with Raine, and others. Based on historical papers and related research, some of the narrative, events and much of the dialogue is projected by the author. The book has the full text of Maxwell's 1961 letter to Raine, telling her of his forthcoming marriage.^[30]

Taken from Who was Who, online version: 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.^[58]

• Biography by Maxwell's nephew
• Eilean Bàn
• Maxwell's Otter
• IUCN listing for Maxwell's Otter
• Visit Camusfearna (Sandaig)