Books

Books

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Pools win

LUCY LETHBRIDGE

The Sea Is Not Made of Water: Life Between the Tides

By Adam Nicolson

William Collins £20

The great Victorian naturalist Philip Gosse is remembered in Adam Nicolson’s new book not for being the unbending religious fundamentalist of his son Edmund’s memoir, but as the godfather of rockpool wonderment.

These shoreline cups, nourished by the in and out of the tides, are teeming miniature theatres of life. ‘Never more great than when minutely great’, Gosse said of the tiny glories of the rockpool.

In The Sea Is Not Made of Water, Nicolson describes how he created three pools near his Scottish home, Ardtornish.

He then lets the contemplation of these ‘micro-Arcadias’ take him on fascinating voyages through history, science, philosophy and literature. Over the course of several summers, he finds hosts of inhabitants in his pools, including winkles, whelks, sea urchins, starfish – and, in one, ten different kinds of seaweed.