Best for Island Histories

Travel Writing

In Tasmania : Adventures at the End of the World

by Nicholas Shakespeare

In this fascinating history of two turbulent centuries in an apparently idyllic place, Shakespeare effortlessly weaves the history of this unique island with a kaleidoscope of stories featuring a cast of unlikely characters from Errol Flynn to the King of Iceland, a village full of Chatwins and, inevitably, a family of Shakespeares. But what makes this more than a personal quest is Shakespeare's discovery that, despite the nineteenth century purges, the Tasmanian Aborigines were not, as previously believed, entirely wiped out.

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