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God protect me from my friends
God Protect Me From My Friends
- GenresBiography
256 pages, Paperback
First published February 4, 1972
47 people want to read
About the author
Gavin Maxwell
41 books53 followersGavin Maxwell was a Scottish naturalist and author, best known for his work with otters. He was born in Scotland in 1914 to Lieutenant-Colonel Aymer Maxwell and Lady Mary Percy, whose father was the seventh Duke of Northumberland. He was raised in the small village of Elrig, near Port William, which he later described in his autobiography The House of Elrig (1965).
After serving in the Second World War as an instructor with the Special Operations Executive, he purchased the Isle of Soay in the Inner Hebrides, where he attempted to establish a shark fishery. In 1956 he travelled to the Tigris Basin in Southern Iraq with the explorer Wilfred Thesiger to explore the area's vast unspoiled marshes; Maxwell's account of their travels was published as A Reed Shaken by the Wind (1959). It was there that he adopted the otter Mijbil. The story of how Maxwell brought Mijbil back to rise in his isolated home in Sandaig (named Camusfeàrna in the book) on the west coast of Scotland, is told in Ring of Bright Water (1960); the book sold more than two million copies and in 1969 was made into a film. It was the first in Maxwell's 'otter trilogy', for which he remains best known: its sequels were The Rocks Remain (1963) and Raven Seek Thy Brother (1968).
The house at Sandaig was destroyed by fire in 1968, and Maxwell moved into a former lighthouse keeper's cottage on the nearby island of Eilean Bàn. He died in 1969. His Eilean Bàn home remains a museum and the island a wildlife sanctuary.
After serving in the Second World War as an instructor with the Special Operations Executive, he purchased the Isle of Soay in the Inner Hebrides, where he attempted to establish a shark fishery. In 1956 he travelled to the Tigris Basin in Southern Iraq with the explorer Wilfred Thesiger to explore the area's vast unspoiled marshes; Maxwell's account of their travels was published as A Reed Shaken by the Wind (1959). It was there that he adopted the otter Mijbil. The story of how Maxwell brought Mijbil back to rise in his isolated home in Sandaig (named Camusfeàrna in the book) on the west coast of Scotland, is told in Ring of Bright Water (1960); the book sold more than two million copies and in 1969 was made into a film. It was the first in Maxwell's 'otter trilogy', for which he remains best known: its sequels were The Rocks Remain (1963) and Raven Seek Thy Brother (1968).
The house at Sandaig was destroyed by fire in 1968, and Maxwell moved into a former lighthouse keeper's cottage on the nearby island of Eilean Bàn. He died in 1969. His Eilean Bàn home remains a museum and the island a wildlife sanctuary.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 3, 2014
This is one of many accounts of the life of the Sicilian bandit, and probably also 'mafioso', Salvatore Giuliano.
I have been reading the first edition, which gave rise to a libel trial in the 1960s in London. The author and his publisher were successfully sued by a member of the Sicilian aristocracy, who objected to his name being associated with supporting the bandit.
Gavin Maxwell writes well and interestingly, but portrays Giuliano as a latter-day Robin Hood, who robbed the rich to help the poor. By most other accounts, Giuliano was far from that. He was an unpleasant and ruthless killer, and most probably a member of the Cosa Nostra. His worst crime was the massacring and injuring of many innocent men, women, and children attending a left wing political rally at Portella della Ginestra on 1st May 1947. I have to take issue with Maxwell's version of this story. Maxwell claims that Giuliani's plan was merely to frighten the people and thus 'persuade' them to shun socialism, but that it backfired. It is unlikely that Giuliani worried about who was going to get hurt when he and his band of men fired over 800 rounds of ammunition at a a crowd of unarmed innocent people.
The book is an out of date curiosity, which is not worth reading if you are interested in getting reliable information about Giuliani. However, I do feel that Maxwell, who lived in Sicily for several years, captures the flavour of the troubled island well.
I have been reading the first edition, which gave rise to a libel trial in the 1960s in London. The author and his publisher were successfully sued by a member of the Sicilian aristocracy, who objected to his name being associated with supporting the bandit.
Gavin Maxwell writes well and interestingly, but portrays Giuliano as a latter-day Robin Hood, who robbed the rich to help the poor. By most other accounts, Giuliano was far from that. He was an unpleasant and ruthless killer, and most probably a member of the Cosa Nostra. His worst crime was the massacring and injuring of many innocent men, women, and children attending a left wing political rally at Portella della Ginestra on 1st May 1947. I have to take issue with Maxwell's version of this story. Maxwell claims that Giuliani's plan was merely to frighten the people and thus 'persuade' them to shun socialism, but that it backfired. It is unlikely that Giuliani worried about who was going to get hurt when he and his band of men fired over 800 rounds of ammunition at a a crowd of unarmed innocent people.
The book is an out of date curiosity, which is not worth reading if you are interested in getting reliable information about Giuliani. However, I do feel that Maxwell, who lived in Sicily for several years, captures the flavour of the troubled island well.
March 11, 2024
This isn’t a history I know anything about, so I can’t speak to its accuracy, but the storytelling was highly compelling. My grandmother sent me her Maxwell collection expecting me to fall in love with the otter books, but I think I prefer this.
May 28, 2017
To begin with the obvious: this is probably not a very accurate account of the subject. Those who know far more about the mid-twentieth-century Sicilian criminal world than myself have disputed its accuracy. Furthermore, Maxwell was successfully sued for libel by one of the people described in the book.
My interest lies less in its accuracy than in how it reflects Maxwell's development in a writer. Published in 1956, it was his second book. His first, Harpoon at a Venture , about his failed attempt to make a living as a hunter of basking sharks, was published in 1952. It's been a few years since I read Harpoon at a Venture , but I distinctly remember it being disappointing. It's very much a boys' own story, except that it describes a failure rather than a success against the odds. No one would read Harpoon at a Venture these days if it weren't for the fact that it's author became famous later on. Perhaps it's also significant that, when Ring of Bright Water was adapted for the screen, a single scene about basking shark hunting was included, drawing loose inspiration from this earlier book.
There seems even less reason to read God Protect Me From My Friends , which does not even share the Highland Scottish location of his most famous books. But it's an interesting book for a Maxwell fan, in large part because it so uneven. Maxwell was never a very consistent writer, and often gave the impression of assembling several diary entries into book form with minimal editing. This was surely in part an authorial fiction (common to travel writers and memoirists at least since Caesar wrote his Gallic Wars as if dictated from the saddle). But it also reflects a basic truth: Maxwell wrote a lot because he was always short of money.
God Protect Me From My Friends includes scenes nearly as good as anything in Maxwell's oeuvre. He already shows his tremendous gifts from humour and for description, particularly of the natural world and rural life. The portions setting the scene in Sicily are the book's best. On the other hand, much of true crime angle is pretty mediocre. Maxwell doesn't have the journalistic skill to really dig deeply into the story and his descriptions, consequently, are often banal and even boring. The subject and author are not well matched.
God Protect Me From My Friends was followed in 1959 by his description of his travels amongst the Marsh Arabs of Iraq, A Reed Shaken by the Wind , which is a much better book. More importantly, it marked the beginning of a decade of remarkable literary accomplishment. In addition to A Reed Shaken by the Wind in 1959, Maxwell wrote a second Sicily book, The Ten Pangs of Death . A year later, he published Ring of Bright Water and became seriously famous. He continued publishing at the rate of about a book every other year until 1969's Raven, Seek thy Brother , which he completed very shortly before his death.
I have now read all but two of Maxwell's literary books (he also wrote a handbook to Seals of the World), and am looking forward to reading the final two over the next week or so.
My interest lies less in its accuracy than in how it reflects Maxwell's development in a writer. Published in 1956, it was his second book. His first, Harpoon at a Venture , about his failed attempt to make a living as a hunter of basking sharks, was published in 1952. It's been a few years since I read Harpoon at a Venture , but I distinctly remember it being disappointing. It's very much a boys' own story, except that it describes a failure rather than a success against the odds. No one would read Harpoon at a Venture these days if it weren't for the fact that it's author became famous later on. Perhaps it's also significant that, when Ring of Bright Water was adapted for the screen, a single scene about basking shark hunting was included, drawing loose inspiration from this earlier book.
There seems even less reason to read God Protect Me From My Friends , which does not even share the Highland Scottish location of his most famous books. But it's an interesting book for a Maxwell fan, in large part because it so uneven. Maxwell was never a very consistent writer, and often gave the impression of assembling several diary entries into book form with minimal editing. This was surely in part an authorial fiction (common to travel writers and memoirists at least since Caesar wrote his Gallic Wars as if dictated from the saddle). But it also reflects a basic truth: Maxwell wrote a lot because he was always short of money.
God Protect Me From My Friends includes scenes nearly as good as anything in Maxwell's oeuvre. He already shows his tremendous gifts from humour and for description, particularly of the natural world and rural life. The portions setting the scene in Sicily are the book's best. On the other hand, much of true crime angle is pretty mediocre. Maxwell doesn't have the journalistic skill to really dig deeply into the story and his descriptions, consequently, are often banal and even boring. The subject and author are not well matched.
God Protect Me From My Friends was followed in 1959 by his description of his travels amongst the Marsh Arabs of Iraq, A Reed Shaken by the Wind , which is a much better book. More importantly, it marked the beginning of a decade of remarkable literary accomplishment. In addition to A Reed Shaken by the Wind in 1959, Maxwell wrote a second Sicily book, The Ten Pangs of Death . A year later, he published Ring of Bright Water and became seriously famous. He continued publishing at the rate of about a book every other year until 1969's Raven, Seek thy Brother , which he completed very shortly before his death.
I have now read all but two of Maxwell's literary books (he also wrote a handbook to Seals of the World), and am looking forward to reading the final two over the next week or so.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews