Letters from Iceland Mothers Day and a life on a

and a life on a remote Hebridean island

vivid and arresting' The Times One summer evening in 2009

she swims in the ocean's cold embrace

Publishing in the shadow of the most significant election since the Tories came to power in 2010

told from the inside

Letters from Iceland Mothers Day and a life on aIn the summer of 1936, W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice visited Iceland on commission to write a travel book, but found themselves capturing concerns on a scale that were far more international. 'Though writing in a "holiday" spirit,' commented Auden, 'its authors were all the time conscious of a threatening horizon to their picnic world wide unemployment, Hitler growing everyday more powerful and a world war more inevitable.' The result is the