Two Wisconsin otters owned and trained by Tom and Mabel Beecham of Phillips, Wisconsin [4] portrayed Mij the otter.

In the post-Savile era, an air of unease hangs over aspects of Maxwell’s life; while in Sandaig he hired two adolescent assistants – Terry Nutkins (who went on to become a well-known TV naturalist) and Jimmy Watt – to help look after the otters. Both under-age, they moved into his home and he became Nutkins’ legal guardian. It was a set-up discomfiting to modern sensibilities, though no allegations have ever been made against Maxwell and those who knew him best believe his desire to be around young boys was merely a product of his stunted emotional development. There is a degree of public ambivalence towards Maxwell’s “conservation” work too. Looked at from a 21st century perspective, his attitude towards animals is distinctly dubious. As a member of the landed gentry, he learned to hunt at an early age; one of his many failed ventures was a fishery for basking sharks; and, far from encouraging the otters to live wild, he anthropomorphised them, giving them their own rooms and feeding them eels shipped in from London. Along the way Mijbil's sub species is clarified as not previously named, and so it became Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli. Ring of Bright Water". Variety. Los Angeles. 31 December 1968. Archived from the original on 25 July 2018. The book's title was taken from a poem by Kathleen Raine, [4] who claimed in her autobiography that Maxwell had been the love of her life. Her relationship with Maxwell deteriorated after 1956 when she indirectly caused the death of Mijbil. [7] Reception [ edit ]An artistic temperament... Douglas Botting, Gavin Maxwell’s biographer, opines that Maxwell was bipolar. But Maxwell also drank a lot – which might explain those expansive evenings. I’m not sure Maxwell was an alcoholic, but drink was in his life (as it was in many more people’s lives in those less puritanical, post-war years). Hangovers make you crotchety, drink makes you contradictory. Also, by the time (and probably before) the house at Sandaig burnt down and he moved to the island, Maxwell was dying. Though he didn’t know it, the cancer that was to kill him was already eating away at him. When you’re facing an early death (Maxwell was only 55 when he went, in September 1969) or you’re in a lot of pain, there’s a lot of anger to deal with. And status and fame put pressures on people, and he was an outsider, in a world that was very tightly-wrapped. What surprised me the most was my changed response to this book. I was not happy by the read as I had been when younger. It reminded me of my desire to acquire my own otter, and then thought of all the crazy kids in the 60's and 70's like me that wanted exotic pets (I'm thinking of Tiger King, here!). It seems to me these kind of stories may have helped that unfortunate trend along. Wouldn't the poor creatures been better left in their natural environments? Kathleen Raine, manuscript poem, included in ‘The Written Word’: a speech delivered at the annual luncheon of the Poetry Society (1963). Early in May comes the recurrent miracle of the elvers’ migration from the sea. There is something deeply awe-inspiring about the sight of any living creatures in incomputable numbers; it stirs, perhaps, some atavistic chord whose note belongs more properly to the distant days when we were a true part of the animal ecology’

The story of the curse put upon Maxwell by poet – and friend, until a blazing row – Kathleen Raine overshadows Maxwell's final years: the otter Mijbil was killed, a fire destroyed his home and he was taken by cancer. Do you think he believed in the curse?Maxwell also published two subsequent works, with further details about the author's obsession with otters and his rather brief life spent on this idyllic landscape one can only dream about. What's more, it was a story about how one man lived in a remote cottage, in the West Highlands of Scotland, with an otter he had tamed: Gavin Maxwell died seven months after I was born. In a parallel universe, I think I would have liked to have sat with a newspaper and a pint at a table in a pub somewhere. Maxwell would be sitting nearby, within earshot, relaxed and happy in the company of some of his less posh friends. I’d be able to listen to what they were gassing on about, and try to get the measure of the man. Then I would step to the bar, buy a whisky (maybe a double) and take it across to Maxwell’s table and place it before him and say, “Thank you, sir. Thank you for writing so well, and for weaving such wonderful stories.” Then I’d nod my head at him and walk out the door into the rain. Compelled to recover what she could of their connection, Raine shared the unpublished manuscript of her private memoir. Maxwell read only as far as her ‘heart’s cry’ at the rowan and, feeling outraged and betrayed, he blamed Raine for every misfortune that had befallen him since. Inadvertently, her words had once again given a gift to the man she loved: his next book, Raven, Seek Thy Brother, which used the narrative framework of the curse of ‘a poetess’ to lay the decline of his now world-famous Highland paradise at her feet. Again, Raine’s name was withheld, but there was no obscuring her identity from anyone who had known either writer throughout the last near-twenty years.

I'm not sure whether it's due to the editing but I got the sense there's an awful lot left out. We get peaks and suggestions. His relationship (and subsequent fall out) with Kathleen Raine, his homosexuality, his mental health issues, his relationship with almost anyone else. Barely mentioned. Aside from Jimmy Watt (and later Terry Nutkins) we get a few names bandied around but it's really a one man show. The film was released as a region 2 DVD in 2002, [10] and as a region 1 DVD in 2004. [11] Previously, it had been released as a VHS tape in 1981 and 1991. [12] [13] See also [ edit ] Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water remains one of the most enthralling and surprising books I’ve ever read and I am sure, if I was to read it again in another twenty years or so, I would find yet more significance in his words. It’s a timeless and wonderful testament to the beauty and power of nature. A reviewer in the Sunday Herald described the book as having "inspired a generation of naturalists" and referred to it as a "classic account of man and wildlife". The review calls Ring of Bright Water "one of the most popular wildlife books ever written", as over two million copies had been sold worldwide by 1999. [8] Legacy [ edit ] Can we ever truly know anyone, even oneself? Especially at second hand. I wrote something about this in Island of Dreams,

Wikipedia citation

The first half of this book explains Maxwell's remote property (called Camusfearna in the book, but not its real name) in Scotlands Western Highlands, and explaining in great detail its surroundings, and his peaceful existence there with Jonnie the spaniel. And then somewhat suddenly he introduces his short story about his first otter in Iraq, and then the obtaining of his second otter Mijbil, also from Iraq and the one year and one day spent with him. It explains the steep learning curve both parties went through, with an otter in semi-captivity. Austerity Britain has nothing on the austerity, drabness and general greyness of post-war Britain. We, along with our allies (especially the USA), may have won the war, but it was bad in Britain – always raining in the bombed-out city centres, where drudges dressed in demob suits trudged through puddles to and from their bedbug-infested tenements along broken pavements to work at tedious, meaningless office jobs for 18 hours a day (if we are to believe the social history writers and/or George Orwell). I wanted to read this after having a go at Miriam Darlington’s Otter Country, which in many ways revolved around this book and the landscape described by Gavin Maxwell. He got much closer to the animals than Darlington, so perhaps it’s not surprising that his account is more interesting and vital. Otters were, not quite pets, but definitely companions for him, in a way that Darlington had no opportunity to understand. The book describes how Maxwell brought to England a smooth-coated otter, from the Marshes of Iraq (before Saddam Hussein drained them) Interestingly, the name of the book came from a poem written about/for him by Kathleen Raine, called The Marriage of Psyche: