Islomania may be defined as an inordinate fondness of islands. When Lawrence Durrell, self-exiled to the Mediterranean, used the term he quoted a friend's theory that islomanes, being descended from Atlanteans, subconsciously yearn for the lost city of Atlantis.
Alan Ross, in this charming book of travel memoirs, acknowledges that he has long experienced islomania's "rare affliction of the spirit," but suggests that his case is not a chronic one. "Despite visits to almost every island in the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean for that matter, I doubt I would want to live on any of them." He is a devoted London man of letters, an editor and publisher and a poet.
In the Royal Navy in the second World War, Ross served in destroyers in cold northern waters, as far as the Arctic. When he was released, at the first opportunity, at the age of 25, he headed south, to Italian sunshine, to the Bay of Naples, the island of Ischia, small boats and swimming, "burning sands" and "iced Cinzano."
There are about 60 pages on "Ischia: Autumn 1948," evidently written at the time, occasionally overwritten. When he was a young man in love, his painterly eye and poetic diction produced some lush passages. There were moments when, perhaps, he may have tried a bit too hard and there was an overabundance of similes: "the island falls like a cloak, its hem trailing into blue crepe sea"; "a few lizards slither into and out of crevices in walls, like vagrant hotel guests returning in the morning to their own rooms"; "stalactites like dentists' equipment"; "the cliffs have the austerity of confessionals". The comparisons don't always intensify vividness; they are sometimes reductively distracting. But, then and now, Ross's writing is never dull, and always elegant.
Fifty years after the first visit, Ross returned to Ischia and found it had changed less than he had. However, his mature appreciation of the place is entirely unrueful. He is a wonderfully civilised guide who bears his scholarship and his own memories lightly, describing the landscapes (and seascapes), the buildings and people he sees on wide-ranging walks, and recounting the island's history, from neolithic times to the recent period when Ischia was an idyllic refuge for a small, fluctuating, international community of lotus-eaters, artists and writers, actual and would-be, and people whose irregular sexual proclivities impelled them to leave their native countries.
Ross equally thoroughly reveals the past and present charms and social complexities of Capri and the Aeolian Islands, from Stromboli to remote Alicudi (where that delightful film The Postman was made). Ross's cast of characters includes Edward Lear, D.H. Lawrence, Norman Douglas, Axel Munthe, Cyril Connolly and Graham Greene. Ross relates gossip without malice.
In his 70s, he has discovered the advantages of Mediterranean travel out of season. Swimming is no longer a prime concern, but he still loves the sea in all its chromatic variations, "like cut-glass," "peppermint-green," "viscous, olive-green," "the colour of wine, streaks of sunset running through it," "changing from blue to chromium"...
Reading Reflections on Blue Water is a winter holiday.
Patrick Skene Catling is a writer and critic.