Islomania
Encyclopedia
Island
An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...
s. The condition was first identified by British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
writer Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
in his book Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953):
In a letter to a friend Durrell wrote: "Islomania is a rare affliction of spirit. There are people who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are in a little world surrounded by sea fills them with an indescribable intoxication.”
The American writer Thurston Clarke
Thurston Clarke
Thurston Clarke is an American historian, author and journalist.-Education and career:Clarke was educated at Yale University, Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London....
uses the term in his book Searching for Crusoe (2001) in his exploration of people's attraction to all sorts of islands –from the classic desert island
Desert island
A desert island or uninhabited island is an island that has yet to be populated by humans. Uninhabited islands are often used in movies or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotypes for the idea of "paradise". Some uninhabited islands are protected as nature reserves and...
to places such as Svalbard
Svalbard
Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. It is located north of mainland Europe, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude , and from 10° to 35° east longitude. Spitsbergen is the...
, from Key West
Key West
Key West is an island in the Straits of Florida on the North American continent at the southernmost tip of the Florida Keys. Key West is home to the southernmost point in the Continental United States; the island is about from Cuba....
to Mykonos
Mykonos
Mykonos is a Greek island, part of the Cyclades, lying between Tinos, Syros, Paros and Naxos. The island spans an area of and rises to an elevation of at its highest point. There are 9,320 inhabitants most of whom live in the largest town, Mykonos, which lies on the west coast. The town is also...
.
Islomaniacs
Islomaniacs (or islomanes) are those who suffer from islomania, the irresistible attraction to islands first described by Lawrence DurrellLawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
in his travel book Prospero's Cell, set in the Ionian island of Corfu
Corfu
Corfu is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the second largest of the Ionian Islands, and, including its small satellite islands, forms the edge of the northwestern frontier of Greece. The island is part of the Corfu regional unit, and is administered as a single municipality. The...
.
While islomania is most frequently associated with writers, this is probably simply because they are the most likely to describe and analyse their condition. One of the first recorded islomaniacs was Roman emperor Tiberius
Tiberius
Tiberius , was Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Augustus in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian...
(42 BC-AD 37) who, growing tired of Rome, retreated to the island of Capri
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...
in the Bay of Naples, whence he ruled the empire from the Villa Jovis
Villa Jovis
Villa Jovis is a Roman palace on Capri, southern Italy, built by emperor Tiberius who ruled from there between AD 27 and AD 37...
with its views over the bay to the Sorrento
Sorrento
Sorrento is the name of many cities and towns:*Sorrento, Italy*Sorrento, Florida, United States*Sorrento, Louisiana, United States*Sorrento, Maine, United States*Sorrento, Victoria, a township on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia...
peninsula. Much later, Captain James Cook, explorer of the Pacific, was also an islomane, his third voyage to the Pacific in particular turning into a strange parade around the islands from which it seemed the Captain secretly never really wanted to return to England. (Though at present this idea seems to be purely conjecture.)
One of the first literary islomaniacs was Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
. Although now famed as the writer of Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
, he was better known during his lifetime for Typee
Typee
Typee is American writer Herman Melville's first book, a classic in the literature of travel and adventure partly based on his actual experiences as a captive on the island Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands, in 1842...
, a semi-autobiographical story of his stay in the Marquesas in French Polynesia
French Polynesia
French Polynesia is an overseas country of the French Republic . It is made up of several groups of Polynesian islands, the most famous island being Tahiti in the Society Islands group, which is also the most populous island and the seat of the capital of the territory...
. He followed this with Omoo
Omoo
Omoo: A Narrative of the South Seas is Herman Melville's sequel to Typee, and, as such, was also autobiographical. After leaving Nuku Hiva, the main character ships aboard a whaling vessel which makes its way to Tahiti, after which there is a mutiny and the majority of the crew are imprisoned on...
, set mainly in Tahiti
Tahiti
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...
. The fame of Typee placed the seed of islomania within other 19th century writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
, George Lewis Becke
George Lewis Becke
George Lewis Becke was an Australian short-story writer and novelist.-Early life:Becke was born at Port Macquarie, New South Wales, son of Frederick Becke, Clerk of Petty Sessions and his wife Caroline Matilda, née Beilby. Both parents were born in England...
, Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
, Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
and Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
.
- "Awfully nice man here tonight," (wrote Robert Louis StevensonRobert Louis StevensonRobert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
in a private letter of spring 1875), "...telling us all about the South Sea Islands till I was sick with desire to go there; beautiful places, green forever; perfect climate; perfect shapes of men and women, with red flowers in their hair; and nothing to do but study oratory and etiquette, sit in the sun and pick up the fruits as they fall."
For three years Stevenson sailed the Pacific in his private yacht, befriending island kings and writing stories set in the Scottish highlands, until in 1890 he built a house in Samoa
Samoa
Samoa , officially the Independent State of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa is a country encompassing the western part of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962. The two main islands of Samoa are Upolu and one of the biggest islands in...
; there he became embroiled in local politics, championing the Samoans against incompetent British officials, while still writing almost exclusively of misty Scottish mountains.
Norman Douglas
Norman Douglas
George Norman Douglas was a British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel South Wind.-Life:Norman Douglas was born in Thüringen, Austria . His mother was Vanda von Poellnitz...
's South Wind
South wind
For other uses, see South wind .A south wind is a wind that originates in the south and blows north.Words used in English to describe the south wind are auster, buster , föhn/foehn , gibli , friagem , khamsin For other uses, see South wind (disambiguation).A south wind is a wind that originates in...
diverted the British public during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
with the story of an amoral idyll on Tiberius's isle of Capri. Douglas lived almost his entire life on the island, which attracted through the inter-war years a whole coterie of literary and artistic exiles, including Axel Munthe
Axel Munthe
Axel Martin Fredrik Munthe was a Swedish psychiatrist, best known as the author of The Story of San Michele, an autobiographical account of his life and work....
(the Swedish doctor's The Story of San Michele
The Story of San Michele
The Story of San Michele is a book of memoirs by Swedish physician Axel Munthe first published in 1929 by British publisher John Murray. Written in English, it was a best-seller in numerous languages and has been republished constantly in the over seven decades since its original...
remains a classic of islomania, although very little of it is actually set on the island), D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
and Compton MacKenzie
Compton Mackenzie
Sir Compton Mackenzie, OBE was a writer and a Scottish nationalist.-Background:Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool, England, into a theatrical family of Mackenzies, but many of whose members used Compton as their stage surname, starting with his grandfather Henry Compton, a well-known...
(author of Vestal Fire, a lightly fictionalised guide to Capri's golden age).
Between the wars the South Pacific
Oceania
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...
again attracted a host of writing talent in search of a simpler world, inspired by the venerable firm of Stevenson, London & Co. W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
visited Tahiti and tracked down an original painting by Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
, the French artist-islomane and contemporary of Stevenson, although the two never met. Maugham also wrote Rain
Rain
Rain is liquid precipitation, as opposed to non-liquid kinds of precipitation such as snow, hail and sleet. Rain requires the presence of a thick layer of the atmosphere to have temperatures above the melting point of water near and above the Earth's surface...
, a short story detailing the moral disintegration of a missionary under the influence of the islands. Americans James Norman Hall
James Norman Hall
James Norman Hall was an American author best known for the novel Mutiny on the Bounty with co-author Charles Nordhoff.-Biography:Hall was born in Colfax, Iowa, where he attended the local schools...
, Charles Nordhoff
Charles Nordhoff
Charles Bernard Nordhoff was an English-born American novelist and traveler.-Early life:Charles Nordhoff was born in London, England, on February 1, 1887, to American parents. His father was Walter Nordhoff, a wealthy businessman and author of The Journey of the Flame penned under the name...
, Robert Dean Frisbie
Robert Dean Frisbie
Robert Dean Frisbie was an American writer of travel literature about Polynesia.-Life:...
, and Frederick O'Brien wrote numerous short stories and serials about Polynesia which captured the public imagination.
The Second World War was far more disruptive of islomania than its predecessor. Lawrence Durrell's experience was typical: he had been living in peace in Corfu
Corfu
Corfu is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the second largest of the Ionian Islands, and, including its small satellite islands, forms the edge of the northwestern frontier of Greece. The island is part of the Corfu regional unit, and is administered as a single municipality. The...
until the war drove him into exile in Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
; there, recollecting times lost, he wrote Prospero's Cell, the book which defined the term. Durrell's islomania was of the restless sort: he subsequently lived on and wrote of Rhodes
Rhodes
Rhodes is an island in Greece, located in the eastern Aegean Sea. It is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, with a population of 117,007, and also the island group's historical capital. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within...
(Reflections on a Marine Venus) and Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
(Bitter Lemons
Bitter Lemons
Bitter Lemons is an autobiographical work by writer Lawrence Durrell, describing the three years he spent on the island of Cyprus...
).
The post-war period saw a host of islomaniac authors who, perhaps having experienced the horrors of war, saw islands as places to escape to. The most influential American contribution to the genre came with James A. Michener
James A. Michener
James Albert Michener was an American author of more than 40 titles, the majority of which were sweeping sagas, covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and incorporating historical facts into the stories...
's Bali Hai, an island which started its mythic life in Tales of the South Pacific
Tales of the South Pacific
Tales of the South Pacific is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, which is a collection of sequentially related short stories about World War II, written by James A. Michener in 1946 and published in 1947...
, then became a song (by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II) from the 1949 Broadway musical South Pacific
South Pacific (musical)
South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...
. Bali Hai was off-limits to ordinary mortals (in this case, to U.S. servicemen). Based on the real island of Ambae
Aoba Island
Aoba, also known as Ambae or Leper's Island, is an island in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, located near . Ambae has a population of less than 10,000, divided into 3-4 discernible language groups...
(or Aoba) in the New Hebrides
Vanuatu
Vanuatu , officially the Republic of Vanuatu , is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is some east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, west of Fiji, and southeast of the Solomon Islands, near New Guinea.Vanuatu was...
where Michener was stationed in World War II, it was depicted in the 1958 film version
South Pacific (film)
South Pacific is a 1958 musical romance film adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, and based on James A. Michener's Tales of the South Pacific...
by the island of Tioman. Bali Hai is also an enduring Tiki Temple restaurant on San Diego's Shelter Island.
Tropical islands seem especially friendly to artists and writers: Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls
For Whom the Bell Tolls
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is assigned to blow up a...
and other masterpieces at his homes in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
and Key West
Key West
Key West is an island in the Straits of Florida on the North American continent at the southernmost tip of the Florida Keys. Key West is home to the southernmost point in the Continental United States; the island is about from Cuba....
, while Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
forsook Tangier for a time to purchase a tiny off-shore islet off a beach south of Colombo, which he named Taprobane - previously owned by a bogus French aristocrat, It is now an expensive boutique hotel. Miguel Covarrubias
Miguel Covarrubias
José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud was a Mexican painter and caricaturist, ethnologist and art historian among other interests. In 1924 at the age of 19 he moved to New York City armed with a grant from the Mexican government, tremendous talent, but very little English speaking skill. Luckily,...
painted bare-breasted maidens on Bali
Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
in the Thirties, and the island continues to lure seekers of sophisticated simplicity.
Not that all islomanes dream of tropical paradises: Gavin Maxwell
Gavin Maxwell
Gavin Maxwell FRSL, FIAL, FZS , FRGS was a Scottish naturalist and author, best known for his work with otters. He wrote the book Ring of Bright Water about how he brought an otter back from Iraq and raised it in Scotland...
retreated to Eilean Bàn, 6 acres (24,281.2 m²) of windswept rock and heath off the Isle of Skye, to write of otters, and also the Isle of Soay, where he engaged in shark fisheries, while George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
wrote much of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
while living in a barn on the island of Jura
Jura, Scotland
Jura is an island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, situated adjacent and to the north-east of Islay. Part of the island is designated as a National Scenic Area. Until the twentieth century Jura was dominated - and most of it was eventually owned - by the Campbell clan of Inveraray Castle on Loch...
. Another prominent Scottish islomaniac was Compton MacKenzie
Compton Mackenzie
Sir Compton Mackenzie, OBE was a writer and a Scottish nationalist.-Background:Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool, England, into a theatrical family of Mackenzies, but many of whose members used Compton as their stage surname, starting with his grandfather Henry Compton, a well-known...
, who loved both the Channel Islands
Channel Islands
The Channel Islands are an archipelago of British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey...
of Herm
Herm
Herm is the smallest of the Channel Islands that is open to the public and is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. Cars are banned from the small island just like its Channel Island neighbour, Sark. Unlike Sark, bicycles are also banned...
and Jethou
Jethou
Jethou is a small island that is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. It is privately leased, and not open to the public.It is immediately south of Herm and has an area of approximately .-History:...
, and also lived on the Scottish Islands of Eilean Aigas
Eilean Aigas
Eilean Aigas is an island in the River Beauly, Scotland, in Kiltarlity parish in traditional Inverness-shire, now Highland Region. It is most notable for the mansion on it at its north end, which was formerly owned by the Sobieski Stuarts and rented by author and Scottish nationalist Compton...
, the Shiant Islands and Barra
Barra
The island of Barra is a predominantly Gaelic-speaking island, and apart from the adjacent island of Vatersay, to which it is connected by a causeway, is the southernmost inhabited island of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland.-Geography:The 2001 census showed that the resident population was 1,078...
.
While most islomanes simply live on islands, some collect them: Durrell noted that fellow-poet Kimon Friar
Kimon Friar
Kimon Friar was a Greek-American poet and translator of Greek poetry.-Youth and education:Friar was born in 1911 in Imrali, Ottoman Empire, to an American father and a Greek mother. In 1915, the family moved to the United States and Friar became an American citizen in 1920...
claimed to have lived on 46 different islands, and Philip Conkling, director of Maine's
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
Island Institute, has visited more than 1,000 islands in that state alone. Some members of the Travelers' Century Club, whose members attempt to visit as many countries as possible, have been to islands in over 100 countries. http://www.worldislandinfo.com/SUPERLATIVESV2.html Welsh writer Leslie Thomas
Leslie Thomas
Leslie Thomas, OBE is a British author.- Virgin Soldiers :His novels about 1950s British National Service such as "The Virgin Soldiers" spawned two film versions, in 1969 and 1977, whilst his Tropic of Ruislip and Dangerous Davies, The Last Detective have been adapted for television Leslie...
"collects" small islands, and wrote the books A World of Islands (1983) and Some Lovely Islands (1984) about his hobby.
Amateur Radio
Amateur radio
Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...
operators occasionally organize "DXpeditions" to uninhabited and sparsely populated islands with the goal of setting up temporary amateur radio stations. Once the radios, power sources, antennas and living quarters are set up on the island, they will contact thousands of other amateurs, thus giving the others credit for contacting an additional "country" for DXCC and other awards. Notable recent examples include DXpeditions to Ducie Island
Ducie Island
Ducie Island is an uninhabited atoll in the Pitcairn Islands. It lies east of Pitcairn and has a total area of , which includes the lagoon. It is long, measured northeast to southwest, and about wide. The island is composed of four islets: Acadia, Pandora, Westward and Edwards.Despite its...
and Scarborough Reef.
Most islomanes are gregarious, but some are not: New Zealander Tom Neale
Tom Neale
Tom Neale was a New Zealander who spent much of his life in the Cook Islands and 16 years in three sessions living alone on the island of Anchorage in the Suwarrow atoll, which was the basis of his popular autobiography.-Early life:Thomas Francis Neale was born in Wellington, New Zealand, but...
, inspired by the stories of Nordhoff and Hall and Robert Dean Frisbie, escaped to Suwarrow Atoll in the Cook Islands
Cook Islands
The Cook Islands is a self-governing parliamentary democracy in the South Pacific Ocean in free association with New Zealand...
, where he lived alone for 16 years.
In early 2005, actor/director Mel Gibson
Mel Gibson
Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson, AO is an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Born in Peekskill, New York, Gibson moved with his parents to Sydney, Australia when he was 12 years old and later studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art.After appearing in...
purchased Mago Island
Mago Island
Mago Island is a volcanic island that lies in the northwest sector of Fiji's northern Lau Group of islands. One of the largest private islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the pristine island consists of of land....
in Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
for $15 million, over the protests of the descendants of Mago's original native inhabitants. Tetiaroa
Tetiaroa
Tetiaroa is a private atoll in the Windward group of the Society Islands of French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the Pacific Ocean. Once the vacation spot for Tahitian royalty, the atoll is widely known for having been purchased by Marlon Brando...
, one of the Society Islands
Society Islands
The Society Islands are a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean. They are politically part of French Polynesia. The archipelago is generally believed to have been named by Captain James Cook in honor of the Royal Society, the sponsor of the first British scientific survey of the islands;...
, was purchased in 1965 by actor Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
, who saw and fell in love with it while filming Mutiny on the Bounty
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962 film)
Mutiny on the Bounty is a 1962 film starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard based on the novel Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. The film retells the 1789 real-life mutiny aboard HMAV Bounty led by Fletcher Christian against the ship's captain, William Bligh...
. Tetiaroa has one inhabitant: Brando's son Teihotu. In his will, Brando, who died in 2004, granted his friend Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
lifelong use of 2000 m2 (a half-acre) on the islet of Onetahi, to the west of Tetiaroa.
Andy Strangeway
Andy Strangeway
Andy Strangeway , a decorator, adventurer and islomaniac from the Yorkshire Wolds, is the first - and so far the only - person to complete the challenge of landing and sleeping on all 162 of Scotland's islands of 40 hectares and above...
is a chronic multiple islomaniac and was the first - and so far only - person known to have visited and slept on all 162 notable Scottish islands.
One of the most notable islomanes outside the English-speaking world was Dutch writer Boudewijn Büch
Boudewijn Büch
Boudewijn Maria Ignatius Büch was a Dutch writer, poet and television presenter.-Early life:Büch originated from a to the Catholic Church converted Jewish family. He was born in a hospital in The Hague and spent his childhood in Wassenaar. His father was a civil servant. He and Boudewijn's mother...
, who wrote four books on the subject of islands, commonly known in Dutch as the 'Island Series'.