#6Degrees of Separation: From Wintering to On the Beach

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Pexels.com

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation!

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees.

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This month’s starting book is Wintering by Katherine May. As usual, it’s a book I haven’t read but it’s a memoir which, according to the blurb, ‘teaches us to draw from the healing powers of the natural world and to embrace the winters of our own lives’.

Another memoir about the power of nature to aid both physical and mental recovery is Devorgilla Days by Kathleen Hart. Recuperating from treatment for breast cancer, the author moves to a small cottage in Wigtown, Scotland. She names the cottage ‘Devorgilla’ after a 13th century Scottish princess.

Devorgilla of Galloway was married to John, 5th Baron of Balliol who founded Balliol College, Oxford. One of its alumni was Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World.

Elspeth Huxley, the wife of Aldous’s cousin, was the author of The Red Rock Wilderness in which a young Scotsman travels to Congo in search of a Nobel prize-winning biologist.

Elspeth was a friend of Joy Adamson, the author of Born Free, the story of how Adamson and her husband raised a lion cub (whom they named Elsa) in captivity and later returned her to the wild.

The actress Virginia McKenna played Joy Adamson in the film Born Free and also starred in the film adaptation of wartime drama A Town Like Alice based on the novel by Nevil Shute.

Another of Nevil Shute’s novels was made into a film, this time starring Gregory Peck. On the Beach, published in 1957, is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe.

My chain has taken us from a restorative winter to a nuclear winter by way of Africa and Australia. Where did your chain take you?