Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Given its remote and wild situation it seems almost odd that Bunnahabhain produces
what is in some ways the lightest, least dramatic Islay whisky; it's still quite oily and salty
while being moderately sherry-sweet and has a hint of peat, but it's a mellow drink com-
pared to the others, and also compared to its dramatic, thrown-down setting. I feel I'm
kind of damning it with faint praise here, but it's actually a very fine malt, and if all the
Islays were as ferociously heavy hitting as Laphroaig, brandishing their peat, smoke and
iodine in your face, the island would lose a great deal; Bunnahabhain is more the strong,
silent type, and none the worse for that. Quite a lot of it goes into Black Bottle, making it
perhaps the best reasonably-priced blend on the market, certainly for Islay lovers.
On Islay I'm staying at Ballivicar farm, near Port Ellen, with Toby and Harriet Roxburgh.
Toby is a rotund, ruddy figure, avowedly Scottish yet with an accent he himself describes
as 'cut-glass'. Toby has the best basilisk stare I've ever encountered (though never, hap-
pily, in anger) and once told the late Robert Maxwell to 'Fuck off!', and lived - and re-
mained employed - to tell the tale. I think hopper loads of respect are due on that count
alone.
Educated and erudite, witty and well read, Toby is a man I first got to know as the
person who bought
The Wasp Factory
for paperback, when he was editor of Futura. Later
he took on
Consider Phlebas
, my first science fiction novel, and we really got to know
each other at the first SF convention I ever attended, in 1986. I say got to know; what
I mean is I lay on the floor in the bar under a table with a pint of beer balanced on my
chest, wondering vaguely why the ceiling seemed so close, while Toby generously plied
my wife with champagne.
It was at the same convention, Mexicon II, that I first encountered John Jarrold. A
famous fan - I have no intention of attempting to explain the intricacies or even the basics
of British SF Fandom In The Late Twentieth Century, Its Customs And Mores; you'll just
have to accept concepts like that of a famous fan - John later became a respected editor,
and not just of science fiction.
John and I haven't met up for some time and neither of us has seen Toby and Harriet
for years, so a rendezvous on Islay has been arranged, John flying in earlier on the Friday
afternoon from Hastings via Heathrow and Glasgow. We'll meet up with photographer
Martin Gray tomorrow. Martin has taken on the unenviable job of trying to take a decent
photograph of me for the topic's cover. My editor for this topic, Oliver Johnson, will ap-
pear on Monday, arriving on the plane that will take John back down south.
John sits in the Roxburghs' kitchen, having just finished some of the lamb I at first
refuse and will later tuck into. He is resplendent in an impressively thick white cable-knit
jumper and what certainly appears to be an equally impressively thick white cable-knit
beard and moustache. John has a seemingly photographic memory for Shakespeare, the
words of every musical ever committed to celluloid and the dialogue from most films of
