 | This highly entertaining audio book, read by star actor Timothy West, was first conceived during a rainy summer holiday in the Highlands of
Scotland in an attempt to amuse the author's step-son. Treasure Island began
with the map - young Lloyd Osbourne had drawn a crude version of an
island and Stevenson, looking over the boy’s shoulder began to
elaborate, christening various curves and smudges the famed names of
Skeleton Island, Spyglass Hill and finally adding the three red crosses
marking the buried treasure. From this gentlest of beginnings has come
one of the fiercest and best loved novels of piracy and fortune in the
history of literature. It is Lloyd’s lasting legacy that he insisted
there be no girls in the story!
It tells the story of Jim Hawkins
who having acquired a map to the vast treasure of the fabled Captain
Flint, sets out with a sponsor, Squire Trelawney, who has been tricked
into crewing up his ship with the remaining members of the notorious
Flint’s band of pirates. Mutiny, maroonings and treasure follow, with the wonderful character of
Long John Silver, not only providing a truly sophisticated analysis of
the fact that morality is never simple but also forever fixing peg legs
and parrots as the only uniform of the true buccaneer. |
