This is the story of the author’s two paternal great-great-grandfathers, both of whom spent over forty years helping to save lives on the Isles of Scilly: Edwin Lewis Davis as the keeper of St Agnes Lighthouse and John Grenfell Moyle as the islands’ only doctor. It also follows the mariners, miners, preachers and teachers of the Moyle and Davis families as they become part of the great Cornish diaspora. We accompany them over the seven seas aboard speedy clippers, to the Antipodes during the gold rush, to the industrial north of England, to lighthouses along rugged coastlines and to the war zones of the Crimea peninsula and the Western Front. With them we enter Victorian classrooms, workhouses, prisons and lunatic asylums.

The book is richly illustrated with images of people, places and mementoes, including the paintings of John Grenfell Moyle, who became a renowned West Country artist. Quotations from contemporary writers such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins and Mrs Gaskell help to transport readers into the world inhabited by the author’s forebears and their own. She pays particular attention to the lives of great-grandmothers and great-aunts, which have so often been hidden from history.

Saving Lives in Scilly will appeal to readers with an interest in the sea, the West Country, lighthouses, medicine, the lives of women and in social history. In addition, those keen to explore their family’s past will find inspiration in the author’s journey of discovery.