Lucy Irvine

Lucy Irvine (born 1 February 1956) is a British adventurer and author. She is known for spending a year on the uninhabited island of Tuin and for her book, Castaway (1983), describing the experience.

Early life Born on 1 February 1956 in Whitton, London, Irvine is the younger daughter of Robert R. Irvine and his wife Lena Holloway, who was from Calver in Derbyshire. She has two siblings, an older sister and a younger brother. She later revealed that she had a tumultuous upbringing, developing a "habit of solitude" and confiding in her diary rather than people as a result of her family life. She repeatedly ran away from school and from home, maintaining this was not "because I was discontented, but because I found it interesting", and claiming "Not belonging to any particular group, I was free to observe. I drew word sketches of people's faces and actions. But I always kept a certain distance, and that habit has stuck." She had no full-time schooling after her thirteenth birthday.

Before writing Castaway, she had been employed as a charwoman, monkey keeper, waitress, stonemason's mate, life model, pastry cook, concierge, and Inland Revenue clerk.

Books In 1981, Irvine responded to an advert placed by writer Gerald Kingsland and they became intentional castaways for a year on the isolated and uninhabited island of Tuin, in the Torres Strait between New Guinea and Australia. In 1983, she published her account of the experience in Castaway, which was later used as the basis for the 1986 film of the same name. On her return to Britain, she lived on the remote island of Tanera Mòr. In 1984, Irvine bought the isolated cottage Rumachroy, near Nairn in Scotland, where, most of the time as a single mother, she raised her three sons.

Irvine founded a registered non-profit animal rescue, LIFE (Lucy Irvine Foundation Europe), located in Bulgaria. LIFE works in the poorest regions, and with Roma. There is a website and also a Facebook page. Over 200 dogs have been successfully adopted to the UK, and LIFE routinely holds SpayAThons as well.