He was a strange man: a thwarted romantic whose lonely childhood bred a sense of adventure leading him to pursue endless avenues in search of fulfilment. Like all romantics, he had problems with real life: always short of money and spending it when he could in the pursuit of hair-brained business adventures and face saving luxuries. He was a homosexual who was drawn to women, hoping desperately that marriage would bring him security and happiness, but his ultimate inability to sustain a fully adult relationship destroyed it and corroded many of his friendships.

Douglas Botting was living at Sandaig, the Highland home which Maxwell unforgettably renamed Camusfearna (Gaelic for the bay of the alders) when "Ring of Bright Water" was written. His ability to capture in a few words the dreamlike essence of the place shows Maxwell's influence. In this biography, you long to have met Gavin Maxwell but constantly wish that he had grown up. He was an often intensely trying man who could also show great generosity of spirit: much loved by the youths who helped him sustain Camusfearna, but despotic enough to eventually drive them away.

Botting recreates the Camusfearna legend unsentimentally, but his affection for both the man and the place succeeds in making you long to be in the pitch-pine panelled kitchen-living room, beside the fireplace with the Latin inscription "It is no will-o'-the wisp that I have followed here". The idyll wasn't to last. Maxwell couldn't have made up a more affecting story and in the end it's unbearably sad.

I had no interest in otters or Gavin Maxwell before I read "The Saga of Ring of Bright Water". My husband has taken me to Camusfearna and returned to the football. I keep a pebble from the beach in my purse to remind me of a magical story.