Book Review:.Tony Harmsworth new book about Loch Ness.

I bought Tony’s new  book through his website : http://www.loch-ness.org/

Loch Ness, Nessie and Me arrived within a couple of days of my ordering it, signed by the author ,with a sticker saying limited edition 10 of a 100 and a nice postcard of the tour sites around Loch Ness(makes a useful bookmark) .It will make a nice present for anyone who is interested in the Loch Ness Story.

It contains some history of the Loch and a nice tour of the Loch ,so if you have never been or are planning a visit ,you will find this interesting. I enjoyed it and I have been there loads of times.

The book is written in  an easy style and different aspects of it are interspersed so you will get a bit about Tony’s life around the Loch and then a chapter on the Nessie. I have to admit my personal preference would have been to have 3 separate sections. The history and tour and then either Tony’s story and the monster hunting stories and analysis ,rather than go from one topic to another, but that is just me.

The front cover claims “The Truth Revealed” but apart from Tony’s  story of his life around the Loch , there was nothing new I hadn’t read before. There is the analysis of Tim Dinsdale’s film saying it is a boat(Apparently you can do this yourself by taking photos of the film being shown on a TV programme. However I do wonder if showing the film , an old cine film, on a modern TV network ,wouldn’t distort it in some way? Wouldn’t it have to be altered to show on the TV? I  don’t know and will leave you to think about that when you read the book. )Robert Rines photos are analysed ,but no new revelations, the usual tree stump and folded polythene argument. The only qualm I have with this ,as all evidence should be open to scrutiny and analysis, is that neither men are around to defend their work and therefore cannot explain how they came to their conclusions and argue back .So this makes the analysis one sided and I think everyone should read different points of  view and make their own minds up and not be swayed by just one view point. There is also , of course, Tony’s encounters with Frank Searle, who if nothing else was a real character and whatever you may think after reading Tony’s book, it still makes me smile every time I hear his name. The locals had a soft spot for him so he must have had some good characteristics, but I just saw him as some sort of showman with a bad temper.It is amazing how fast people could run when they suggested to Frank his photos weren’t genuine. lol

Tony says he believes there is something in the Loch but more likely to be a big fish, which is fair enough, I think most people would agree it is not some remnant prehistoric beast.

I enjoyed the book ,read it in one afternoon ,and if nothing else I have learned from Tony, always get things in writing. There are lots of black and white illustrations , some that you may not have seen before and yes it is a worthwhile read but keep an open mind.