A SOCIETY can be very highly organised without being at all civilised. To send a rocket to a distant planet is a wonderful demonstration of a society's technical and scientific capacity, but tells one nothing about its degree of civilisation.

But when an island people uninspired by its government organises a service to rescue people whose lives are endangered by the seas surrounding its shores, it gives proof of a high degree of civilisation, even though the only instrument which its technical skills can provide for the purpose be an open rowing boat launched beyond the surf from a cart.

For almost 200 years this voluntary service has been carried on and it has proved impossible to reckon the lives lost in that service.

Increased technical capacity has extended the range and somewhat diminished the risks of the service; but these risks have always been high and only the future can show if the latest improvements have reduced them further. A series of seven disasters in a comparatively short span of 23 years, up to 1970, has drawn closer attention to the suffering of the relatives of those who engaged in or lost their lives in this service. Physical needs can be met: spiritual needs are more intractable.

No one has devised a satisfactory compensation for a small isolated community in which almost every family has lost its father. Still that is no reason why nothing should be done.

It was suggested that a book should be made, listing all the places where lives had been lost in this lifesaving work, with the names of the dead, the date and the service, and that such a book should be illuminated by our best modern artists page by page. The illuminations of her prayer book which did such honour to Catherine of Cleves could be paralleled by illuminations in honour of an even more worthy object. Those children of the dead who are now alive may realise that we recognise the dignity of their parentage and be assured by the beauty of the record that it will not be forgotten.

The RNLI generously made its records available for the book; butthese records can only give a proportion of the whole. The Institution came into existence several decades after the commencement of the service and only gradually acquired its existing authority over local stations through its services.

These were, however, the only records procurable. Alan Neal of the Institution's staff produced and checked these records and then devoted a large proportion of his own time to duties like those of a clerk of the works.

Thanks to advice from the British Museum it became clear that the construction of the book itself could best be undertaken by members of the Society of Scribes and Illuminators and conversations were opened with Miss Joan Pilsbury of that body.

The advantage of dealing with master craftsmen is that one's ideas are almost always modified and improved by the conditions of their art. In this way it was decided that the book should be composed of vellum sheets about 141" x 10" and that Sydney Cockerell of Grantchester should be asked to bind it in boards cut from the oak knees used for the stems of lifeboats. Miss Pilsbury undertook the writing of the book whose pages were to be ornamented in general by varied floraldesigns up the left-hand border interspersed with roundels containing miniature paintings relating to the localities in the text.

The team which assisted Miss Pilsbury were Miss Margaret Alexander, Miss Heather Child, Miss Wendy Gould and Miss Wendy Westover. Some of the places had to be represented by arms, and these were designed by Miss Child and executed by Miss Pilsbury, who also contributed 45 miniature paintings and kept a vigilant eye on the progress of the work. Miss Alexander contributed 23 borders and her birds are particularly successful. Miss Gould's borders, 30 of them, display a charming variety of insects among the flowers. Miss Westover contributed 60 miniatures, ten of them with borders, also the painting of the Greathead lifeboat and the Bishop Rock.

This imperfect summary hardly brings out the pleasure of the work. The design and the reason for it invaded and inspired the artists themselves and they excelled their own best and delighted in each other's work. For example, one ofthem said to an observer about a colleague, 'Oh! She's a much better artist than I am'. Some of our greatest cathedrals may have been built in the same spirit.

It is hoped that the book may be held worthy to become a national treasure to take its place among similar treasures and so preserve to future ages the memory of those whom least of all we would wish to forget..