Out there, the following were among many who gave their help and advice, and in many cases hospitality, for which I am most grateful. In Bermuda, Lord Dunrossil, Sir Edwin Leather, Helen Rowe, Jack Arnell, Gillian and Dai Lewis; in Anguilla, Alastair Baillie, Alan Hoole, Ronald Webster; in the British Virgin Islands, David and Margaret Barwick, Arden Shaw, Jefferson and Jinx Morgan; in Montserrat, Elizabeth McEwan, John Cashin, Reginald Lucie-Smith; in the Cayman Islands, Peter Lloyd, the Tradewinds calypso group; in the Turks and Caicos Islands, Christopher Turner, Edward Brooks, Norman Saunders; on Ascension Island, Ian Thow, Steven Devitt; on St Helena, the Hon. John Massingham, the Hon. Dick Baker, Philip Dale, Ethel Yon, Maureen Jonas, Richard Saltwell, Frederick Ward, Clive Warren; on Tristan da Cunha, Roger Perry, Richard and Margaret Grundy; en route to and in British Indian Ocean Territory, the crew of the tugboat Robert W., the staff of Cable and Wireless on Male and Diego Garcia, John Beasant, John Topp; in Hong Kong, David Akers-Jones, Clare Hollingworth, Cecilia Wong, Donald Wise, Teresa Ma; in the Falkland Islands, Sir Rex Hunt, Patrick Watts, Graham Bound, Les Halliday; in Gibraltar, Admiral Sir David Williams.
In addition I am grateful to Andrew Bell and Simon Sugrue of Curnow Shipping Ltd., for their help in arranging voyages to the South Atlantic, and to Captain Bob Wyatt and Chief Officer David Roberts for taking me there. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office was less eager to offer its assistance after I had made my unwelcome voyage to Diego Garcia than when I began the project; but Walter Wallace of the Dependent Territories Section of the West Indian and Atlantic Department was helpful throughout, and read and criticised several of the typescript chapters. Wing Commander Ian McCoubrey made helpful comments after reading the Hong Kong chapter, and General Sir William Jackson gave me many useful pointers during my study of the history of Gibraltar.
I am grateful to Tracey Skelton for digging out much useful material on the islands in the Caribbean and Atlantic.
Donald Simpson, that most kindly and helpful librarian, who has presided for many years over the finest and most congenially atmospheric of all colonial collections—that at the Royal Commonwealth Society in London—has my keenest gratitude, as do his immensely knowledgeable staff; and I made much use of, and was greatly helped by the librarians and their colleagues at both Queen Elizabeth House and Rhodes House in Oxford.
Any errors that survived the attentions of the scrutineers are, of course, my own.
The Press Facilities Office of the Royal Air Force made possible flights to and from Ascension Island, and to them and the crews of Strike Command based there and at Brize Norton I owe a great deal.
The idea for the book was suggested by the literary agent, Anthony Sheil; his colleague, Gill Coleridge, kept my enthusiasm alive on those occasions when it seemed likely that the project would never be completed. To them and to my ever-tolerant family and friends, who put up with a lot, my deepest gratitude.
S. B. A. W.
Iffley,
Oxford
August, 1986
Further Reading
For anyone fortunate enough to be able to contemplate a journey to these last specks of the British Empire there are, sad to say, rather few relevant books that are worth taking. I have ploughed through scores of works that linger over the stately decline of the Empire and any number of papers that suggest fates for those islands that, for one reason or another, escaped the great retreat. But most are a little dull; I would be loath to advise any friend bound for Montserrat or Tristan; for instance, to lug along The Cambridge History of the British Empire, or Mr D. J. Morgan’s Guidance Towards Self-Government in British Colonies 1941–1971, invaluable though they were for me. So I have omitted that kind of book, meaning no disrespect to the authors. Those few I have mentioned below are books that in my view are best suited for the traveller, in that they combine accuracy and interest with a sense of the atmosphere of the places they seek to describe. They are books both to be of use as sources of information and, in all cases, to enjoy. But I was only too well aware, after reading through all the others available—and there are many—that had these islands been more important places, a greater range of authors might have tried their hands, and this list of suggestions would have been rather easier to compile.
DIEGO GARCIA
Robert Scott, Limuria, Oxford University Press, 1961
John Madeley, Diego Garcia, Minority Rights Group, London, 1985
TRISTAN DA CUNHA
Derrick Booy, Rock of Exile, Dent, 1957
Peter Munch, Crisis in Utopia, Longman, 1971
GIBRALTAR
John D. Stewart, Gibraltar the Keystone, John Murray, 1967
George Hills, Rock of Contention, Hale, 1974
ASCENSION ISLAND
John Packer, The Ascension Handbook
Lawrence G. Green, South African Beachcomber, Timmins, Cape Town, 1958
ST HELENA
E. L. Jackson, St Helena the Historic Island, Ward Lock, 1903
Tony Cross, St Helena, David and Charles, 1980
Lawrence G. Green, There’s A Secret Hid Away, Timmins, Cape Town, 1956
HONG KONG
Richard Hughes, Hong Kong—Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time, Deutsch, 1968
David Bonavia, Hong Kong 1997, Columbus Books, 1983
Maggie Keswick, The Thistle and the Jade, Mandarin Publishers, 1982
BERMUDA
Henry Wilkinson, Bermuda in the Old Empire, Oxford University Press, 1950
THE BRITISH WEST INDIES
There are many brief accounts of the five island groups that still belong to Britain, though most appear to have been written more for academic interest than literary pleasure. I would refer the reader to just two volumes. The first does not specifically cover any of the five colonial possessions, but wanders gently across islands and seas belonging to a variety of foreign owners; the second is, I think, the very best guidebook available about anywhere in the world, and it deals at very respectable length with all of Britain’s West Indian territories.
Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Traveller’s Tree, John Murray, 1950
John Brooks, The South American Handbook, Trade and Travel Publications, updated annually
THE FALKLAND ISLANDS
Michael Mainwaring, From the Falklands to Patagonia, Allison and Busby, 1983
Ian Strange, The Falkland Islands, David and Charles, 1972
Natalie Goodall, Tierra del Fuego, Ushuaia, 1979
John Brooks, The South American Handbook, Trade and Travel Publications, updated annually
THE FALKLAND ISLANDS DEPENDENCIES AND
BRITISH ANTARCTIC TERRITORY
Robert Fox, Antarctica and the South Atlantic, BBC, 1985
THE PITCAIRN ISLANDS
Robert Nicolson, The Pitcaimers, Angus and Robertson, 1966
AND IN GENERAL
George Woodcock, Who Killed the British Empire? Jonathan Cape, 1974
Colin Cross, The Fall of the British Empire, Hodder and Stoughton, 1968
James Morris, Farewell the Trumpets, Faber, 1978
If there is room for just a single volume, pack the last.
About the Author
SIMON WINCHESTER was a geologist at Oxford and worked in Africa and on offshore oil rigs before becoming a full-time globe-trotting correspondent and writer. He lives on a small farm in the Berkshires in Massachusetts and in the Western Isles of Scotland.
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Praise
OUTPOSTS
‘Not only a valuable historical document…but a marvellous tribute to the author’s diligence, enterprise and plain old-fashioned chutzpah’
Jan Morris
‘The superlatives are earned. Mr Winchester’s warm, superbly written book deserves attention, he offers far more than a vivid account of far-flung islands, his book is also a meditation, by turns funny, melancholic and mocking…masterly…fine’
New York Times Book Review
Times Literary Supplement
‘He has brought a sensitivity and openness to the people who inhabit the islands…(It is) inaccurate to describe Outposts as a travel book for it is very much more—a powerful and compelling book’
Glasgow Herald
‘A readable account mixing historical résumé with descriptions…and Mr Winchester argues cunningly’
Literary Review
‘A brilliant and delightful addition to the long and distinguished shelf of British literary odysseys…Wise and sympathetic, and as a result rather open-minded…He is an exquisite writer, and a deft anecdoteur… Winchester’s erudition, wit and eye for the telling detail produce an epiphany on nearly every page’
Washington Post
‘Extraordinary and significant…here is history, suspense, romance, pathos and glory…enlightening and entertaining’
Chicago Tribune
Also by Simon Winchester
The Meaning of Everything
Krakatoa
The Map That Changed the World
The Fracture Zone
The Professor and the Madman
In Holy Terror
American Heartbeat
Their Noble Lordships
Stones of Empire
Prison Diary: Argentina
Hong Kong: Here Be Dragons
Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles
Pacific Rising
Small World
Pacific Nightmare
The River at the Center of the World
Copyright
OUTPOSTS. Copyright © 1985, 2003 by Simon Winchester. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition September 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-197832-6
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