The British Isles are an archipelago made up of two large islands & 6289 smaller ones Some like the Isle of Man resemble miniature nations with their own language & tax laws; others like Ray Island in Essex are abandoned & mysterious places haunted by myths ghosts & foxes There are resurgent islands such as Eigg which have been liberated from capricious owners to be run by their residents; holy islands like Bardsey the resting place of 20000 saints & still a site of spiritual questing; & deserted islands such as St Kilda famed for the evacuation of its human population & now dominated by wild sheep & seabirds In this evocative & vividly observed book Patrick Barkham explores some of the most beautiful landscapes in the British Isles as he travels to ever-smaller islands in search of their special magic Our small islands are both places of freedom & imprisonment party destinations & oases of peace strangely suburban & deeply wild They are places where the past is unusually present but they can also offer a vision of an alternative future Meeting all kinds of islanders from nuns to puffins from local legends to rare subspecies of vole he seeks to discover what it is like to live on a small island & what it means to be an islander