Britain has 6,000 islands. Not as many as Sweden’s 30,000 but quite enough to be going on with. Only 132 of ours are populated, on a scale that slides from the 85,000 people on the Isle of Man to tiny St Kilda, with its summertime population of just 15.
Patrick Barkham is a skilled compiler of lists. His charming and successful first book, The Butterfly Isles, chronicled the sighting of every one of Britain’s 59 butterflies within a single summer. It is high up on my own list of ‘I wish I’d thought of that’ ideas.
Clearly trying to gazetteer all Britain’s islands in a similar way might be indigestible, so he has restricted himself to a representative First Eleven, a team of big hitters scattered evenly around the mainland from Orkney in the north to Alderney in the south.
Islands make their presence felt.
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