The Gravity of Feathers by Andrew Fleming

The Gravity of Feathers by Andrew Fleming

Discover the true story of St. Kilda.

When the last 36 inhabitants of St Kilda, 40 miles west of the Scottish Hebrides, were evacuated in 1930, the archipelago at ‘the edge of the world’ lost its permanent population after five millennia.

It has long been accepted that the islanders’ failure to adapt to the modern world was its demise. Andrew Fleming overturns the traditional view. Unafraid of highlighting dark times, he shows how they sacrificed their reputation as an uncorrupted, ideal society to embrace and exploit the tourist trade. Creating a prestigious tweed, exporting the ancestors of today’s Hebridean sheep, the islanders gained access to consumer goods and learned how to play politics to their advantage.

This book tells the absorbing and eventful story of St Kilda from earliest times, up to the evacuation and its aftermath. Previously untapped sources and fresh insights bring to life the personalities, feelings, attitudes and rich culture of the islanders themselves, as well as the numerous outsiders who engaged with the remote island community.

'Andrew Fleming has written a book about St Kilda in a way no one has managed before.. A sense of things as they actually were comes bounding out of its pages as it sets the exceptional story of St Kilda in a context of undistorted truthfulness-to-life that is sobering, moving and revelatory'

Andrew Fleming specialises in prehistory and landscape archaeology. He taught at Sheffield University for 27 years and then at the University of Wales Trinity St David. He lives in Hertforshire.