The Gravity of Feathers:

Birlinn

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.

About the author

Professor Andrew Fleming FSA grew up in Herefordshire and was educated at Christ’s College Cambridge, where he read Archaeology and Anthropology. He taught archaeology at the universities of Sheffield (1967-94) and Wales Lampeter (1994-2006). He has won the Baguley Prize for an article in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society (1984), the Archaeological Book of the Year award (1990) for his book The Dartmoor Reaves, and the inaugural British Academy John Coles Medal for Landscape Archaeology (2007). He has been Vice-President of the Prehistoric Society, Chair of the Society for Landscape Studies, and President of the Devon Archaeological Society.

Read an extract from The Gravity of Feathers: Fame, Fortune and the Story of St Kilda.

Read an interview with Andrew Fleming.