Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire – The Last Account of the Vanishing Empire

by Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester, struck by a sudden need to discover exactly what was left of the British Empire, set out across the globe to visit the far-flung islands that are all that remain of what once made Britain great. He traveled 100,000 miles back and forth, from Antarctica to the Caribbean, from the Mediterranean to the Far East, to capture a last glint of imperial glory.

His adventures in these distant and forgotten ends of the earth make compelling, often funny reading and tell a story most of us had thought was over: a tale of the last outposts in Britain's imperial career and those who keep the flag flying.

With a new introduction, this updated edition tells us what has happened to these extraordinary places while the author's been away.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, History, British Literature, Audiobook, Essays, Memoir

400 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1985

About the author

Simon Winchester, OBE, is a British writer, journalist and broadcaster who resides in the United States. Through his career at The Guardian, Winchester covered numerous significant events including Bloody Sunday and the Watergate Scandal. As an author, Simon Winchester has written or contributed to over a dozen nonfiction books and authored one novel, and his articles appear in several travel publications including Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian Magazine, and National Geographic.

In 1969, Winchester joined The Guardian, first as regional correspondent based in Newcastle upon Tyne, but was later assigned to be the Northern Ireland Correspondent. Winchester's time in Northern Ireland placed him around several events of The Troubles, including the events of Bloody Sunday and the Belfast Hour of Terror.

After leaving Northern Ireland in 1972, Winchester was briefly assigned to Calcutta before becoming The Guardian's American correspondent in Washington, D.C., where Winchester covered news ranging from the end of Richard Nixon's administration to the start of Jimmy Carter's presidency. In 1982, while working as the Chief Foreign Feature Writer for The Sunday Times, Winchester was on location for the invasion of the Falklands Islands by Argentine forces. Suspected of being a spy, Winchester was held as a prisoner in Tierra del Fuego for three months.

Winchester's first book, In Holy Terror, was published by Faber and Faber in 1975. The book drew heavily on his first-hand experiences during the turmoils in Ulster. In 1976, Winchester published his second book, American Heartbeat, which dealt with his personal travels through the American heartland. Winchester's third book, Prison Diary, was a recounting of his imprisonment at Tierra del Fuego during the Falklands War and, as noted by Dr Jules Smith, is responsible for his rise to prominence in the United Kingdom. Throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, Winchester produced several travel books, most of which dealt with Asian and Pacific locations including Korea, Hong Kong, and the Yangtze River.

Winchester's first truly successful book was The Professor and the Madman (1998), published by Penguin UK as The Surgeon of Crowthorne. Telling the story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, the book was a New York Times Best Seller, and Mel Gibson optioned the rights to a film version, likely to be directed by John Boorman.

Though Winchester still writes travel books, he has repeated the narrative non-fiction form he used in The Professor and the Madman several times, many of which ended in books placed on best sellers lists. His 2001 book, The Map that Changed the World, focused on geologist William Smith and was Whichester's second New York Times best seller. The year 2003 saw Winchester release another book on the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, The Meaning of Everything, as well as the best-selling Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded. Winchester followed Krakatoa's volcano with San Francisco's 1906 earthquake in A Crack in the Edge of the World. The Man Who Loved China (2008) retells the life of eccentric Cambridge scholar Joseph Needham, who helped to expose China to the western world. Winchester's latest book, The Alice Behind Wonderland, was released March 11, 2011.
- source Wikipedia

Reviews

[Daren · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, an early one by Simon Winchester, he concocts the idea of visiting the remaining British Commonwealth 'possessions', to establish the colonial situation of these - to revisit the question posed by George V in 1936 - "How is the Empire". It is not an original concept for a book - I have read another on the same lines, albeit later that Winchesters 1985 publication - and it makes for a slightly disjointed read, but I suppose you need some sort of premise for a book don't you?

I decided that as I read this I would make a few notes about each chapter to avoid my regular need to read parts again once finished so as to formulate a review!

British Indian Ocean Territory
In this first chapter of travel, Winchester teams up with a 27 year old Australian woman with a yacht and a willingness to visit the restricted territories in the Indian Ocean owned and administrated by the British but solely occupied by an American Base (although it is not referred to as a Base by the authorities, just a 'facility'). After arriving at Boddam Island, one of the various uninhabited northern islands other than Diego Garcia (the island which forms the American base facility), Winchester backtracks to fill in the political details of how the BOIT came about - in very simple terms when Mauritius and the Seychelles were British Colonial Possessions, the islands of the BOIT were dependencies of these. When Britain granted them independence, it was on the condition that the islands of the Chagos Archipelago were surrendered to remain British. No reason was given for this strange move, but shortly after, America was permitted, free of charge, to use the largest island, Diego Garcia, for 'defence purposes'.

This however meant the forceable removal of the approx 2000 in habitants, relocated to the Seychelles against their will. This was done in a particularly underhand way, although the British Labour government were brazen when it came to light. The whole affair reflects badly on the British government, and in 2017 the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the United Kingdom must transfer the islands to Mauritius as they were not legally separated from the latter in 1965. The UK Foreign Office said the ruling is not legally binding, and continues to ignore this.

Long story short, Winchester spent about a week at Boddam Island, and one night at Diego Garcia, although he was not permitted to set foot on land.

This was a good start, and interesting chapter about a place I knew nothing of!

Tristan da Cunha
Another yacht, this time in South Africa, awaiting suitable weather for the notoriously dangerous voyage to Tristan da Cunha. Unfortunately we spend a dozen pages with this narrative, only a few short jaunts of sailing before the ship is not deemed worthy of the risky trip and Winchester is back in London.
Starting again, he is invited onto a ship travelling to Tristan, and in spite of the wild seas, and trouble using the port he does make it to land, and spends a few short days with the inhabitants who already know all about him before he arrives, and (understandably) take a bit of a stand-offish position with him, knowing he has the ability to make a spectacle of them, committing their flaws to paper in perpetuity, and with which they must live. There is a little interesting history, but otherwise, like BIOT, this chapter is more about the journey than the destination.

Gibraltar
A journey by foot, this time, hiking in Spain to reach Gibraltar. Upon reaching the border, Winchester is denied entry (as were all British passport holders at the time) by the Spanish, who still consider Gibraltar Spanish. He was, like all who try this route, to take a hydrofoil from Spain to Morocco, then to Gibraltar! On Gibraltar, we hear about the history, the siege attempts by Spain to recover Gibraltar and the apes (of course). He quotes Laurie Lee from his As I Walk out one Midsummer Morning biography.

Ascension Island
By RAF plane, Winchester arrives at Ascension, an island occupied by a RAF base, a satellite monitoring (spying) facility and the BBC! Previously the spy facility was a cable station, a link in the communications cables linking Britain with the outposts, by this time redundant. Not acknowledged, were the American spies on the island - the NSA.

So far it seems like the British outposts that the 'Empire' chose to retain are all for military advantage!

St Helena
Famously the place of exile of Napoleon, St Helena breaks the mould of military benefit. It seems Britain has had no real use for St Helena since Napoleon's death. In 1981, like most British Colonies, St Helena was reclassified as an British Dependant Territory, (Gibraltar and later,the Falkland Islands escaped this indignity), removing the islanders the rights to British Citizenship (and thus abode). Aggrieved, the islanders point to the 1673 Charter signed by Charles II which protected these rights.(In the 1990s and 2000s law changes eventually reinstated these rights).
Have to say, Winchester is not really painting a picture of these locations - this chapter seemed all about the journey and the history.

Hong Kong
For Hong Kong, Winchester travels from Peking (Beijing), but doesn't dwell to long. He dedicates the chapter to a historical look at how Britain came to be in possession of Kong Kong, with a quick view toward what is expected to happen 12 years from his visit - the returning of Hong Kong to China. Nothing very new here, but a good summary of events.

Bermuda
And back to another American base, and despite being an American tourist destination and using dollars and cents currency pegged to the US dollar, Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory. Once again free use for the military base was offered to the USA who at the time of publication were using Bermuda as a base for the submarine monitoring along the east coast of the USA. I know my chapters are getting smaller, but there was nothing much happening in this one!

British West Indies (Turks & Caicos; British Virgin Islands; Anguilla; Monserrat; Cayman Islands)
Shorter chapters these, which outline the historical ownerships of these islands.
Turks & Caicos suffering with traditional 'one-crop-economies' - salt, lobster, crab, conch or cotton - with drug smuggling added to that list, and perhaps the most successful.
British Virgin Islands, where much of the narrative explains how the world ended up with two sets of Virgin Islands - the American and the British.
Anguilla - mostly this section revolves around the 350 troop assault of the island which made the British look fairly silly, since journalists found out in advance and were on the beach to greet them!
Monserrat - A French name, colonised by the Irish, yet a British Oversea's territory. It is volcanic and had an economy supported by lime juice, but at the time of writing was favoured as a place for musicians to hide up and record albums. Paul McCartney and Elton John are named in this chapter, and I know the Rolling Stones also recorded there.
Cayman Islands - A financial success story, since it became a tax haven, although not perhaps much of a holiday destination.

The Falkland Islands
Interesting, probably because it explains the tensions which caused the war, but doesn't discuss the war itself. At the time the situation in South Georgia (Argentines salvaging scrap from an old whaling station without having obtains visas) and tensions were brewing, Winchester was sent to the Falklands in preparation for an attempt to get to South Georgia and report on the events. As such he was on the Falklands at the time of the Argentine invasion and British surrender. Later in Argentina, still sniffing around he and two other journalists were arrested down in Tierra del Fuego and charged with spying. He spent three months in prison in Ushuaia (and subsequently wrote a book about it).

Pitcairn and other Territories
No, Winchester skips Pitcairn - it is hard to get to and a visit must be 10 hours or 6 months, nothing in between. Instead he mentions a few others he elects not to visit - British Antarctic Territories, and then those which are not Colonial possessions - Isle of Man, Channel Islands, Jersey, Guernsey etc

Winchester then wraps it up with a rather long winded summary, order of various events and draws a bunch of conclusions, without really being able to wrap it all together. No easy task, and by this point I was looking for the end. His take away - the British Overseas Territories are poorly treated when compared to French, Dutch or American equivalents. The administrators don't always have a vested interest in assisting the people, and London has no vested interest in investing in them. Winchester goes on to propose some outcomes.

I wouldn't say it wasn't a worthwhile book, but it lacked cohesiveness. While he aimed to look for 'Britishness' in these British Territories, I am not sure he concentrated on that. He put a lot of effort into the journeys, into the people he met and into the histories. I didn't get a great impression of the geography or the feel of each place, how they differed or how they were similar. In that respect, I don't think it was successful. As a travel book, following a (slightly gimmicky) theme, I enjoyed it. I think we can see the makings of Winchester's future books Atlantic and Pacific, where he gathers anecdotes from places with commonalities, and wraps them into a great book.

3.5 stars, rounded down.

Sorry this got long!

[Paul Weiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

History, geography and travelogue wrapped up in a single package

In the early years of his career as a journalist, Simon Winchester hatched the rather ambitious idea of touring the globe to visit the far-flung remains of the rapidly dwindling and little known remnants of the British Empire. Although the sun still does not set on what little remains of these imperial holdings, Winchester recognized that this was a tenuous political situation unlikely to last for too many more years. He felt that there was a moving, fascinating and important story to be told of these vastly separated, profoundly isolated and mostly forgotten specks of land that reflected on Britain's somewhat tarnished past glories and conquests.

I'll admit this is a personal opinion (and you may well disagree) but I'd suggest that any fool with sufficient motivation and desire can complete the research and develop the information necessary to write a non-fiction book. But it is only a very special and exceptionally talented author who can write non-fiction in such a fashion as to turn that book into a compelling page-turner that reads like a novel and holds a reader's interest with the grip of the most exciting thrillers. Like Bill Bryson or Canada's Pierre Berton and Ken McGoogan, Simon Winchester is one of those authors with the ability to vault over that rather daunting bar.

Blending history, geography, biology, geology, sociology, linguistics and anthropology into a positively delicious cocktail, Winchester tells us the stories of such little known imperial tidbits as Tristan da Cunha, St Helena, Pitcairn Island, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Ascension and BIOT (the British Indian Ocean Territory). While he is clearly a Brit to his very toes and positively wallows in his love of British tradition and custom from cricket to high tea, he certainly doesn't shrink from chastising his own government for imperial high-handedness and political shenanigans. For example, he clearly suggests that white supremacist racism may be the underlying reason that the residents of St Helena are not accorded the right to emigrate to England as full citizens? What were the secret political deals that were made with the US military when the residents of Diego Garcia in the BIOT were summarily evicted from their homes?

Having been written in the early 1980s, OUTPOSTS is clearly outdated but it is nevertheless immensely entertaining and informative. Simon Winchester ranks high on my list of authors that (at least for now) I'll buy without reference to anyone else's reviews. Yes, he is that good!

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

[K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, here's the thing: this concept - going around to all the remaining British colonies and writing about the experience? Is AWESOME. Kind of dated now, because Winchester travelled to said colonies in the early 1980s, so the discussion of Hong Kong is now irrelevant and much of the discussion about the Falkland Islands focuses on the beginning of the war. But still awesome.

However.

The writing was almost...too journalistic? This would have been a far more engaging story in the hands of, say, Bill Bryson - no doubt filled with amusing anecdotes and oddly endearing qualities of the people he meets. But in Winchester's hands, there's far more of a focus on the bureaucratic side of things - the difficulties he has in actually getting to the various colonies, the rights that the various residents have in regards to moving to Britain (or not), the logistics of getting supplies and food and medical care to these tiny populations, and how neglected they often are by the Foreign Office.

And frankly, while that stuff is important and Winchester's point that only white colonists (those from Gibraltar and the Falklands) have the right to live and work in Britain whenever they'd like is an incredibly valid one, this book was often dry and not particularly interesting. It read more like it was trying to be hard-hitting journalism where there often wasn't a hard-hitting story to tell.

Plus, Winchester and his "I had an old school chum serving as [government authority] on [tiny remote colony]" tendencies made the whole thing somewhat insufferable and very...privileged white guy uses Old Boys Network to write book and generally support the idea of colonialism. Or something.

Seriously, he spends an awful lot of time happily discussing how very BRITISH the residents of these various colonies are, and how they all have pictures of the Queen on their walls (a question he clearly asked a lot, because one poor woman freaks out, thinking that he's an inspector). And yes, it's 30 years old now, so it's not surprising that some of the ideas are a little...out of touch. But frankly, even for 1985, his ability to gloss over the atrocities committed by British colonists over the years is fairly astonishing.

So it had the potential to be excellent. But instead, it was trying to be something it wasn't quite capable of. And it didn't succeed.

[zed · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has been interesting to read this book 20 years after publication. A very readable mix of history and travel and with that some very interesting events that would pass the reader by generally. There are a couple of very strong chapters, "Tristan", "St Helena" and the "Falklands" for example. "Pitcairn and other territories" just seems an ill fit. The final chapter "Some Reflections" seems dated. The Further reading seems perfunctory.

In the end an easy read so it was never that hard to read past the dated history. I found that Winchester wrote a mix of love and despair and at times a fair bit of sarcasm about the remnants of the now (almost) gone Empire and with that I suggest that this would have been a fine read on release.

[Gordon Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, but I think I was expecting more.

[Sairam Krishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do I say about this book? I loved it as an adventure, an almost impossible journey undertaken with heart and an attempt to understand. But the introduction to the book immediately put me off, and as a descendant of subjects of the glorious empire that the writer wishes to celebrate, I have reason to be.

I don't know how Winchester looks back and comes to the conclusion that the empire was a force for good, when every credible history book lays out clearly how the British empire was a thieving, murdering enterprise bent on enriching itself and its people at the expense of literally everyone else.

We can look to the book itself for evidence of this. The people of Diego Garcia were taken away from their homes, inspite of being British subjects, because the empire wanted their land. So many peoples of the Overseas Territories cannot travel to Britain as British subjects (how are they British, then?) At several points, Winchester himself attributes all this unfair treatment to the colour of the people of this part of the empire (how is this justified?) Each chapter has something like this, when you can't help but sit up and ask: How is this fair, or as the British themselves would say, puffed up with moral indignation, 'that's just not cricket'.

I can go on, but I'll finish with a few numbers. The Scottish historian William Dalrymple, whose father served in colonial India, observed thus, "In 1600, when the East India Company was founded, Britain was generating 1.8% of the world’s GDP, while India was producing 22.5%. By the peak of the Raj, those figures had more or less been reversed: India was reduced from the world’s leading manufacturing nation to a symbol of famine and deprivation."

This was the legacy of the empire that Winchester so blindly celebrates as a force for good in this book. My people were subjected to centuries of oppression by a foreign force and reduced to poverty. Such blind paeans to it can't be allowed to stand, even if written at a different time.

But finally, I will also repeat what I wrote first: I enjoyed this book. It is an excellent travel book and a window to places we may never imagine exist. Winchester is a remarkable observer and journalist. That such lovely portraits of these faraway lands and its people exist is a gift. If only it had been written with a critical eye on Britain's own culpability and crime in winning and losing an empire.

Maybe a new edition with a new foreword? The book deserves it.

[Chrismcginn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anglophiles listen up! Simon Winchester takes you on a winding journey through the last vestiges of Britain’s once-great, far-flung empire. Traveling to such lonely spots as St. Helena (where Napoleon was exiled) and the Falkland Is is not for the faint of heart. Originally written in 1985 and updated in 2003, the book offers a peak at a time before the new century where a few places around the globe still had a “Governor” with plumed hat and Union Jack hosting tea and “at homes” for residents and intermittent visitors. He offers some ideas at the end to embrace the few hangers on but now 35 years on I don’t think any have been acted upon. Interesting for those of us who love a little British life wherever it may be found.

[Liv · Rating 1 out of 5]

Researcher/author Simon Winchester once got a hankering to visit all of the relics of the British Empire, taking in all of its "Imperial glory." Before saying anything, it is important to note that this book was published in 1985. I'm saying it right at the outset for people who want to say, "But, but, it's a product of its time!" In the almost forty years since (my first instinct was to say 20 years--*insert both midlife and mathematical crises*--I feel really old now), people have thankfully started to adopt more anticolonizing stances. But, even in 1985, people knew that daydreaming about, "Gosh, wasn't it great when we used to be able to own people and steal their resources" was cringe.

Outposts waxes just a little--make that a lot--too much poetically about the glory days of colonization. There is literally a line about, "*Sigh* Remember when all these Brown chaps used to wave the Union Jack with pride?" The gag-worthiness of this instance is only overpowered when the author mentions going to a small island and coming across a nubile and beautiful young woman who hands him a piece of fruit and says something along the lines of, "You can have anything you want." Blech.

It reads as if he wanted a red carpet rolled out for him everywhere he went and natural resources adoringly laid down at his feet. Captain Cook always expected the same thing, and that didn't work out well for him. While there was a slight nod to "well, colonialism wasn't ALL good," this book has not aged well and is a firm DO NOT READ.

[Annabelle P · Rating 2 out of 5]

Winchester carefully avoids the most interesting parts of his journey in favor of describing, in excruciating detail, his travel arrangements for each outpost and the entirety of its historical and political significance.

The whole book is also written through a painfully pro-Imperial lens. Winchester frequently makes highly subjective generalizations about how much the colonies love being ruled by the British. However, he provides absolutely no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, to back them up and forcing me to take every statement with about a quart of salt. Is this the way the colonists really feel? Or is this how Winchester wants the colonists to feel? All in all, there was a bit too much bemoaning the decline of the Empire - not because the Empire was a good thing, but simply because it diminished Britain’s dominion of the world. He barely acknowledges the atrocities Britain committed in India, instead lamenting that it could not remain a colony. His main concern seems to be sadness that the British rulers could no longer sign their letters with “I” to indicate themselves Imperator.

All in all, an exceptionally boring exploration of what could have been a fascinating adventure, and a gloss-over of the many atrocities committed by the British.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although dated now, this is still an interesting and well-written exploration of the dwindling reaches of the British Empire. I would have liked perhaps a little less history and a bit more description, because I am unlikely to ever get to visit these places and have to experience them vicariously. I enjoy Winchester's work though.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable but dated— as an American, I certainly did know about heartbreaking stories of some of these places (For example, as a Navy kid I grew up hearing of Diego Garcia but didn’t know of the horrible way the locals were relocated from it to make room for the base). I adore Simon Winchester, but some of his writing here skates awfully close to racial stereotyping.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I am not much of an imperialist myself, I must say that the thought has crossed my mind to do what this esteemed author did, and that is travel to as many as possible of the forlorn remnants of British imperial rule in the mid 1990's, places that occasionally appear in my own blog: the Falkland Islands, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena, the Turks and Caicos, Anguilla, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, the (British) Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Bermuda, Ascension Island, the British Indian Ocean Territory, and Pitcairn [1]. With wit and verve, Winchester discusses his arrival in areas, his casual disregard for the laws and practices preventing him from arriving in Diego Garcia where he is confronted with the reality of American power in the Indian Ocean, his unlucky arrival in the Falkland Islands right as the Falklands War was beginning, only to spend most of it in an Argentine jail for three months on a bogus accusation of spying, and of breaking into the rental house of a couple suspected of drug running who disappeared without a trace. This book is not only a humorous travel history, told by a witty and urbane journalist with a supreme grasp of irony, but it is also about a man coming to terms with the decline of his country and enjoying the melancholy feeling that results from the almost end of empire.

Although this book is not organized in a chronological fashion, it has a rough geographical organization, and it is clear that Winchester used quite a few means of transportation in his heroic effort to visit the vestigial outposts of British imperialism. He tried, unsuccessfully, to walk from Spain to Gibraltar. He traveled on a yacht to Diego Garcia, and then failed to arrive in Tristan da Cunha on that same yacht after its unpleasant encounter with a small American flotilla. He flies into Bermuda, the Falkland Islands, and somehow manages to travel overland into Hong Kong from China. He arranges for tea with various British officials, meeting many of them, even if one of them was arrested for drug smuggling shortly after his visit. His accounts tell of the origins of the British imperial presence in a given territory, how the small areas like the Cayman Islands or Turks & Caicos or Anguilla, to give but a few examples, were originally part of other areas and were the loyal remnants of those areas once the larger parts opted for independence.

It is to be admitted that not all of this book is enjoyable to read. Like many English writers [2], he seems to have something against Florida, but doesn't everyone. Of the Cayman Islands, he says, "There is little left which is obviously West Indian about the place: it seems like an outpost of Florida, rather than of the British Empire, with a tawdriness, a mixture of the seedy and the greedy that was less attractive than the shabbiness or the decay of the other islands (246-247)." These minor quibbles aside, the book is noteworthy to read because he and I happen to be of the same belief concerning the need for the British to take responsibility for showing concern and compassion for their minor outlying islanders, given the fact that these people are the most loyal of colonists and that a little respect and care would go along way, not merely by throwing money at a problem but by recognizing such people as worthy of British citizenship and some dignity and self-respect. This is a book that is worthwhile to read, not least to remind us that imperialism still lives on, and still remains attractive to many settlers, and that the possession of an empire means seeking to reassure one's colonists that one is serious about protection and that one takes their concerns seriously. One wonders if Great Britain does. That said, this is a book to read, to enjoy, and to ponder over, and to take seriously. Most of all, this book provides an opportunity to hear, at least through a sympathetic narrator, the voices of often obscure people in the forgotten areas of the contemporary British Empire.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

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[S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simon Winchester, b. 1944 London, M.A., Oxford (Geology) 1966, geological exploration Uganda 1967, changes career to journalism 1968, the Guardian, covers the Troubles incl. Bloody Sunday, Watergate, 80s and 90s travel books, mostly Asian, switches to book-writing full-time.

1998 (age 54), first breakthrough blockbuster, The Professor and the Madman about the OED. 2003 best-seller, Krakatoa. 5-6 books about Asia amidst a total output of ~25 books in total.

this 1986 book OUTPOSTS is the most successful of the early Winchester, (age 42) was originally a six-month project partially funded by the Sunday Times, with Winchester intending to go step by step through the remaining pieces of the British Empire that were sufficiently inhabited to have a Governor. six months became three years, 100,000 total travel miles, but Winchester sees everything except Pitcairn, is in the Falklands during the Argentina invasion, and sees some otherwise unreachable parts of the world.

probably everyone who's ever held a public or non-profit position with an internet connection has wondered about some of those odd little south sea dependencies and tiny little islands scattered around the world. Simon Winchester has in fact visited them, the lucky duck, and the resulting travel book is in that sense the peacetime Imperial Grunts or In the Hot Zone. one gossipy story is apparently meaningful enough for him to be barred from the dependency; trying to see Diego Garcia (now a bustling US military base) involves runs-in with the armed forces of the UK and US, and left-sympathetic analysis of the colony-empire are at times repeated but also backed up with actual anecdote and data.

4/5 interesting and unique travel book, resource for anybody wondering about Montserrat, Saint Helena, the Gibralter, --meaning actual daily life. a romp through the world for a few bucks (if acquired used)

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1983, some of the places visited by Mr. Winchester have changed status and the 2003 paperback version I read contained an introduction which explained the current state of affairs of the remaining outposts of the British Empire.
The author weaves a stellar tale of traveling to the mostly remote holdings of the British Empire that were still around in the early 1980s. All but several are islands, and a few are far flung, hard-to-get-to places. What the author found were territories still fiercely loyal to England even when the stewardship of the mother country was lacking. Mr. Winchester found the native peoples of these outposts are a tenacious bunch and most prefer their way of life over the hustle and bustle of big cities. However, the glory of empire is slowly decaying. Whatever the original premises for incorporating a large amount of the world's population under the British flag, and whatever the nobler ideas of imperialism, looking back from today's view there were faults and travesties in the system that overshadowed the good that was done.
That being said, the author's journey gives a look at the daily lives of inhabitants of places such as Tristan da Cunha, Ascension Island, Gibraltar and The Falklands, to name a few. The reader finds out some history of the places as well as quirky little asides: Why is the well-being of apes on Gibraltar of serious concern to England? Why are practically all of the full time employment jobs on one island held by women? (not that that is a bad thing, just unusual)
On another of the outposts it is briefly mentioned just how the locals used to set the cane fields aflame to clear them. It would have had PETA up in arms if they had been around back then.
This look at the remnants of British Empire was fascinating, if bittersweet.

[Daniel Greear · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember reading this book in high school. I found it at Barnes & Noble or somewhere and the cover, a lonely British telephone booth, piqued my interest. I had just started to broaden my knowledge on British history, and I remember taking this book home and reading it very quickly. I still have the same copy on my bookshelf today.

This book was dated in the 2000s, and is even more so now. At the time of publication, Hong Kong was still a British colony. However, it’s still a great overview of British Overseas Territories, and their histories. If anything else, this is a travel book. As the author went to the far flung places around the globe, and that was interesting to me as well. Some of the few are Bermuda, in the middle of the North Atlantic, The Falklands in the middle of the South Atlantic, St. Helena, Gibraltar, and Pitcairn Island.

Of course, all of these places are unique, yet very British at the same time. It’s almost like some are stuck in time due to their isolation.

[Popup-ch · Rating 4 out of 5]

More light-hearted than Winchesters other books, this work relates his travels to the remaining parts of the British Empire, such as Tristan da Cunha, the Pitcairn Islands, the British Indian Ocean Territories and the British Virgin Islands.

Technically it's still true that the sun never sets in the British Domain. By the time the sun goes down in Cornwall, it's already high noon in the Caribbean colonies of Anguilla and others, as well as the Falklands. And when it's evening there, it's still light on Pitcairn Island. And by tea-time on Pitcairn, it's breakfast time in the British Indian Ocean Territories. And before they go to bed, it's already a new working day in London. (Not to mention the intermediate crown dependencies of Gibraltar, Tristan da Cunha and Jersey.)

[Tim Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspired by a newspaper article about a British island he had never heard of, author Simon Winchester made a grand tour of the modern British Empire (the book was published in 1985). Like many, he originally thought that the Empire was no more, that most of the colonies and protectorates had long gone independent. His research revealed that the British Empire still included 200 named islands of any size (and thousands of smaller ones), that according to the 1981 census 5,248,728 people were citizens of the Crown colonies (5,120,000 in Hong Kong, 128,000 in the remaining 15 possessions). Winchester resolved to visit each colonial possession that had a permanent population, a trip that took three years, in which he covered some 100,000 miles.

Winchester visited the remote British Indian Ocean Territory (or BIOT), thousands of miles from the mainland. The territory, made up pretty much of the Chagos Islands, was at one time home to over 2,000 islanders (more than the population of the Falkland Islands), earning their livelihood from a French-run copra and coconut oil company and possessing schools, churches, roads, and the inhabitants having lived there for generations. In the saddest part of the book, Winchester described how the islanders were all more or less deported to Mauritius, 1,800 miles from their former home, even though they were under supposedly British protection, all in the interests of establishing an American military base in Diego Garcia (sometimes called either the Footprint of Freedom due to the island's vaguely foot-shaped appearance, or the Rock by those posted there who hate its isolation).

Winchester visited several remote South Atlantic islands. Tristan da Cunha, 1,800 miles southwest of Cape Town, was a fascinating place, very difficult to reach or even get onto owing to rough seas, weather, and no real harbor. The island essentially one massive volcano (which erupted in 1961, forcing the islanders to temporarily retreat to the UK), in its isolation has produced a unique group of people, all comprised of just seven family names, these Tristinians speaking a unique dialect of English. Ascension Island was he writes once officially dubbed HMS Ascension and treated bureaucratically as a ship! Originally annexed as a place for a transatlantic cable station, today it serves as an electronic listening post and military base, largely for the Americans. St. Helena is an island inhabited by a proud but kind people ("Saints" to outsiders, "Yamstocks" to each other), their language a mixture of various dialects and somewhat akin to what one might find in Dickens novel. Famous as the final place of exile for Napoleon Bonaparte, it has served as a prison for others, including the Chief of the Zulus and many Boers; now the islanders feel imprisoned by their remoteness from the outside world, a problem exacerbated by the lack of an airport. The Falkland Islands of course get attention in the book, Winchester having visited the islands on the eve of the Falkland Islands War and even served some time in prison in Argentina.

Winchester visited the five colonies of the Caribbean, with a far nicer climate and less remote but perhaps not any better off than the South Atlantic territories. The Turks and Caicos Islands - two distinct archipelagos- are the third largest inhabited colonial possession (after the Falklands and the BIOT), the Turks deriving their name from a local fez-like red cactus, the Turk's head, the Caicos derived from the word cay. The Turks were once major exporters of salt, though have fallen on hard times since losing that industry to a Bahamian factory. The British Virgin Islands (more properly simply the Virgin Islands) he visited as well, a slower paced - and poorer - counterpart to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Anguilla we find was subject to a massive invasion in 1969 - Operation Sheepskin - that involved two Royal Navy frigates and over 300 soldiers, all in an attempt to put down what was feared a rebellion by the 6,000 islanders. Instead it was a miscommunication, there was no rebellion, and not a shot was fired, much to British embarrassment. Britain's newest inhabited colony, choosing to remain with the UK when St. Kitts became independent, Anguilla demonstrates that some colonies are not yet ready to go independent, or maybe never will. Montserrat we find is another volcanic island, one that just missed out on being the only Irish colony in the Caribbean! Finally we visit the Cayman Islands, the most famous of the British possessions in the Caribbean, home to an (in)famous offshore banking industry, and not much else.
Winchester visited also Gibraltar, Bermuda, and Hong Kong, but decided against visiting Pitcairn Island.

So what states does Winchester find the British Empire in his grand tour? Not in a very good one unfortunately. He finds the colonies an "unhappy collection of peoples and places, wanting in imagination,...policy,...a future,...money,...sympathetic administration,... [and]...talented leaders." London he wrote didn't seem to care that drug money was being laundered in the Cayman Islands, or that the Turks and Caicos Islands were a transshipment point for drugs from South America. Several colonies had - at the encouragement of London - developed in the past one-crop economies, and when they failed those colonies - whether it was salt in the Turks and Caicos Islands, flax in St. Helena, or the dockyard in Gibraltar - faced bleak economic futures. None of this was aided by the fact that Whitehall seemed quite begrudging of monetary aid and quite slow to respond to any requests made by the colonial administrations.

Winchester felt though that a more grave injustice was done by the passing of the British Nationality Act in 1981, whereby only those who lived in the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar were full British citizens, able to come and go to the Great Britain as they please and even settle there if they liked. The remainder of the colonists cannot settle in the UK proper with such ease, and for all intents and purposes are aliens in that respect.

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of Winchester's best, in my opinion, though of passable interest to those with an interest in the British empire. The premise of the book struck me as something of a publishing "stunt" more than a real quest, which I suppose soured me from the get-go. Winchester's narratives tend to ramble and digress, and here, with no one overriding theme to tie things together, that trait seems more pronounced. All in all, I've read better travelogues and better musings on the twilight of the British empire, too, but the book had its moments.

[David Corleto-Bales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book by one of my favorite authors, Simon Winchester, from 1986 with an updated introduction to the 2003 edition; Winchester seeks out the last remaining remnants of the British Empire, (where the sun once never set) and tells the histories of some of the most obscure and stranger places on the Earth; Gibraltar, Montserrat, the Virgin Islands, St. Helena and Hong Kong are all visited with interesting tales to tell.

[Kendra · Rating 1 out of 5]

This could have been interesting and charming, but it was just dull. I was very disappointed, as Winchester is an author I usually enjoy. Perhaps these locales are better suited to Bill Bryson.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book previously under another name [1], and I have to say this book is at least mildly worth reading twice.  Admittedly, this book is not identical to The Sun Never Sets.  For one, it is an updated version that includes the author's revised thoughts and reflections about British imperialism and some trips to areas that he had not been able to visit on his first go around.  Also, of interest to me particularly is the way that the author faced some repercussions for writing the way he did.  In particular, the people of one of Britain's Atlantic Islands refused to welcome the writer back because he had written about a long ago love affair some girl on the island had and her neighbors thought, understandably, that he had done her wrong by writing about it and bringing embarrassment upon her (and them).  The author does come off a big gossipy here, and it is no surprise that he spent some time in jail during the course of his travels to Diego Garcia and the Falkland Islands (the first because of being stubborn and the second because of having very bad timing).

This particular book is about 350 pages long and it discusses all of the territories that are still run by Britain's colonial office.  This includes the British Indian Ocean Territory (2), home of Diego Garcia, Tristan da Cunha (3), Gibraltar (4), Ascension Island (5), St. Helena (6), Hong Kong (7, an emeritus colony), Bermuda (8), the British West Indies (9), which include the Turks & Caicos, Cayman Islands, Anguilla, and the British Virgin Islands, the Falkland Islands (10), and Pitcairn and other territories (11).  The author discusses his plans for travel (1) and how things got lengthy, provides some reflections and conclusions about the likely sad fate of British Imperialism (12), and in each of the various discussions of colonies he provides a great deal of insight about their history as well as his own reflections on reading and observation about these place, most of which would be well worth visiting even if some of them are quite remote.  Like many writers, the author seems to think that calling something Florida-like is about the worst insult that can be given to a place like the Cayman Islands, for example, whose financial wealth and lack of culture and natural beauty the author does not find to be particularly exciting given his preference for ramshackle colonies.

Admittedly, despite the fact that quite a few of these places are difficult to get to, I would like to visit many of them myself, especially because of their remoteness and isolation.  If the author seems a bit of a tool, he clearly sees some major fault with the British colonial office in not living up to the charters that islands like St. Helena have and in their longstanding refusal to grant many of their colonies' people the full right of residency within the home country, despite the fact that the colonies are so small that it would present no burden to the country as a whole.  The author seems unwilling to praise American imperialism for providing a better standard of living than British colonies have, but wherever he travels he sees a lack of interest in providing transportation and other infrastructure, a tendency for Americans to muscle in on those places which are particularly strategic (Ascension and Diego Garcia among them), and a complete inability on the part of the British to think of a way that the colonials could be able to do productive work that would benefit themselves and the British Empire as a whole.  Rather than showing a scene of grandeur, this book shows an empire that is dead on its feet, tottering and refusing to completely fall despite having no strength or life left in it, and that is something sad to see.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

[Dan McCarthy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had hoped for a more deep look at the few island outposts remaining in the British Empire in the 1980's, but the book was more about one man's travels to these places. There were brief sections of the history of each territory, but just as much space was allocated to the different stops for a letter the author sent, or his yacht accomodations.

I also didn't expect the amount of imperial apologism, especially in the 2003 author's preface. That is far too late for these passages

"In principle, of course, they were a less-than-ideal arrangement - for how much greater an indignity could any people suffer than to have an alien power impose some sort of rule upon them, often with racist overtones? How shocking for proud members of tribes in East Africa to be obliged to live under the Imperium of Berlin. How shaming for Madrassis and Bangaloreans to be forced to obey laws laid down by bureaucrats in London. Has there ever been a more humiliating peroid in Polynesian history than French came and told them where to work, how to behave and how it was permissible to dress? No - there can be no doubt that all such arrangements - whether the colonial masters came from Rome or Venice, were Ottomans or Mughals, had been educated at an École Supérieure or at Haileybury or the University of Tokyo - were misguided. The very idea of Empire is, by today's standards and principles, quite wrong.

But setting principles aside, and accepting for a moment that these arrangements did hold, that these are realities of history which, like it or not, did take place - how truly dreadful were some or all of these arrangements?

And if one were to argue that not all were quite so frightful as the principle suggests they should have been, were some of these foreign Empires in fact better than others (or at least, less bad)? Did some few of them, perhaps, at least leave a legacy that was to be of some utility to those who had been colonized a legacy that a dispassionate long view of history might argue offered some compensation for the shock, shame and humiliation of all those years under the Imperial heel?"

The British Empire was no better than any other empire. They looted, genocided, starved, and caused chaos across the globe - just like all the others.

"It cannot escape the notice of even the most rabidly anti-colonial campaigner that the essential livable decency of the place stems not necessarily from any peculiarly innate goodness in its people, but from- may one dare to say this today? - the wisdom and benevolence of the colonial masters who planned and ruled the territory for the century and a half so lately ended.

Much the same might be said of a whole raft of former British possessions. Comparisons between the practical aspects of living in almost any one of them, and of living in countries once ruled by rival Empires, nearly always tend to favour (all chauvinism aside, though I would not blame any reader for doubting me) whichever one was once directed from London."

After that introduction, needless to say his political opinions didn't get much better. Though, it seemed like every chapter involved the British screwing over one group of people or another in each territory, he never seemed to reevaluate his opinion that the British were the best colonizers...odd.

Finally, he just handwaved away Northern Ireland as a colony, despite writing the book at the height of the Troubles, and being a journalist who covered the conflict during that time.

If you're interested in the remote few imperial holdings, I'd recommend their Wikipedia page before I'd recommend this book.

[Evan Hays · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook of this, so it was abridged. This was good enough, though, that I would like to read the full version someday. At this point, since the book is essentially as old as I am, it is kind of a unique window into the world in the early 1980s, and several of the locations he visited, are no longer colonies, such as Hong Kong.

This is my second Winchester read, and I certainly like him a lot and plan to read more, this is one of his earlier works, and didn't impress me as much as The Professor and the Madman. Partially, this book suffers by way of comparison to two of my favorite authors who write similar books to this: Bill Bryson and Tony Horwitz. There are two main issues that limit this book from being excellent, although it is still charming, well-researched, and his narration is very pleasant.

The first is that he spends an inordinate amount of time, especially given how short the abridged version is, telling me why he did visit some places and not others. The issue of what a colony actually is, and which ones count, is quite confusing. But, honestly, I wish he would have just picked a criteria and stuck with it. Maybe it's because I'm not British that it doesn't bother me, but I just want to mainly hear about him visiting places I know next to nothing about, not about why he visited them or didn't visit them or the confusing bureaucratic issues that make them quasi-colonies or not.

That leads me to my second quibble. He left out a lot of what would have made this book even better: more of the human story of how he got to places, the backgrounds of the people he meets there, and what he does on a day to day basis while visiting there. There are snatches of all of these, but they really only tantalize, and leave you really wanting more. You want to read this book because places like St. Helena are places you know that you will never visit in your life, so you want to kind of live vicariously through him. But you can't do that if he doesn't describe to you the details. And often, what he does describe is out of chronological order, so the drama of what he experienced is diminished.

Still, a fun and unique view into the world, and one that was a very fun form of historical escapism for this coronavirus time we live in now.

[Reza Amiri Praramadhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was an old saying that the sun never sets in the British Empire, and as the contents of this book were concerned in 1983, it was true to some extents. In this wonderfully, if rather melancholic, written travelogue, we followed the journey of the author to some of the most remote places around the world where the Union Jack still flies high and the memory of the British Empire of the past still lingers. Far-flung from everywhere, with exceptions of Gibraltar and Hong Kong, they are united in fierce loyalty to the Crown, although the British government, rather sadly, put most of them in the state of benign neglect. I found the colonial loyalty of these places rather romantic, while their remoteness quite idyllic. The author also points out how to bring these sad places to greater integration with Mother Country of United Kingdom, such as giving them proper representation in Parliament and giving them British Citizenship, a privilege only extended to two crown dependencies, Gibraltar and Falkland Islands, the reason probably because they are majority white. Overall, I found this book rather refreshing, and satisfy my interests in faraway places and imperialism.

[Marvin Goodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

It takes a delicate touch to write about the vestiges of empire and colonialism without celebrating it, lamenting its passing, glossing over its injustices, railing against the practice, or totally ignoring all of these things. Readers of Winchester's other works won't be surprised at his deft handling of the topic. He acknowledges contributions, shines a light on injustices, and reflects on the demise of the British Empire without sounding maudlin. His skill and style would likely quell the ardor of most agenda-driven readers, and allow them to bask in his charming, eloquent descriptions of the people and places he traveled to in compiling this epic travelogue. Readers who have traveled around the world on well-worn, comparatively easy paths, will marvel at the hurdles he overcame in getting to some of the places he went, and almost, but perhaps not quite, wish that they had been his traveling companion.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winchester is one of my favorite authors, so I thought I would try this slightly older one of his books. Although perhaps not as wonderful as many of his more recent ones, it is still a good and interesting read. He travels to all (most) of the remaining colonies of the British Empire and has a story to tell about each one. Gibraltar, Diego Garcia, Ascension, St. Helena, Hong Kong (now no longer a colony), Bermuda, Falklands and the British West Indies are all covered. Winchester approaches each with a sort of wistfulness for the old British Empire and at the same time a compassion for the people of these colonies who have often been forgotten by the mother country. If you like Winchester, you'll probably enjoy this book. If you haven't read Winchester before, start with something else, like The Professor and the Madman or Krakatoa.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting idea, but I didn't think the execution was that good. Still, it is the Simon Winchester book that I have most enjoyed (not a high bar).

Winchester goes off to a a bunch of different the most far-flung parts of what remains in the British empire in the 1980's. Like the remains of the empire, there is no narrative that is cohesive. Perhaps that is the nature of the project. I always felt like I was learning interesting facts that never really connected. If he had something vaguely resembling a thesis that connected the book, it was that Britain has treated its colonial remains badly.

Part of the problem is the fact that the book did not age well. It is written in the 1980's, and I earread the audio version, which is the abridged remains of the original, filleted by the author himself in the 1990's.

Still, lots of interesting facts.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did I ever really know that all these spread out islands from ocean to ocean were part of the British Empire? No, and apparently very few Brits knew this either.

Simon Winchester researched which significant islands which make up the colonies of the United Kingdom were inhabited and set out to see these, and it took him three years to do them. Because some are so very well neglected, he had to visit several by begging favors to take military transport or coming in by ship with the mail. In one case, Pitcairn Island, he had to decide not to visit in the end as his choices were to visit for 10 hours or six months, given the transportation available.

Winchester does two big things very well in every book he writes. As a trained geologist, he captures the history of the formation of a place and its landscape very well. He is also a good storyteller about individual people. When he doesn't have a good individual to talk about on some of the visits, the story starts to seem like a laundry list of islands checked off on a list. But then an anecdote pulls me back to the story and engages me fully.

Because he took his travels in the 1980s, what I know of at least a couple of places he visits comes after the story and I wonder about those people and landscapes now. This occurs to me as I read his section on Montserrat and although he doesn't discuss the major volcano eruption of 1995-97 - because they hadn't occurred yet - I forgot about this while he shared details of why Montserrat uses the Irish 4-leaf clover as its symbol on the passport stamps it gives at the airport. His story about the "last resort" hotel took the sunshine out of the place and made it a gloomy rainy one as I read: Cancer patients who had run out of options showed up at this hotel and were served Laetril and other snake oil treatments. Winchester writes about the woman he met who was receiving treatment and was so overcome with hope, she couldn't quite see that this treatment had done nothing for her.

The author arrives at each location as a journalist and is given meetings with governors in residence, except in the case of Diego Garcia, when he has to slip into the place sans credentials and is kicked out. It is not an official colony, and the military who occupy it have no history to care about the native population that once lived here.

Gibraltar is boring and hard to get to, and he can't do it on foot - the author learns when casually determining a path from Spain to it makes him late for his appointment with the governor, as it now involves a boat ride off the mainland and back around to Gibraltar.

There is build up to Winchester's chapter on the Falklands, and for good reason. He had accidentally arrived on the island hours before it was to be invaded by the Argentines and on his departure traveling through Argentina (the only way out when they were able to quickly take over the island lacking any meaningful defense from the Brits), he was jailed for several months. It is to his credit that he merely mentions this in the chapter and doesn't make it a major part of it. His visit there was a major argument in his thesis as to what the UK government should do about its remaining territories for in at least this case the neglect had perhaps caused unnecessarily a war and the death and destruction it brings.

So many of the places he went to were so very hard to get to. The trip to Diego Garcia was a stopover for a young woman taking her boat around the world. His trip to Tristan to Cunha was scuttled after waiting so many days to depart and aborting the trip just after it was underway due to winds and weather. But he eventually got there. St. Helena, where Napoleon was exiled, was a suitable point of exile. He wonders at the ability of expatriated Brits to hermetically seal a life that no longer exists for Brits anywhere else on this island. Looking at Ascension Island's position on the map, one would think you could knock off a bunch of destinations in one season, but transport was not easy throughout the trip.

This is part of Winchester's argument throughout and more clearly stated at the end. Here are your loyal subjects, Empire (or Empress, to address the Queen directly, though it seems to not be HER we can fault). What will you do for them because if you continue to do nothing for them they will have reason to change loyalties.

I don't know what the author's coda to Hong Kong would be now. He visited the island over 10 years before it would pass back tot he Chinese. He feared for the change, though it seems to have fared alright since.

Winchester notes at the end that there were many other places once that were part of the Empire that have since become dependent. In the end he adds Ireland to his travel list and at the time he does still sees it being treated as poorly as any remote Pitcairn Islands native. Winchester fears for the mainly neglected islands for either their inability to create something for themselves there (in the case of the Falklands he noted that despite hundreds of thousands of sheep inhabiting the territory, he couldn't find a place to buy meat and knew of not a single industry that wove wool. Despite being on an island, he could never seem to order fish anywhere) and the British neglect for each of its colonies and what will inevitably follow. The Caymans to be overrun by money laundering and Bermuda to be overrun by American military needs.

I can't remember if I ever knew that Newfoundland remained a British colony into the 20th century. The book's concept was fascinating.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ticking off another book on my quest to read all of Simon Winchester's books! This was another great read, learning a ton about very unknown places on the map, and the strange cold war intelligence gathering outposts deep in the middle of the ocean. This book was also even more of a travelogue than usual, which is kind of my favorite part about Winchester's books. I was particularly interested in the St Helena section, and their trials to get UK citizenship. I was glad to see that they were given citizenship in 2002, well after the publication of this book. This one certainly is not an all-timer, just an obscure book that is a very fun read.