The Life and Death of St Kilda

🔖 In the prosaic Victorian era a visitor with the unromantic name of Smith was so forcibly struck by the awe-inspiring scenery of St Kilda, that he wrote "had we not heard of it before, we should have said that if inhabited it must be by monsters". Today one's first confrontation with this farthest outpost of the British Isles has the same staggering effect.An increasing number of people today, both servicemen, fishermen, and tourists, are being subjected to the strange impression that a visit to St Kilda creates. Among those who have succumbed to this impression and fallen under the spell are Tom Steel the father and Tom Steel the son, and it is the latter who, with paternal support, now lays before us the results of his research into the period when the islands were inhabited, not indeed by legendary monsters but by men, women, and children. The story of the life and death (all record of the birth being lost in the mists of time) is here told with a sympathy and understanding that make it a notable social document, and that cannot fail to arouse sympathy for the struggles of this strange community: this community to whom, paradoxically, the breakdown of isolation meant the beginning of the inevitable breakdown of independence and of the power to survive.