I am often asked what my favourite place in the world is; not an easy question for someone who has travelled in over 70 countries. The fact is that I have not one but a handful of favourite destinations, from Alaska and the Falklands to Tasmania and Montreuil-sur-Mer, a beautiful old town in the north of France.
I am happy to say the recent expedition to the Scottish islands on MV Greg Mortimer - some aspects of which I have described in recent columns - added one more place to my favourites list: Fair Isle (population 60), situated roughly halfway between Shetland and the Orkneys. Nicknamed ‘the jewel in the ocean’, it is officially Britain’s most isolated island.
One of the aims of my MV Greg Mortimer voyage was gathering material for my next book on Britain’s utopian (meaning ‘ideal’, or ‘dream-like’) settlements, some of which used to exist (and still do) on several Scottish islands. That comes as no surprise, for Thomas More’s original ‘Utopia’ itself...