What is an island? A body of land surrounded by water? What about islands that are not surrounded by water at low tide? What about the Isle of Skye, which is attached to the mainland (or the mainland is attached to it!) by a bridge? A fixed definition of the word ‘fiction’ is similarly elusive. ‘Literature in the form of prose, especially novels, that describes imaginary events and people’? What implications are there if the novel is set in a real place? I believe the word ‘fiction’ has a counter-intuitive aspect – a truth – that must be part of today's investigation.

At any rate, in Scotland there are about 800 offshore islands, 94 of which are inhabited and 14 of which have a population of over 1,000. And while there are relatively few novels set on these islands, there is nonetheless a significant and varied bookshelf of such books. Authors would include those from islands, such as Malachy Tallack, Robert Alan Jamieson, Laureen Johnson, Amy Liptrot, and those not from, but writing about, the islands, such as Ann Cleeves, Peter May, Anne Macleod, Lillian Beckwith, Sheenagh Pugh. I think we need to be wary of suggesting there are any inherent qualitative distinctions between works written by those who have, say, a lifelong knowledge of a place and those who may have simply visited. That would be absurd; the reality, naturally, is much more nuanced. One of the best-known island narratives of all time, The Tempest, was written by someone who was not an islander and I have spoken elsewhere about successful ways in which Shakespeare brings an understanding of elements of small island culture to that play.

Now – full disclosure – in the passing I might point out that I was born and raised on the Isle of Lewis to a mother from Lewis and a father who is an Uidhisteach, a Uist-man, with Barra blood (the surname ‘MacNeil’ is very common on Barra), and I have also lived on Skye and in Shetland, so I have considerable experiential – as well as vicarious, literary – knowledge of island culture.