The sea that retreated

The most startling historical fact I have come upon in recent years is on page 62 of this book. In 1882 an attempt was made to evict three crofters on the Isle of Skye. These were humble men pursuing a way of life little changed in recorded time, in a place which to them would have seemed like all the world. The eviction failed, so do you know what the British government did? It did what British governments had always done when there was trouble in the colonies, it sent a gunboat. Only this was no colony.

This was part of Great Britain, and it occurred as Queen Victoria was spending most of her time in the Highlands, convinced that there she was among her most loyal subjects. But it showed how her government felt it could behave when dealing with a small people whose first language was not English: Mr Gladstone was dealing with natives. Some of you had grandparents who were alive then, but, though it was a time of national newspapers, you never heard them speak of this. And the government got away with it.

Two years later, when there was trouble again on Skye, it sent a warship, a warship. I must apologise for these italics, but it is hard to splutter in print. And not just a warship, but two gunboats as well which landed 350 marines. Three years after that a gunboat was sent to Stornoway.

I have waited a long time for a book like this. Written by a man with no nationalist or internationalist axe to grind, it is not only a sensitive and up-to-date history of the language and culture of the Celtic nations, of Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Wales, and the Gaelic fragments within Scotland, it is also an attempt to predict just how much of them will survive.