Duff Hartdavis

Notes from a very small island: wonderful, eccentric Ascension

‘This is one of the strangest places on the face of the earth,’ wrote a Victorian naval officer. Another early visitor called it ‘the abomination of desolation’ — and to this day, on the 200th anniversary of the British occupation, Ascension remains decidedly odd. The summit of an extinct volcano, it pokes up out of