It isn’t hard to see why literature has had such an affinity with islands. From Homer to Pratchett – via Swift, Defoe, Golding and Ballard – they offer microcosms, archetypes, fantasies, allegories, metaphors and utopias various. There are holy isles, prison colonies, hospital outposts, castaway crags, runaway boltholes, living laboratories, places of ostracism, escapism, treasure-seeking and despair. I have spent much of my adult life island-hopping, and occasional work has appeared everywhere from the Stornoway Gazette to the journal of the Kiribati and Tuvalu Philatelic Society: if that doesn’t qualify me as a nesophilic hack, then I might as well hang up my rusty rowlocks.

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