LIFE AND DEATH OF ST KILDA (PB)

Situated at the westernmost point of the United Kingdom, the spectacularly beautiful but utterly bleak island of St Kilda is a lonely archipelago off the coast of Scotland and this is the acclaimed portrait of the lives of the St Kildan's - the men and women lived here for over two thousand years, largely cut off from the rest of the world. It reveals that the population never exceeded two hundred in its history and they were a fiercely self-sufficient and intensely religious people who climbed cliffs from childhood and caught birds for food. With the onset of the First World War, things changed with daily communication established between the islanders and the mainland. Slowly but surely, this marked the beginning of the end of St Kilda and in August 1930, the island's remaining 36 inhabitants were evacuated.