Before Winchester wrote the best seller The Surgeon of Cawthorne he was a foreign correspondent and travel writer and in the erly 80s penned this delightful book, a series of visits to the remaining British Empire outposts through the world. In addition to the ones everyone knows -- Gibraltar, Hong Kong (then), Bermuda - there are odder ones like Ascension Island, Falklands (which he vists just as the war begins), St Helena, Tristan, British India Territories.
The edition I read was a 2003 one, with an intro updating it. It's an interesting intro - it makes a comparison between the old British Empire and the new empire of global corporations. He also says he thinks the Empire was a good thing. However, he isn't very nice about the remaining colonies in his book - Falkland Islanders are a bit pathetic and the war was a waste, British Indian Ocean Territories are a black stain on British memory, Gibraltar is pathetic, Bermuda is weird. He does like St Helena.
The travels are always interesting, especially the really obscure places, and I liked the history (there could have been a bit more of it - and a little more local colour and maybe some photos). Winchester keeps running into people he went to school with - the old school tie network seems to have evolved neatly.
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