1. There is no accepted legal or geographical definition of what constitutes an island at the small scale rock-island.
2. See J. Paxman, The English: A Portrait of a People, (Harmondsworth 1999) 30.
3. See G. Dening, Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land, Marquesas 1774–1880, (Honolulu 1980) and P. Carter, Dark with excess of bright: mapping the coastline of knowledge, in D. Cosgrove (Ed.), Mappings, (London 1999) 125–168. Both these authors in their different ways highlight how areas such as the ‘coastline’ operate as spaces of knowledge creation and cultural encounter.
4. Some of the recent research on islands and off-shore tax havens have called into question traditional understandings of territoriality and sovereignty. See S. Roberts, Fictitious capital, fictitious spaces, in S. Corbridge, R. Martin, and N. Thrift (Eds), Money, Power and Space, (Oxford 1994) 91–115.
5. See C. Darwin, The Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, (Harmondsworth 1968 originally published in 1859). See also P. Armstrong, Darwin's Desolate Islands: A Naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834, (Chippenham 1992).