In 1840 a terrible storm hit St Kilda. The ‘island at the end of the world’ rises out of the sea 100 miles off the West coast of Scotland, with sheer cliffs and a windswept top. But the islanders were not the hardy seafarers and fishermen you’d expect in such an environment - their diet consisted largely of seabirds, which they had become skilful at trapping, and they even paid their rent in feathers. Those who were out at sea when the storm hit drowned, their boats swamped in the huge waves. A day or two later, the bodies of the dead started to wash up on the shore. Among them was a bedraggled figure, still alive. It was a Great Auk, a large flightless bird that is now extinct, and while no one was to know it, this would be the last sighting of one in the British Isles. The islanders had never seen a creature like this before. Two men netted the Auk and took it to the tiny community’s church. There it was decided that this bird of ill-omen had brought the storm to the island. And so the last British Great Auk was charged with being a witch, put on trial and found guilty. It was stoned to death on the beach it had been washed up on a few days before, by islanders whose own time there was running out. These days seabirds have St Kilda to themselves.

 

This book is about the Great Auk and all those others who have found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Throughout history outsiders have been blamed for events that are beyond the comprehension and control of man. I intend to look at these figures, and how they ended up as scapegoats, held responsible for the wrongdoing of others. Who were they and what had they done to deserve their fate?

 

A wonderful historical investigation of a fascinating, and widespread aspect of human behaviour: the ritualistic and inbuilt need to blame others. We may have come a long way from the days when a goat was saddled with all the iniquities of the children of Israel and driven into the wilderness, but is our desperate need to find some organisation, person or other to pin the blame on and absolve ourselves of responsibility really any more advanced?

 

Moving from the Bible to the modern Royal Family, from medieval Witch burning to reality TV, from the whipping boys of the Renaissance court to Blairite politics, this is a brilliantly relevant and timely look at human history that uncovers countless stories of obsession, mania, persecution, injustice from the highest echelons of society to the lowliest outcasts.

 

Duckworth UK

 

Material: proposal, delivery of ms March 2010