The Sun Never Sets: Travels to the Remaining Outposts of the British Empire

Spurred by his experience as an Argentine prisoner during the 1982 Falkland War, British travel writer Winchester determined to see what remained of the once-glorious British Empire. Some three years and 100,000 miles later he completed an often dismaying, disillusioning yet somehow proud ""Imperial Progress.'' Here he describes with vivid recall, and with the aid of some esoteric history and lore, his sojourns on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia; on Tristan de Cunha and St. Helena in the South Atlantic, on Gibraltar, whose 30 miles of rock-hewn tunnels feature a Catholic Church, a pub and a fish-and-chips shop. Britain's ``outposts'' today suffer from considerable neglect, reports the author; Pitcairn in the Pacific is nearly depopulated, while the Caymans in the Caribbean serve as tax havens for rich Americans or stopovers for drug smugglers. Only Hong Kong remains an important remnant of the empire (until China claims it in 1997) and it is here that Winchester's descriptive powers are at their most satisfying. Photos. (May 1)