They may not be home to great cities or blue lagoons, but our British islands are places of insular retreat that encapsulate extremes of weather, architecture, landscape and emotion, says Mary Miers.
Wind is the defining element of the thousands of islands that encircle the British Isles. Wet and salted, it sculpts every branch and bush, burns palm fronds (yes, our islands do have palm trees — albeit bedraggled), shifts shorelines and leaves surfaces rimed and…