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It would be a very small part of a story about a very small island in an overlooked corner of the world. But as a story it was a good one—especially if I quoted from his book Derrick Booy’s two rather overwrought paragraphs. My rationale for doing so was simple: everything had already been made public; everything was in the prints; and in any case the story, told in an exquisitely gentle fashion, was just a near-beer account of a wartime love affair which, by all accounts, had been tender, unconsummated, and quite possibly entirely imagined. I thought that back on a Tristan which now seemed a very, very long way away, old Kenneth Rogers was being just too, too sensitive: the story was the thing, that was all there was to it. So I wrote the book; it was duly published. The reviews were kindly, the sales modest—and I thought little more of it.

Except that twelve years passed, and then out of the blue in 1998 I was invited onto a cruise ship on passage through the Southern Ocean. I had been asked to go along to talk to the passengers about various places I had visited: the Antarctic, South Georgia, Gough Island, Inaccessible, Nightingale—and Tristan. I did as I was bidden, without incident for the first two weeks of the voyage. Then on a Friday morning, during a half gale just north of the Antarctic convergence, I gave my talk about the history of Tristan. We arrived the following evening, and when we were comfortably at anchor off the Edinburgh mole, we were boarded, somewhat surprisingly, by a very large imperial policeman. He had a brief announcement to make: everyone would be permitted onto the island the following morning, but regrettably not—the ship’s passenger manifest had been radioed ahead—Mr. Winchester.

I had, he explained sternly, betrayed an island secret. I had been warned; I had actually been implored. But I had gone ahead, and now the islanders were every bit as hurt and upset as Kenneth Rogers had forewarned. The constable was implacable, immovable. And so the passengers, most of them greatly amused, filed past me down to the gangway, boarded their Zodiacs, and were swept off behind the riprap into Calshot Harbor—named for the village in Hampshire to where the islanders had been evacuated in 1961—and off to see the sights of Edinburgh. When they returned an hour or so later they shook their heads as one: why would anyone want to live there? And then they puzzled over my exclusion: it’s not as though you had killed someone.

Another invitation, from a second cruise line, dropped through the mailbox in the spring of 2008: it was for a voyage due to begin in the austral autumn of 2009, in March. This time, anticipating problems, I wired ahead. I asked the British chief resident envoy to Tristan, David Morley (whose career path had previously included postings to such out-of-the-way legations as Kaduna, Mbabane, and Port Stanley) if I were still banned. Surely not, I said I supposed. Twenty-four years had passed. Emily and Kenneth Rogers were now both dead. Surely by now I had purged my contempt?

Weeks passed until his telegram of reply. Sadly no, he finally reported. The Island Council had met, had formally considered the request, and had voted that, “You will not be able to land on this occasion or, indeed, ever.”

And so with that knowledge I boarded the MY Corinthian II (in Ushuaia, in southern Patagonia, a town where I had once spent three months in prison on spying charges during the Falklands War, but which by contrast still welcomes me warmly each time I happen by), and off we sailed, along the familiar sub-Antarctic milk run. I delivered without incident my lectures about the Falklands, on South Georgia, on the history of the Atlantic—and eventually, about Tristan da Cunha. And it was then that I told the passengers that I would not be going with them, and explained why.

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