Book excerpt: in 1985 Simon Winchester, struck by a sudden need to discover exactly what was left of the British Empire, set out across the globe to visit the far-flung islands that are all that remain of what once made Britain great. He travelled 100,000 miles back and forth from Antarctica to the Caribbean, from Mediterranean to the Far East, to capture a last glint of imperial glory. His adventures in these distant and forgotten ends of the earth make compelling and often funny reading and tell a story most of us had thought was over: a tale of the last outposts in Britain's imperial career and of those who keep the flag flying. With a new introduction and additional material in many of the chapters, this revised edition tells us what happened to these extraordinary places while the author's been away.