In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, two young Cambridge ornithologists arrive on a remote, uninhabited Scottish island, sent by the government to survey the island's birds. With them on the island are Kirk, the authoritarian leaseholder, and his niece Ellen, a young woman in love with the stars of silent comedy. Left alone on a scrap of land surrounded by the vast Atlantic, they observe each other. Poetic, intense and gripping, Outlying Islands is a glimpse of an innocence, a way of seeing and a way of being young that is about to be destroyed forever. Outlying Islands was premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in July 2002 and transferred to the Royal Court, London in Autumn 2002.