The Furnivall mansion was in the stomach of the island. It rose from the bottom of a deep glen, gurning against the wind which assaulted its crenellated walls. Through the windscreen, I watched the mansion rise before us – turrets, arches, cornices, arranged in a recursive order. Every time I visited, it arrested my attention and so, my conversation with Lewis subsided while the mansion interrupted us with its language of angles. The longer I looked, the more I had to wrestle with its dimensions, giving up, starting again. It seemed to have been forged from a series of disparate elements, balancing each other in a grotesque symbiosis.

Many years before, Malcolm had moved with his family to this Hebridean island, so that he might better concentrate on his writing. It had taken three years

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