Edge of the World by Michael Powell – a gripping voyage into the past

The film director’s story of making The Edge of the World, a tale of a vanishing world, is itself a trip into a lost realm

• More journeys in literature

It starts, as great voyages perhaps should always do, with a ship crawling through the thick fog. “Where bound, Captain?” comes the deep voice of the Aberdeen harbour-master across the water.

“Lerwick,” replies the captain of the Vedra through his megaphone. The man standing next to him, a then-unknown British film director called Michael Powell, grabs the megaphone and shouts, “AND THE ISLAND OF FOULA!” Below decks, in the ship’s saloon, a film crew lounges around looking, as Powell puts it with a director’s eye “like a scene from one of those American films where the whole cast is catching the Last Express from Shanghai”.

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