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This isn't the story I expected to tell here.

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And I want to be clear at the very start:

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Gruinard Island, on the west coast of Scotland,
is not a tourist destination.

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There's not much to see, and what there is,
you can see it from the mainland.

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But if you really do want to get closer,
there is a way.

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And these days, the government
won't even try to stop you.

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While I think Scottish right-to-roam law

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would allow us to land this boat
and have a walk around,

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the owners of the island asked that I don't.

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And that's fair enough.

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One of the reasons I want
to respect that request

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is because there is quite a history of Englishmen
coming up to the Scottish Highlands and, uh,

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acting like we own the place.

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Gruinard Island here?

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In World War 2, this is where Britain
tested its biological weapons.

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It was contaminated for decades,
and landing was dangerous and illegal.

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It has another unofficial name:
Anthrax Island.

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...and traditionally at this point,

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television crews go into
the history of the place,

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and there'd be a lot of pontificating
about whether Britain

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would ever have actually used
lethal anthrax bacteria as a weapon.

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The government has always maintained that
the experiments on Gruinard Island sheep here

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were just for defence,

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to have data in case we were attacked,

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or as an early form of mutually-assured-destruction.

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All the records I found back that up,

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but who knows what was said
quietly in private.

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Britain did draw up theoretical attack plans.

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That seems abhorrent now.
But in times of war, the laws fall silent.

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This video isn't about that.

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I'm telling you that story

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so I can tell you something else
I found while researching.

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Because it's often difficult to find
truth about history like this:

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so before travelling up here,
I went to look at original documents

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in the National Archives.

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It's really amazing to me that
researchers can just ask for those.

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All the details are there:

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how much anthrax the scientists
used in each test,

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how many sheep were killed and how,

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the dimensions of the
clouds of anthrax given off,

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and the scientists' comments about
just how effective it was.

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But that's been well told,
in books, in articles, in all sorts of ways.

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It's been badly told as well,

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like in an overdramatic US TV segment
from 2001, where the journalist

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wears a completely unnecessary
respirator and hazmat suit.

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And he didn't need those
because in the 1980s,

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the island was decontaminated.

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Partly because of pressure and
petitions from the public,

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and there was also more startling pressure,

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when an anonymous group calling themselves
Dark Harvest Commando

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dumped anthrax-contaminated soil outside
one of the English government research labs.

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The people responsible were never tracked
down.

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And while all that was going on,
modern tourism had become a thing:

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in 1982, the government had to deal
with a couple of Europeans on holiday

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who just landed on the island
in an inflatable dinghy

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and had a walk around, unaware of
the danger that was still there.

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There's a letter in the archives
from the British Embassy,

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and it's this wonderful bit
of diplomatic writing.

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And it's among those more modern documents
that I stumbled on a story about Gruinard Island

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that I don't think has ever been told,
because in context it's a fairly minor detail.

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But out of all the stories about the island,
this is the one that stood out to me.

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So it's 1986.

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The decontamination was successful,

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the government used tonnes and tonnes
of formaldehyde disinfectant,

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which killed a few other things
apart from the anthrax,

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but the ecosystem was steadily
starting to recover from that.

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For the government, it all
seemed to be going well.

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The press coverage was mostly positive,

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they got a lot of attention
for doing a good thing,

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for finally cleaning up an old mess.

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And of course the public's interested
in the whole thing,

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"newly cleaned-up secret wartime
anthrax-contaminated island"

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is the sort of thing that
attracts people's attention.

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And it was being sold for only £500!

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Slight catch there.

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It was being sold for £500
back to the original owners.

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Because the government, correctly,

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was honouring the original contract
from the 1940s, which specified that

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once the island was safe again,

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the folks who'd sold it to the government,
or those people's descendants,

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they'd have the option of buying it back.

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For the same price they sold it for, £500.

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It was worth much much more than that,
but £500 was the price, and £500 they'd pay.

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What this did not mean

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was that there was a bargain-basement
private Scottish Island on sale.

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But the trouble is that the press can
sometimes gloss over some of those details.

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And as the decontamination story went out
in newspapers and magazines and TV broadcasts,

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several government departments
found themselves dealing with

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a rush of letters and telephone calls
from the public,

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all asking if they could buy
the island for £500.

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"It has come to my attention that the
island of Gruinard is for sale.

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"I am interested in making an offer to purchase."

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I realise that getting voice actors
to read the letters out

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does make them a bit funny,

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but I don't want to mock the
people sending the letters.

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They weren't ignorant,

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they'd just been told by an
apparently-reliable source

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that there was a private Scottish island
available for £500.

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I'd ask about that.
I might even try and beat the offer.

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"The price offered is £500.
I am prepared to offer £501 immediately."

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One woman from Glasgow wrote:

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"The fear of anthrax pales
into insignificance to me,

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"as I have lived adjacent to a council
rubbish dump for nearly three years."

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And it wasn't just British people.

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The enquiries came from all over the world.

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Germany, Ethiopia, Bahrain,
the UAE, New Zealand,

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a couple from homesick Scottish immigrants
to Australia.

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"I often long for the old country."

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People wrote to any department
that they thought might be relevant:

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the Scottish Office,
the Ministry of Defence.

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A man from Australia wrote directly
to the Prime Minister

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offering a thousand dollars.

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"Please forgive me for writing
directly to you, Mrs Thatcher,

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"but I am hoping you will forward this
tender to the correct department."

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That one arrived three months
after the first ones.

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This took a long time to clear up.

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Not all the incoming letters
are in the archives,

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probably not all the replies either.

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There are also a couple of
grumpy memos from civil servants

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passing the buck to one another

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about dealing with the letters
and the phone calls.

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I do wonder if any of these writers
thought their letter would someday

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end up preserved in a national archive.

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This isn't ancient history,

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that's why I've blocked out
their personal details.

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And I love this story.

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Because it shows that misinformation
is not a new thing.

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Misunderstandings are not a new thing.

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Even now, if you Google
"who owns Gruinard Island"

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you'll find an article about how
Russian oligarchs want to buy it...

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dated April 1st, 2018.

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April Fools' Day is a curse
and we should abandon it.

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And anyone who's ever been in
the public eye, even briefly,

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knows that one wrong word can
come back to haunt you for years.

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It might not even be your word:

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the press might misquote you,
or take you out of context,

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and somehow the world gets
the impression that, for example,

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for example, you're the person to call
about a surprisingly cheap Scottish island

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that doesn't have anthrax any more.