This chapter explores the creation of a narrative of ‘isolation’ between the lateeighteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on the presentation of ruralcommunities in Scotland, Wales and Ireland as passive and isolated from the cut andthrust of the metropolis. This narrative trope can be found in examples of travel writing and ethnography dating from the period 1750–1950, but is also apparent inmore recent archaeological texts. Narratives of isolation can be fluid and can bemanipulated. The ‘stories’ told in travel literature change over time, depending on theidentities and motives of the groups involved; indeed, the value of travel accounts liesnot so much in the ethnographic documentation of their subjects as in what they tellus about the motives of the people writing them.