Loch na Keal and James Boswell during their tour of the Hebrides; they were entertained there by Sir Allan MacLean, head of the Maclean clan. Both Johnson and Boswell published accounts of their visit. Its most famous owners were the eccentric Mitford family. Nazi sympathiser Unity Mitford spent her final years on the island. Following the death of their father Lord Redesdale, the island was inherited under Scots Law by the surviving Mitford sisters and not his wife, as Lord Redesdale had willed it to his deceased son Tom. When their mother died in 1963, Nancy gave her share to Jessica, who bought
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters scalding wit and best selling novelist; Pamela, who craved a quiet country life; Diana, the fascist jailed during the Second World War; Unity, whose obsession with Hitler led to her demise, Jessica, the runaway communist; and Deborah, the socialite who became Duchess of Devonshire. The book was well received both critically and commercially. In particular previously held perceptions were challenged. India Knight wrote in the "Sunday Times"; "we didn’t really know them especially well, it turns out. Jessica was not that good; Diana briefly sinister but also clever, kind, fatally loyal to her Blackshirt husband, Oswald Mosley, and so on."