The island was cut off from the rest of Britain by rising seas around 6,500 BC, the same era that severed Great Britain from continental Europe. Stone Age farmers raised megaliths. Celts arrived around 500 BC speaking a Brythonic language closer to Old Welsh. Then, around 500 AD, came a second wave of arrivals from Ireland whose Q-Celtic language became the ancestor of modern Manx, Scottish, and Irish Gaelic. From 800 AD onward the Vikings raided, then settled, then converted. Godred Crovan - the King Orry of legend - ruled from the 1070s a maritime realm called Suðr-eyjar, the southern islands of Mann and the Hebrides. The ecclesiastical diocese of Sodor and Man still preserves that name. When Norse power broke in the 13th century, Mann became a pawn in the long Anglo-Scottish wars, owned by absentee barons who treated it as a private ranch.

Eighteenth-century Mann ran on smuggling. Taxes were lower than on the British mainland, and goods landed at Manx ports moved invisibly into the contraband networks of Britain and Ireland. By the 1760s the London government decided this had to stop. In 1765 the Crown bought out the feudal rights from the Duke of Atholl - an event known as Revestment - and the title 'Lord of Mann' returned to the monarch. London considered annexing the island to Cumberland, then decided against. Mann was never formally part of the United Kingdoms constituted in 1603, 1707, or 1801. In 1868 the island was granted a measure of local autonomy, and almost immediately re-invented itself: first as a Victorian holiday resort, then as the inheritor of a thousand-year parliamentary tradition that had in fact spent most of its history doing very little. Today Tynwald genuinely governs domestic affairs; the UK retains defence and foreign relations; Manx residents are British citizens but live under their own laws.

Everything on the island bends, for two weeks each May and June, around the TT motorcycle races. Racing began here in 1907 because mainland speed limits made it impossible elsewhere; the name 'Tourist Trophy' fits the leisurely original idea about as well as it fits a modern 1000cc superbike, which is not at all. The course is a 37.730-mile triangle of public road running Douglas to Peel to Ramsey and back over the mountain. Bikes leave at ten-second intervals; nobody races wheel-to-wheel. The dangers are obvious to anyone who looks at the stone walls along the verges. The course has lost its Grand Prix status, riders have boycotted it, and the official fatality figures - which already number in the hundreds - do not count the visitors who fancy a quick lap on open road days and discover the verges the hard way. The races stay. So do the crowds: ferries, flights, and B&Bs book out months in advance.

The island is small - about 33 miles long and 13 wide - and getting around is easy if you accept the maritime weather and the famous mist called Manannan's Cloak. Bus 3 runs from Douglas to Laxey and on to Ramsey. The Manx Electric Railway, opened in the Victorian era and still electric, climbs the east coast on its original narrow gauge. From Laxey the Snaefell Mountain Railway grinds to the summit, the only mountain railway in the British Isles still using the Fell central-rail braking system. Drive on the left, mind the village corners (many are named after racers who came to grief there), and remember that outside town there is no general speed limit - which doesn't make it wise. The TT fortnight closes some roads entirely and turns the mountain section one-way southbound; the coast road through Laxey stays open.

The Laxey Wheel - the giant pumping waterwheel called Lady Isabella - is the unofficial symbol of the island and features on the £20 note. Castle Rushen at Castletown is one of the best-preserved medieval castles in Europe. Peel Castle stands on a tidal islet on the west coast, its curtain wall enclosing a ruined cathedral. The House of Manannan museum in Peel tells the whole island's story from Celts through Vikings to Victorian holidaymakers. Cregneash, near Port St Mary, is a restored Manx crofting village where the Loaghtan sheep - a four-horned indigenous breed - still graze. Cuisine runs to smoked kippers from Peel, queen scallops ('queenies') landed on the south coast, and Manx cheddar. The Manx pound sterling looks like the UK pound but isn't legal tender once you leave: spend it before the ferry, or carry it home as a souvenir.