Selecting faces on object from UV editor window I can't see this as an option so is there a way to select faces or islands and have them show up as selected faces on the object in 3D view.

In programs such as maya it is possible to work from either view and makes selection and mapping a little more user friendly.

I suspect it isn't possible in Blender but welcome your feed back.

Edited as flag as already answered, although the question was not asked in the other post in a way that showed in my search. 
I was looking for face and island selection to show in both views. The other asked about unselected vertices this obviously did not appear in the results.
There's a button you can check to sync edit mode mesh selection with the uv editor:



Enable it, then select a UV face in UV editor and see it selected in View3D!

It doesn't work however for UV islands, and as you enable it, the selection in the View3D takes precedence over the UV selection. That's for sure something to be improved.

For Blender 2.8 

The button to toggle 'sync' is as shown below: