In this book Alexander Broadie describes The Scottish Enlightenment (Scottish Philosophy in the 18th Century (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)) as a deeply collaborative, highly practical explosion of intellectual energy in the 1700s. He shows how this movement in Scotland reshaped how the Western world viewed human nature, economics and science. Rather than viewing it as […]
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Jim Ness, a local historian and archaeologist in Biggar, has produced a fine historical guide to the Clydesdale town. Packed with detail and historical photographs this book reveals the architectural development of the High Street and refers to many of the characters and business owners who have populated the town throughout the decades stretching back
Historical Guide to Biggar High Street by Jim Ness Read More »
James Robertson (A life in writing: James Robertson | Books | The Guardian) has a special connection to Clydesdale. From 1993 to 1995 he was the first writer in residence at Hugh MacDiarmid’s house at Brownsbank, Candymill near Biggar. Robertson has gone on to publish several novels, short stories and poetry collections. He was born in Sevenoaks, Kent
And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson Read More »
Many people, including myself, who have visited the battlefield of Culloden report being underwhelmed. It amounts to little more than a rickle of stones on a heather moor. The battle itself in 1746 had lasted less than an hour, and the forces on each side were small, even by the standards of the day. The
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Subtitled ‘Documents relating to the case of Roderick Macrae’, His Bloody Project contains the memoir of a 17-year-old crofter, written while awaiting trial in Inverness in 1869 for three brutal murders, and ‘discovered’ by the author while researching his own Highland roots. This manuscript, we are informed, divided the Edinburgh literati of the time, who feared
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Nan (Anna) Shepherd (11 February 1893 – 23 February 1981, http://www.slainte.org.uk/CILIPS/publications/scotauth/shephdsw.htm) was a Scottish novelist and poet who was born and lived most of her life in the Aberdeenshire village of West Cults. She became an early Scottish Modernist writer, producing three stand alone novels set in small, fictional, communities in the north of Scotland. The Scottish
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Alistair Moffat was born and bred in the Scottish Borders. A former Director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Director of Programmes at Scottish Television, he now runs the Borders Book Festival. He is the author of a number of highly acclaimed books and is a former Rector of St. Andrews University. In this new single volume
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Val McDermid (http://www.valmcdermid.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_mcdermid) will need little introduction to her many fans or to the readers of these reviews. Her new stand alone book has been published in September of 2014 and the summary is as follows: When a skeleton is discovered hidden at the top of a crumbling, gothic building in Edinburgh, Detective Chief Inspector Karen
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It’s not often you find top ten best selling popular fiction set in Carluke. Yet here we have it in the latest outing from Quintin Jardine (Quintin Jardine – Books from Scotland). This is a story of a man’s quest for justice at any cost. The summary is as follows. It’s 1818 in Carluke, Lanarkshire.
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