Exiled to Jamaica after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Sir John Wedderburn made a fortune, alongside his three brothers, as a faux surgeon and sugar planter. In the 1770s, he returned to Scotland to marry and re-establish the family name. He brought with him Joseph Knight, a black slave and a token of his […]
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Denise Mina (http://www.denisemina.co.uk/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Mina) treats us to a grisly Glasgow crime novel in Garnethill. Maureen O’Donnell wasn’t born lucky. A psychiatric patient and survivor of sexual abuse, she’s stuck in a dead-end job and a secretive relationship with Douglas, a shady therapist. Her few comforts are making up stories to tell her psychiatrist, the company of
Finlay J MacDonald was born and brought up on Harris, in the Outer Hebrides. As a child he spoke only Gaelic while the village schoolteacher spoke only English. His account of pre-war life on Harris was later to be published, in English, in a trilogy of books: ‘Crowdie and Cream‘ (1982); ‘Crotal and White’ (1983); and ‘The Corncrake
In August 1930 the 36 last remaining inhabitants of St. Kilda (a tiny archipelago 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Kilda,_Scotland) left for the mainland, bringing the end to an extraordinary way of life that may have persisted for 2000 years in near total isolation. This was the remotest community in Britain and its way of life
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Jan Webster had a deep and instinctive feel for the Scots people of whom she wrote.This is an affecting saga of Scots life. ISBN 978-0446825825
The Scots are a small nation living in the north west corner of the British Isles remote from the traditional centres of power in England and the European continent. Yet miraculously the Scots have contributed an enormous amount to Western culture and civilisation. Their contribution has been quite disproportionate to their population. Eighteenth century Edinburgh was
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James Pawkie, haberdasher in Gudetown (based on Irvine), rises by degree to the ultimate position of local power – that of Provost. This is a brilliantly acute fictional analysis of small town ambition, politics, power and manipulation. The Provost convinces by the realistic deployment of small detail and its ironic touch. Be prepared for the use
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The advent of the First World War brought about the end of a whole way of life in the Scottish countryside that had persisted for perhaps a thousand years. With technological change picking up pace as well, the old patterns were swept away. It was a ‘sunset song’ for a harsh yet beautiful existence. In this novel of 1932
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