THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

David Robinson speaks to Francine Toon about the inspiration and setting behind her first novel, Pine.

 

Pine
By Francine Toon
Published by Doubleday

 

If they ever make a film of Pine, Francine Toon’s debut novel, it will probably begin much the same way as her book. The opening shot will establish the setting: a village in a wooded Sutherland valley, with adults shepherding oddly dressed children from door to door. It’s Hallowe’en. Of course it is. When else would you want to set a Gothic novel?

We don’t need to notice too much about the villagers, but we’ll let the camera pan on their faces just long enough for us to recognise them in later scenes: a ceilidh, perhaps, or the hunt for a missing teenager. Most of the time, though, the film will focus on a ten-year-old girl called Lauren and try to work out what she makes of the world. Take, for example, that skinny woman in a white dressing gown she has just caught a glimpse of from the passenger seat of her dad’s car as they approach the village.

‘Who’s that?’ she asks him.
‘Who’s what?’ he replies, turning up the music.

Who that was, and whether or not Lauren has in fact just seen a ghost, and if so why, and is the subject of her novel. Toon doesn’t believe in the supernatural herself, but writing horror or fear is, she says, like trying to write humour – ‘you need the equivalent of comic timing to make sure that a “reveal” lands in the right way. I’m fascinated by that process and how other writers like Shirley Jackson or MR James managed it.’ Or, she could have added, the contributors to Haunted Voices, the anthology of Scottish Gothic storytelling, from new imprint Haunt Publishing, which she has just started reading.

Toon is already well regarded as a poet and has worked for the past three years as editor at Sceptre, where she has shepherded a number of novels to publication, including Starling Days by Rowena Husayo Buchanan, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year. When it came to choosing the setting or the protagonist for her own novel, however, she didn’t have any hesitation.

Its Sutherland village, she says, ‘is a blend of two places I lived – Rogart, a hamlet north of  Dornoch, where we moved up to from London when I was about eight, and Clashmore, where we lived beside a really big pine forest.’ After the bustle of London, where she couldn’t even play in the street, the potential freedom to explore that this part of Scotland offered made a deep impression. It was at Rogart, a place so remote that you might even spot wildcats there, that she imagined the woman in white making her first, fleeting appearance.

Dornoch added something else to the mix. ‘It captured my imagination that Dornoch was the last place in Britain to execute a witch [in 1727]. She was called Janet Horne, so in the book the valley is called Strath Horne, although I imagined it in a slightly more New-Age way. At Royal Dornoch golf course, next to the 17th hole, there’s what they used to call the Witches’ Pool, where witches were “swum”, ie tortured and drowned… So there’s something in the air, and even if you don’t believe in the supernatural, it’s easy to imagine that there actually was something out there. . . ’

Perhaps to the young Francine the supernatural seemed just that bit more real than it had in England. Certainly, she noticed, there seemed to be more interest in ghost stories in Scotland.  It wasn’t just learning to recite Tam o’ Shanter, or the ghostly ‘urban myths’ even the teachers delighted in telling at school. ‘They really scared me, those stories, but then I got to telling them myself, so even from the start there’s been an element of horror about my storytelling.’

She had originally intended to make Lauren the same age as she had been when she first arrived in Scotland, but she then made her a bit older, so she could better understand the adult world.  Lauren is also English, and is bullied because of it. Was that something else drawn from life?

‘It wasn’t as bad for me as it is for Lauren,’ Toon concedes, pointing out how friendly the villagers and most of the children had been. ‘But when I was ten, I had this growth spurt and was so much taller than the other children, and I was this strange child from London and had an English accent,  so . . . On the other hand, it did give me that outsider’s perspective.’

Ah yes, the outsider’s perspective. How often do you find it when you interview authors that apparently easy explanation for why they became writers in the first place? With Toon, you wonder how much her writing owes to the shock of that move to Scotland when she was eight. Is that why she is able to convey such a clear sense of the multiplicities of middle childhood, the way Lauren can adore the simplicities of Frozen at exactly the same time as working out the psychological complexities of reading Tarot cards, or how she can be one minute worrying about her father’s health, the next belting out Bat Out of Hell as a Halloween ‘treat’?

Changing countries, standing out from the crowd. Just being different. Sometimes that can be all it takes to set you out on the road to becoming a writer. It can be many other things too. For Stephen King, the master of the modern gothic horror novel, it was coming across a box of fantasy paperbacks from the 1940s that belonged to the father he never knew.

In 2008, having studied classics at Edinburgh University and worked for Chambers Dictionary, Toon headed back to England for a job at Hodder & Stoughton, where among other things she was editorial assistant to Stephen King’s UK editor. She’s keen to emphasise that she never worked directly with Maine’s horror maestro, but all the same she would certainly have read his books in proof form before they appeared in the shops.

That’s how I read Pine too, in a proof copy which her publisher promises ‘unites the gloom of the modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller’. That’s fair enough, I thought, when I finished the book, but the blurb went on to claim that the book was set ‘in a place that feels like the end of the world’. If Sutherland really did feel like the end of the world, I can’t imagine Toon wanting to return. Yet a couple of days after our chat, that’s exactly where she was heading, back to see friends. She might have an outsider’s perspective, but she’s got an insider’s one too.

 

Pine by Francine Toon is published by Doubleday, priced £12.99

BooksfromScotland enjoyed the Q & A with Tom Mole, author of The Secret Life of Books, in the Making Mischief Issue, so much that we have decided to make it a regular feature. This month we speak to Mark Douglas-Home, whose next instalment of The Sea Detective series, The Driftwood Girls, was published this month.

 

The Driftwood Girls
By Mark Douglas-Home
Published by Penguin

 

The book as . . . memory. What is your first memory of books and reading?

I loved comics – The Beano and The Dandy – and adventures. My favourite books in childhood were The Island of Adventure by Enid Blyton, The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis and A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes. I enjoyed stories about children in danger in faraway or strange places!

 

The book as . . . your work. Tell us about your latest book The Driftwood Girls. Is there something in particular you’re setting out to explore?

The Driftwood Girls, the fourth in the Sea Detective series, is a story about two missing women, a mother, then twenty three years later, her daughter, and how unexplained absence keeps in agonised suspension those left behind. My interest in ‘the missing’ stems from when I was a newspaper reporter. I interviewed women whose husbands had gone out for ‘five minutes’ to buy cigarettes or a newspaper and had never returned and, in one tragic case, a woman whose husband died in a North Sea disaster but whose body hadn’t been recovered. Until it was, she was paralysed. She couldn’t be certain he was dead, nor did she dare to believe he was alive. More than six months later she still hadn’t been able to empty the basket of washing she had filled the day of the accident. Nor had she worn make-up.

 

The book as . . . object. What is your favourite beautiful book?

The book which is always a pleasure to hold and to open is The Birds of Scotland which was published in two volumes by the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club in 2007. It’s an astonishing undertaking and a wonderful reference book: 1,632 illustrated pages containing everything you’ll ever need to know about 509 bird species.

 

The book as . . . inspiration. What is your favourite book that has informed how you see yourself?

I’ve never had that favourite book, no inspiring secular bible, if you like. However, there are many books which I associate with different stages and times in my life. These include Narziss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B by JP Donleavy and The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

 

The book as . . . a relationship. What is your favourite book that bonded you to someone else?

There are two, involving the same people: King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard which I read to my two children when they were young; also Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson which I read in my twenties and, many years later, that same copy was borrowed in turn by my daughter and son until, finally, the binding disintegrated from love!

 

The book as . . . influence. What is your favourite book that made you see the world in a different way?

I Didn’t Do It For You: How the World Used and Abused a Small African Nation by Michela Wrong is as memorable as it is shocking, required reading for anyone still harbouring a misty-eyed view of colonialism or the consequences of big power meddling. Eritrea was abused by its first colonial master, Italy, asset-stripped by its next, Britain, then ravaged and wrecked by American and Russian rivalry and armaments. This book’s lesson: big powers crush little people without even being aware of their effect and leave suffering as their legacy.

 

The book as . . . entertainment. What is your favourite rattling good read?

There are many (any book by Sarah Waters, for example) though I’ve chosen An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris because it’s a masterclass in how to construct an involving, page-turning novel from historical fact, in this case the Dreyfus Affair. I didn’t want it to end!

 

The book as . . . technology. What are your favourite audiobooks or eBooks?

I listen to audiobooks only on long car journeys. A favourite recently was The Dry by Jane Harper; another was Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. I don’t read eBooks because writing books on screen is more than sufficient screen-time for me!

 

The book as . . . a destination. What is your favourite book set in a place unknown to you?

Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg is a novel set on St Kilda, based on real historical events. It tells of the arrival in 1830 of Rev Neil MacKenzie and his wife Lizzie. His mission was to introduce the superstitious and ill-educated St Kildans to God; hers to be his support and mother to his offspring. Isolation, both emotional and social, as well as cruelty – three of Lizzie’s children die – changed them, as did a God who was every bit as unyielding as the conditions on St Kilda itself. It’s a compelling, beautifully written story about a marriage under stress and the harshness of 19th century island life.      

 

The book as . . . the future. What are you looking forward to reading next?

Two novels by the American writer Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge and Olive, Again; also, with great anticipation, the concluding part of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, to be published in March.

 

The Driftwood Girls by Mark Douglas-Home is published by Penguin, priced £8.99

Not all memories are happy ones and Rebecca Wait’s gripping yet tender novel, Our Fathers, explores the aftermath of a terrible family tragedy. In the novel, Tom witnesses his father shooting dead his mother, brother and baby sister. We catch up with him as adult, still reeling from his childhood, returning to his Hebridean home to visit his uncle to make sense of his father’s motivation.

 

Extract taken from Our Fathers
By Rebecca Wait
Published by Riverrun

 

Tom studied his uncle discreetly. Malcolm was wearing an old green apron, which had presumably belonged to Heather, and was stirring the sauce with frowning concentration. There was something incongruous about seeing his uncle dressed like this, brandishing a wooden spoon and making a dish which Tom associated with his mother. It seemed unmanly, though Tom realized what an absurd idea this was.

A feeling of shame came over him suddenly, a plunge of his stomach. And there was something behind it: a memory, he thought. Tom used to try to close down his thoughts in these moments, to prevent them bringing back anything he didn’t want to see, but often that made it more painful in the long run. It was better, he had learned, to be brave and to face up to the memory at once. So, deliberately, masochistically, he followed the threads of the feeling until he found the memory attached to it. The laundry one, as he thought of it. Back again. It was a straightforward event in itself: his mother had asked him to help put away the laundry and he had refused. Then, later, this had led to a row between his parents. It was the timing of the incident that gave it an unsettling significance, and Tom knew this was why it came back to him so regularly: it had taken place just a couple of days before the murders. And although as an adult Tom could see that the two probably weren’t connected, still a sense of horror infused the memory that was far disproportionate to its content.

He turned his eyes away from Malcolm and lived it again. He saw his mother standing by the sink, her hair loose. He was supposed to be going out to meet Angus to play. Tom had never been sure if the scene took place in the morning or afternoon, but he could feel the urgency of the meeting in his body, that tightness of anxiety – not that he was keeping Angus waiting, but something else, something vaguer, perhaps caught up with one of the deeper fears of his childhood – of missing out, of being left behind.

And his mother had said something like, ‘You’re not going anywhere until you’ve helped me put these clothes away.’

Tommy had believed he was going to do what she told him as he always did. He was surprised when he opened his mouth and said, ‘No.’ Then he felt the frisson in his whole body at having defied her.

He wasn’t sure exactly how his mother had responded, but he knew she had stood firm and, amazingly, he had too. He had hated her in that moment, and he remembered the shock of this feeling. ‘I have to go and meet Angus,’ he had told her, over and over, feeling himself a hero in his defiance. ‘He’s waiting for me.’ And then the bit he remembered most clearly, knowing as he said it that he was going too far, but saying it anyway: ‘Laundry is women’s work.’

He didn’t recall what his mother had said to that either. She had been furious, he was certain, but her words were lost. He was not sure why he had silenced her in so many of his memories.

Into this stand-off between them his father had entered. Tommy had felt a lurch of fear that was like falling, the certainty now that he had overplayed his hand. His father had looked to them both to explain the noise. He must have been in his study working.

They had told him, or perhaps Tommy’s mother had told him, reluctantly, maybe, in her quiet voice. Perhaps Tommy had chimed in shrilly in his own defence, saying that he didn’t have time, that Angus was waiting for him, or perhaps he had remained silent, fearful.

He remembered, though, how his father had responded. His father, standing in the kitchen doorway, doing that half-smile he sometimes did. He had said something like, ‘Katrina, the boy needs to be outside playing, not tied to his mother’s apron strings.’ Then he had turned to Tommy. ‘Off you go. We won’t let her turn you into a lass.’

And Tom remembered how he had slunk out, the mingled sense of satisfaction and betrayal, and how – he believed – his mother had not looked at him as he left. He felt the triumph at having defeated her and the horror of it, and caught up with it all was the warmth that flooded him when she turned her smile on him, how she would crouch down to listen to him when he was trying to tell her something, the feel of her as she hugged him and he slipped his arms around her middle and squeezed. Tommy adored no one as he adored his mother. He had confided in Nicky once, when they were very little, that he loved his mother even more than God and Jesus, and Nicky had told him, ‘You can’t say that,’ before adding comfortingly, ‘I do too.’

Tom knew that he had not enjoyed that afternoon, or that morning, whichever it was, playing with Angus. He had thought of his mother the whole time, of how angry she must be, and worse, how hurt. Getting your own way, he had discovered, did not feel the way you expected it to. It made you lonely.

Malcolm turned and said, ‘Almost done now,’ and Tom nodded and got up to lay the table.

 

Our Fathers by Rebecca Wait ublished by Riverrun, priced £14.99

A new year often inspires you to try something new. Marion Dunn had the same feeling when she turned 50, and joined a boxing gym. She found herself transformed by the sport and has written a knockout memoir on her experiences in the ring. Here we share an eye-opening – and hunger inducing – first session.

 

Extract taken from The Boxing Diaries
By Marion Dunn
Published by Saraband

 

I have signed up for a women’s boxing session, and in the changing room I speak to a woman with badly dyed blonde hair and a slightly mad glint in her eye. She tells me that she has been in the boxing ring fighting competitively as an amateur but has been recently injured and has lost fitness.

I change into my gear and have a little last-minute shadow boxing session in front of the changing room mirror before the main session starts. Even though it is supposed to be a women’s only boxing session, we are initially directed to a largish group of men and women, where we warm up under the watchful eye of the coach, skipping and shadow boxing interspersed with other familiar exercises. We have to sprint in a dogleg pattern across the gym floor to avoid the Victorian ironwork. The room seems to be divided into two halves. Most of the women are directed into the right hand half of the room and, mysteriously, the woman with the mad glint in her eye, the men and I are directed into the other half, where things begin to look a bit more serious.

I have had to fill in an online form about my boxing skills (or lack of them), so surely the coach must know that I am still a novice? The boxers in my group appear to be more experienced, carded or ex-carded types, which means they either carry or have recently carried medical cards to allow them to box competitively in the ring. After a few further exercises I am paired up with the woman with the mad glint in her eye, and I get my first taste, or rather trial by fire, of defensive boxing.

She throws a sharp jab. I am not expecting this so rather embarrassingly I am still wearing my glasses. I block the shot with my left hand, with my hand in a vertical orientation and the palm facing inwards as I have seen the other boxers do at my local gym. She throws a right hand – I parry or push it out of the way with my right. This goes on for a bit. We stop for a breather.

I warn her that I am wearing a rather expensive pair of glasses that I don’t want to lose. We start up again. The glasses seem to have enraged her somehow. The jabs and right hands come thicker, faster and harder, and my glasses are knocked to the floor. I am having real trouble blocking the shots now. I sense that she has it in for me, and I am cross because it should be obvious that I am novice and will gain nothing from the session if she treats it like a boxing match. Neither will she. I guess that she is somehow frustrated by her injury. The coach rushes over and without hesitation slings her out of the gym, and that is that. I am glad to say that this is the one and only time I have experienced this type of undisciplined behaviour in any boxing gym.

I attend two further sessions at the same gym over the next few weeks and both are worthwhile. In the first session one of the professional coaches who has a cauliflower ear spends time with me going right back to basics with my boxing stance. This is incredibly worthwhile. I practise moving around the boxing ring for the first time. I am told to ‘swing my hips like Elvis’ which I try in vain to do.

In the second session I am paired up with a much saner female boxer, Michelle. We both practise some genuinely useful defensive moves at a more civilised pace, before enduring a fairly punishing fitness session. At the end of this session, I am placed in the boxing ring with a much more experienced male boxer for five three-minute rounds. My sole purpose is to try and break down his defences and to see if I can score any points against him at all.

I consider myself to be quite fit now, but rather cruelly I am not allowed to rest between the rounds. Instead, I am given a series of exercises including fast step-ups on a bench to keep me ‘occupied’. Apparently, this keeps the necessary blood pumping round the muscles between the rounds.

My opponent is not throwing any punches at all at me, but even without this obvious distraction it is completely exhausting work. Because he is an experienced strategist, somehow he is making me do all the work. I seem to be whirling round and round the edge of the ring, feebly throwing punches into the air. He can read me like an open book and merely ducks, slips or rolls out of the way of my clunky jabs. He barely seems to move as I try my hardest. It is abundantly clear that he is completely at ease and well able to defend himself from any of my rather pathetic attempts. In fact, his is a textbook demonstration of proper boxing defence. In a way this gives me hope as I see that good defensive boxing is at least possible by someone.

Something must change, I think, as the bell rings and rings and the fourth round starts. For the first time ever, I actually start to engage my boxing brain. I must try something new or face complete humiliation in the eyes of the few onlookers. I feint a right hand shot. This causes him to momentarily drop his guard, and I plant a good left hook. I drop towards the floor by flexing my knees. He doesn’t know what’s going on, and this temporarily confuses him. I move forward in a display of pretend confidence. He moves back onto the ropes, and I deliver a couple of good body shots, then I am spent. The bell rings. At least I have managed something. The fifth round passes in a blur of exhaustion without event, but I do manage to deliver punches right to the last.

I thank my opponent and we fist-bump gloves in the timehonoured way. He takes off his headgear and smiles. He has barely broken into a sweat, but I am all in. I ask him for his honest comments. ‘Well, you are clearly a novice and lack technique, but there is some determination and punching power there. You were even punching quite well in the fifth round.’

Though not a proper boxing match or even a sparring contest, this experience did have a sense of reality about it, and from now on, I think, I will never be afraid to step into the ring under the gaze of onlookers, as long as I am adequately prepared. Perhaps this means never.

After getting changed, I have the immediate and quite primal desire to eat. It is an overpowering sense of hunger that I have rarely experienced. Fortunately, I have a couple of cereal bars in the car. Feeling faint, I wolf these down. Perhaps these will stifle the hunger pangs before I can reach my favourite café in Rivington village, a couple of miles away.

After driving only one mile along the Bolton Ring Road, I turn off into a small park. God Help Me! I have to eat again. Right Now! I fumble in a rucksack in the boot of my car and thankfully I find a few soggy glucose tablets right at the very bottom. Simultaneously, I glug down a whole flask of sugar-rich coffee. Then I feel as high as a kite as my system is simultaneously swamped with endorphins, sugar and caffeine. It is the most glorious feeling imaginable. It makes me wonder what real boxers must feel like after a real match.

Eventually I make it to the Rivington café. It is an old, slightly damp, churchy building stuffed with wet dogs and their earnest owners out for weekend walks on the Bolton fells. Years ago, I recall that my partner shamed me in this café by asking for Eccles cakes. ‘They’re Chorley cakes round ’ere, love,’ came the swift reply.

I ask for beans on toast with scrambled eggs, and pray, pray, pray for it to be quick. I am thirsty again and ask for a pint of tea loaded with sugar, then another one, then another one. It might be the road to diabetes hell, but I need it right now.

I sink into a dreamy torpor. I am tired, but also alert and incredibly elated. The food revives me enough to make it back home by teatime. I wonder if I will ever replenish my reserves of energy.

The following day, I lie languidly on the sofa and eat three enormous meals, one after the other, one of which is just a giant pan of spaghetti. ‘You’re never going eat all that?!’ Haydon says, aghast. I know that it is slightly disgusting, but I just stuff it straight in, gratefully all the same. I am still ravenous.

‘After all,’ I lie, ‘I’m allowed – I’m a boxer.’

 

The Boxing Diaries by Marion Dunn is published by Saraband, priced £9.99

There are so many books to look forward to in the coming year, so we thought we’d pick 10 authors on their first or second books to watch out for. They’re future superstars!

 

Martin MacInnes 

We’re very much looking forward to Martin MacInnes’s second novel, Gathering Evidence, after the success of his debut, Infinite Ground. He’s a writer who defies description, and likes to push boundaries in genre and form, while exploring ideas of technology, the environment and the world(s) we live in. In Gathering Evidence, we are taken to a dire future where a research team, led by Shel Murray, visits an exclusive national park to observe one of the last troops of bonobo chimpanzees. Amid unusual behaviour and unexplained deaths, Shel suspects her team is being hunted, and when her partner, John, is attacked, she realises that something even more catastrophic has to be stopped.

Gathering Evidence is published on 6th February. (Atlantic)

 

Shola Von Reinhold

In 2020, Jacaranda Books will be joining forces with Words of Colour Productions for its Twenty in 2020 initiative, celebrating black British writers. One of them is Scotland’s Shola Von Reinhold, a recent graduate from the Creative Writing MLitt at the University of Glasgow. Jacaranda will be publishing their debut novel, LOTE, which follows the narrator Mathilda’s fixation with the forgotten black Scottish modernist poet, Hermia Drumm. A fan of modernism and the avant-garde, Shola explores the ephemeral nature of art and beauty, and how art stakes its claim in history.

LOTE is published on 26th March. (Jacaranda Books)

 

Jane Alexander

Jane Alexander, a creative writing teacher at the University of Edinburgh and the Open University, is just about to release her second novel, A User’s Guide to Make-Believe. Her first novel, The Last Treasure Hunt, was published in 2015 and selected as a Waterstones Debut of the Year. Taking its cue from Black Mirror and Jane’s own fascination with virtual reality, A User’s Guide to Make-Believe follows Cassie, an employee of of the manufacturers of the virtual reality experience Make-Believe, as she herself gets caught up in using it to relive her memories of a past relationship.

A User’s Guide to Make-Believe is published on 23rd January. (Allison & Busby)

 

Laura Guthrie

Another debutant, Laura Guthrie will be publishing her her first YA novel in the summer. Anna is a modern reimagining of childhood favourite, Pollyanna, where Guthrie’s Anna, who has Aspergers’ Syndrome, finds herself transported to Scotland to live with her reclusive mother after the death of her father. With two plays, a PhD and several award-winning short stories under her belt, we’re bound to hear a lot more from her in the future.

Anna is published in June. (Cranachan)

 

 

Colin Bramwell, Chris Boyland, Carly Brown & Bibi June

The wonderful folks at Stewed Rhubarb are encouraging all poetry lovers to subscribe to their Fellowship of Stewed Rhubarb this year to receive all their publications as well as other lyrical treats. They will be releasing pamphlets from four shining stars in Scotland’s spoken word scene: Jigsaw by Colin Bramwell, User Stories by Chris Boyland, Dramatis Personae by Carly Brown and Critique of the Criminal Justice System by Bibi June.

The Fellowship pamphlets will be published quarterly throughout 2020. (Stewed Rhubarb)

 

 

Graeme Armstrong

Coming highly recommended by the award-winning, and fellow Airdrieonian, David Keenan, as well as Kerry Hudson and Janice Galloway, Graeme Armstrong’s debut The Young Team looks set to dazzle us all in 2020. We follow the teenage years of Azzy Williams who’s ready to smoke, drink, fight and do anything for his gang of pals, though it might not all be good for him. Graeme Armstrong was picked up for Picador’s New Voices 2020, and the novel is based on his own experiences of growing up.

The Young Team is published on 5th March. (Picador)

 

 

Deborah Masson

It’s always good to get a new fictional bobby on the beat, and Deborah Masson’s creation, DI Eve Hunter, is pounding the mean streets of Aberdeen in her first novel, Hold Your Tongue. On her first day back from a sabbatical,  DI Hunter is called to the scene of a gruesome crime. A young woman’s mutilated body has been discovered in a hotel room with a newspaper headline about the victim’s burgeoning modeling career is pinned to her. It is up to Eve to find the killer before they strike again. The novel is already garnering strong praise with fans already looking forward to its follow up.

Hold Your Tongue was published on 26th December 2019. (Corgi)

 

Ali Whitelock

Ali Whitelock’s first book, Poking Seaweed with a Stick and Running Away from the Smell was a brilliant memoir of her childhood growing up in the west of Scotland. She now dedicates her writing time to poetry and her first collection And My Heart Crumples Like a Coke Can will be released in the UK later on this year. If you like poems that are honest, hilarious, visceral, tender and always surprising, you should definitely pick this one up.

And My Heart Crumples Like a Coke Can is published in April. (Polygon)

 

Joe Donnelly

Joe Donnelly, a Glasgow-based journalist and mental health advocate, loves video games. And he is tired of reading about the supposed bad influence gaming has on the young and the introverted. His debut, Checkpoint: How video games power up minds, kick ass and save lives, seeks to counter those stories, reflecting on the comforting and healing effect that exploring digital worlds and narratives can have on mental health both personally and on a wider scale.  The rehabilitation of gaming culture starts here!

 

 

Hannah Foley

Former nurse Hannah Foley won the Kelpies Prize for childrens’ writing in 2018, and this year sees the publication of that award-winning entry. The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle is a childrens’ book (8-11 years) full of magic, adventure, enchanted bicyles and a host of characters from Scotland’s myths and legends. If you want to know Avery’s secret, you’ll have to get a copy!

The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle is published on April 23rd. (Floris)

It’s always a delight to take part in the end of year round up podcast with Alistair Braidwood of Scots Whay Hae!, one of the best websites and podcasts celebrating Scottish culture. If you’re still looking for recommendations Christmas gifts, then let us give you a whistle stop tour round the books that caught our eye over the year.

 

Check out the Scots Whay Hae! website for more excellent Scottish culture.

Rosemary Hector has re-imagined the Nativity story through a series of poems offering different voices and perspectives. If you’re looking to see this story anew, this beautifully-illustrated book is a perfect gift for Advent. We’ve selected here a few of the poems from the collection to kick start your Christmas reflections.

 

Poems taken from A Quickening
By Rosemary Hector
Published by Muddy Pearl

 

Matter of Belief

The guide from National Geographic suggested
it could have been a trough, rather than a manger,
where Mary laid her baby, since Bethlehem,
banked by olive and almond trees, is on an aquifer
and was built to defend water. He pontificated that
water and height, the soil and its fertility, defence,
boundaries and access remain political issues.
Trough or manger; a problem? The mystery is
in contested territory, in politically charged times
God became matter, and tiny, contained.

 

Star of Bethlehem

A conjunction of planets:
a comet; a nova (birth of
a new star), or a miracle
(without explanation)?
Oblivious, the quilters
sense the need for joy
in their choice of colours, know
effort should focus more
on effect than on perfect points;
a burst of visual delight.
They choose this pattern,
cut cloth, stitch and patch
this many-sided star,
and sense its significance,
the ancient story.
Learned men. Interpreters
of skies. The decision
to trust their knowledge,
traverse deserts, hopeful,
follow what they could see,
follow the foretold.

 

Art

Did he come down to be mocked up
in plaster of Paris, or pale wood
painted with vermilion wounds,
paraded through streets each fiesta?
Did he come down to be a statue
handled by men in white gloves,
gently winched onto a plinth?
Did he come down to model
for Raphael or Leonardo;
on a beatific Mary’s lap?
Yes, he came down, for all our poor
attempts to represent what we sense,
or consider beautiful and in good taste;
he came down and has compassion
on our worst art, and on our best.

 

Lament

… oh i cry for our country a bank with no money
a shop with nothing to sell a sandpit not safe for play
because of litter and needles and dog shit
oh i weep bitter tears for our country …
Isaiah’s metaphors were for different times; he wrote
of neglected vineyards, deserts, burning straw, as he wept
for Israel, God’s lovely nation. It was the same observation
as today; a failure of justice. Rightness offended.
A prophet’s lament is not personal, but mirrors
things as they are. It speaks to those in power,
nor does it offer an answer, provide a neat narrative
with a rhyming conclusion. The call is to consider, return.
Say ‘sorry’ and attempt to restore all that is broken.
Yet within his descriptions of darkness and woe a small voice
slips in; light. There will be a child. Named ‘God with us’.
With us, in all our metaphors. In all our times.

 

A Quickening by Rosemary Hector is published by Muddy Pearl, priced £9.99

It’s fair to say that Billy Connolly is both National Treasure and absolute legend. His earthy, surreal and utterly hilarious outlook on life has been gracing stages across the world for decades, and can now be found in print in his latest book, Tall Tales and Wee Stories. To celebrate publication, BooksfromScotland was delighted to look back at some of Billy Connolly’s most famous routines. Enjoy!

 

Tall Tales and Wee Stories: The Best of Billy Connolly
By Billy Connolly
Published by Two Roads

 

 

The Crucifixion

 

 

Incontinence Pants

 

 

The Welly Boot Song

 

Tall Tales and Wee Stories: The Best of Billy Connolly by Billy Connolly is published by Two Roads, priced £20.00

When Stephen Rutt moved to Dumfries-shire, noting the daily lives of the birds in the area connected him to his new home. Wintering: A Season with Geese is his memoir of those first winter months, and we’re delighted to present this extract here.

 

Extract taken from Wintering: A Season with Geese
By Stephen Rutt
Published by Elliott & Thompson

 

I am falling more deeply for geese on a daily basis. Although I am told the winter won’t always be like this – they are wild geese after all, predictably unpredictable – the regular skeins flying over are captivating me. Sinking deep inside me. It is new for me. In a new place they are making me feel, tentatively, at home. Connected to the world, while it just happens around me, daily and unadorned. It is not a famous spectacle, these passing skeins of geese, not the top billing on wildlife TV. These geese just quietly go about their daily movements, as I go about mine. I am one insignificant human to them but they are reminding me that I am a part of the world that stretches as far away as Iceland, part of the running rhythm of winter.

*

These pink-footed geese know Dumfries better than we do. The skeins we see scoring the sky are following regular routes. Well-travelled sky paths. Geese can be long-lived, if they avoid foxes, polar bears, powerlines and men with guns: the average life expectancy is eight years, but the oldest recorded bird was thirty-eight when it died. The Solway has seen pink-feet live through to their twenties. These are just the ringed birds that we know about, that have been found again. In the thousand-strong flocks there could be some that are older. I wonder at the generations of geese contained in each skein.

*

A morning, a week later. The first skein comes, shaped like the nib of a fountain pen, drawing a northbound line through the sky. I am walking northeast through the town, to the station, on an early golden morning. The third skein skips across, between the roofs of the shops, just off the high street. The fifth veers off eastward, into the sun. The sixth is the vanguard of the two-coach rattling train to Glasgow, ploughing its slow way through the hills to the city. I look up the word ‘skein’ on slow mobile internet from the train. It’s from the old, obscure French word ‘escaigne’, meaning an amount of yarn. The word makes a sort of sense. Although it is the only use of the word ‘skein’ that does not have a textile meaning, I like the way it suggests threads. Threads of geese in the sky, sometimes unravelling, sometimes like a ball of string, trailing a loose end. The skeins we see are stringy strands of the geese. It is only roughly, only occasionally, the precise V-shape of the classic imagined geese skein. Each flock is social. It seems mildly ironic that we should move to a place where I know nobody, and for the birds to be obviously together, benefiting each other. These skeins are social forms of flying. Each goose reduces drag for the one behind it. Each goose helps another.

It is possible to think these skeins ancient, that they have been scoring the sky since time beyond memory. It’s not true. British pink-footed geese come almost entirely from Iceland and Greenland. The rest of Europe’s come from Svalbard, the archipelago halfway between Norway and the North Pole. The Icelandic population increased spectacularly during the twentieth century. I start reading. The Birds of Dumfriesshire, compiled in 1910 by Hugh S. Gladstone, suggests that the bean goose was more common but was being displaced by the pink-footed goose.2 But all grey goose species look similar to some degree and even now, with modern knowledge and modern optics, identification is not easy. Early accounts are mired in confusion and misidentification. What is clear is that over the twentieth century the pink-footed goose became exceptionally common on the Solway Firth, where once it had been either irregular or unknown. The bean goose is now so rare in Dumfries and Galloway that if you see one you have to write a description of it for a panel of four men to adjudicate on whether you are correct.

I was dimly aware that pink-footed geese were supposed to be here in Dumfries, in the way that one is dimly aware of gravity or local politics: I know of the existence of these things and vaguely how they work and affect me, but that is it. Although I can’t imagine a time when I become obsessed with the machinations of councils or the essentials of physics, as necessary as they may be. I was not anticipating how frequently my thoughts would return to the geese, how my eye would be scanning the horizon for the smudge that betrays a skein on the horizon. I was not anticipating how much I would become obsessed with the geese. I was not aware how much they were becoming part of my life.

This is not unique to me.

 

Wintering: A Season with Geese by Stephen Rutt is published by Elliott & Thompson, priced £12.99

David Ouimet’s I Go Quiet is beautiful, special book celebrating the wonder of books and the imagination. It’s an ideal gift for those you know who prefer to be found in a quiet corner rather than in the thick of the Christmas crowds. We hope this taster of some of the stunning illustrations will get you rushing to the bookshops!

 

Illustrations taken from I Go Quiet
By David Ouimet
Published by Canongate

 

 

 

 

I Go Quiet by David Ouimet is published by Canongate, priced £12.99

The end of the year is often a time of reflection, particularly on those who are no longer with us. David Robinson is moved by the bravery and honesty of Kenneth Roy’s memoir on his terminal illness, In Case of Any News.

 

In Case of Any News
By Kenneth Roy
Published by ICS Books

 

Try as I might, there is no way in which I can give this month’s column a seasonally jolly topspin. It’s not about Christmas, carols, cracker jokes, stupid sweaters, office parties, balloons or stuffed turkeys. It’s about saying goodbye to all of that, about the empty chair at the feast. It’s about dying.

Most of us have read books by people who know they are dying and want to put into words what their life meant, to describe their experience of love and friendship before it all goes away. I’ve ghost-written such a book myself, on behalf of a man dying of a brain tumour, and in terms of how much it meant to its subject, it is probably the best thing I have written. But in the vast literature of death, I have never come across anything quite as moving or brave as the late Kenneth Roy’s In Case of Any News.

I didn’t, I hasten to add, know him: I never met him, saw him on television, or heard him speak. I haven’t read any of his other books, heard of the charities he founded, or written for Scottish Review, the magazine he founded and edited, in either its printed quarterly (since 1995) or (since 2008)  online weekly iterations. My admiration of his book isn’t tainted by friendship or professional courtesy: in short, it’s not personal.

I had, though, read his journalism for years. From it, I had constructed a mental picture of him: a bit crabbit, perhaps, not the sort to throw himself into the mad social whirl but commenting on it from a laconic distance. A cynic, possibly; definitely not a joiner-in or a booming extrovert. One thing for sure: his byline was a byword for clarity of thought and expression, usually with a dollop of wit on the side – ‘writing worth reading’, in the words of the Scotsman advert from the days when he was writing for it or Scotland on Sunday.

Magnus Linklater begins his excellent introduction to In Case of Any News by saying that he always saw Kenneth Roy as ‘the conscience of Scotland – a writer who gave it a wee nudge when he thought it had strayed off course’. I’d put it slightly differently: that he had a knack for asking awkward questions. If he were reviewing his own book, for example, he’d probably ask what on earth the living could possibly hope to learn from a book written by someone who is dying. He might even have been sceptical about the whole project: that would, after all, be the contrarian position, and Roy never shied away from taking the minority view. What, he might ask, can a writer teach us about Death when it is already in the hospital room, scythe raised?

This drastically foreshortened focus is the truly remarkable thing about Roy’s ‘diary of living and dying’. He began writing it on 4 October 2018, just after being told that his cancer was terminal and ended it on 1 November, four days before his death, and yet for all his caveats about not having had time to edit it properly, it  is complete in its own right. A rare and ultra-lucid despatch from very edge of life, it is a last testament of will from a writer who ‘wonders how near the finishing line I can get and still file a line or two of copy’. And that’s the key: these are the final pages of a reporter’s notebook, and he will struggle through sleeplessness and embarrassment (vomiting, soiling the bed) and pain to fulfil that oh-so-simple-sounding journalistic instruction to ‘tell it like it is’.

But that, he says, is the easy bit. Recording what is life like in Room 303, Station 9, at Ayr Hospital is straightforward reportage of the kind that writes itself (yeah, right). The really worrying bit, he adds, is that if he suddenly runs out of any added insights into the business of dying, any last words of wisdom, the whole project will be doomed to failure.

Now this, remember, is what Kenneth Roy has decided he will do with what remains of his life. Finishing this book is his one remaining ambition. Not reading poetry, because the words float away, unabsorbed. Not watching films, because or reading histories because, well, what’s the point? Even music palls. Religion doesn’t help, because he’s not a believer. The news no longer matters and will happen without him. Philosophy doesn’t console, not even Seneca. Pastimes are pointless when there is so little time to pass.  But 3,000 words a day: that counts for something, doesn’t it, even if only a fragment to shore up against ruin? Spurred on by his estimable consultant Dr Gillen, he carries on.

Of course, he has his visitors, and they have their place in the reporter’s notebook, although – and again, this is another way in which this book differs from most other examples of this curious sub-genre – they are not its primary focus. As family and friends take turns by his bedside, one is never quite sure who is who. Perhaps he didn’t want to embarrass them, but my own guess is that he didn’t want to dwell on the love and friendship he was leaving behind him lest it undermine his own purpose. Wallowing in self-pity isn’t his style. Nor does he bore us with the details of his treatment, because that’s what they are, just details.

He tells us something of his life, and it’s not remotely what I expected. A bleak background in Bonnybridge, driven to truanting aged 12 by a bullying maths teacher and leaving school three years later without a single qualification. An embarrassing, alcoholic father (‘no good purpose. would be served by a celestial reunion’) and reserved mother. Wondering why he and his sister never talked much about either of them, he notes that ‘dying doesn’t necessarily release inhibition; it can actually reinforce it.’

And if belatedly confronting the past is a strange experience, so too is life on Station 9. ‘Overwhelming love. Overwhelming love. Overwhelming love. I am surrounded by it, wrapped in it, and I am trying to learn at the end of my life to learn how to deal with it and respond to it. It isn’t easy. It’s the most difficult thing I have ever done.’

Read that paragraph again, you can see just how far it is from my initial mental image of Roy (crabbit, cynical, witty etc). Yet his affection for the NHS staff who look after him (and to whom the book is dedicated) is clear enough. If there has indeed been a change in him, it has happened in front of our eyes as we are introduced to them – the assistant nurse who helps him to shave, the nurse who makes time for a kind word before she goes off shift, everyone who cleans up after him or cares for him, or who quietly understands what it’s like to be afraid to go to sleep when you’re not sure if you’ll wake up in the morning. The palliative care expert who quietly asks him if he wants to carry on.

Maybe, if he had time, he would have edited that paragraph about overwhelming love. But that’s the point. He hasn’t. He notices how his whole style is shifting, becoming less energetic, less elaborate and more direct. He has things to say, but it’s getting harder. He is fighting against tiredness, interrupting his own narrative even more than the most po-mo novelist (has that first chapter been lost for good? Has he gone over the top in the heartfelt tributes to Station 9 at the end of his self-penned obit in Scottish Review?  Should he have written it straighter, maybe with a joke in the first par?). But he hasn’t time to change anything. It’s there, 49,000 words, at one and the same time raw and thoughtful, and delivered, somewhat miraculously, just in time for that final, and sadly unalterable, deadline.

I wrote earlier on that I had never met Kenneth Roy, and that’s true. But In the course of writing this, I remembered that I had received an email from him. Three years ago, compiling one of those Books of the Year round-ups, I had asked him to pick a couple of books that had impressed him. He replied courteously  and in time for my own deadline. So I’d like to repay the compliment.  If anyone asks me for my own book of the year, this is it.

 

In Case of Any News by Kenneth Roy is published by ICS Books, priced £14.99.

The Secret Life of Tartan is a gorgeous and fascinating book on our nation’s cloth, ideal for the fashionista or history buff in your life. Within its pages, Vixy Rae speaks to many people involved in the tartan industry, and in this extract she speaks to Peter Macdonald, a tartan historian.

 

Extract taken from The Secret Life of Tartan: How a Cloth Shaped a Nation
By Vixy Rae
Published by Black and White Publishing

 

Peter MacDonald is a man who quite possibly has forgotten more than I will ever begin to know about tartan. Peter is Scotland’s foremost tartan historian; his main area of interest is the Jacobite era and the early commercial production of tartan. And so, in my quest to weave together the whole historical pattern that is tartan, I turned to him as surely the world’s leading authority on its history and its design. I posed a few questions to help ease myself into this new, intricate world of structure and colour, hoping to broaden my knowledge by absorbing some of his. I came away from our meeting convinced that if you were to cut him in half, he would be tartan all the way through – like a stick of rock, only more stylish.

 

Vixy Rae: How would you define tartan? What is its defining quality?

Peter MacDonald: Historically, the term tartan was used to describe a type of cloth, irrespective of pattern. More commonly, it describes the multi-coloured, cross-barred pattern woven from solid coloured yarns, which distinguishes it from tweed. As a design, tartan is not unique to Scotland but only here did it develop the cultural significance that is inextricably linked to the Highland clans and which later became perhaps the unifying symbol of Scottishness. It is the Fabric of the Nation.

 

For you, which tartan represents the pinnacle of design in colour and complexity of sett?

There are a number of contenders for the title but perhaps the finest example is the tartan designed in 1713 for the Royal Company of Archers’ first uniform. The tartan was replaced by the Black Watch tartan in the late 18th century but not before it had been used as the basis for Ogilvie and Drummond of Strathallan tartans.

 

And which is your least favourite?

I’m not a fan of a lot of modern fashion tartans, principally because they often use colours and colour combinations that are non-traditional; for example: pink, yellow, purple and light blue, which I just don’t find pleasing. I also find the current trend for dull and bland colours, such as those of the Outlander range of tartan, visually unsatisfying and historically misleading. In the 18th century, red was the colour of choice for those that could afford it, the gentry were invariably painted in red-based tartans and the majority of surviving specimens reflect this.

 

What is the earliest surviving garment made from the cloth?

The nature of our climate and soils, together with the need to reuse garments and cloth in the past, means that few old examples of tartan survive. We have nothing that was created before the mid-18th century and only a number of examples associated with the Jacobites.

 

When was tartan’s defining moment? When did it become noteworthy in historical terms?

 If there’s one date that is significant above all others it is 1822, the date of Sir Walter Scott’s Royal Pageant and the tartan jamboree associated with George IV’s visit to Scotland.

 

There appears to be a revival in the wearing of trews. Do you think this takes away from the Scottishness of tartan use?

 No, why should it? Trews (triubhas) have been part of Highland dress since at least the 17th century, long before the development of the modern kilt.

 

When Sir Walter Scott was planning the Royal Pageant, many clan chieftains apparently had no idea what their tartan was. Or is this a myth?

In 1815 the Highland Society of London set about collecting ‘traditional clan tartans’ in order to preserve them. They wrote to the clan chiefs asking them to submit a specimen of their clan tartan. The trouble was that the idea that there had been such a thing as clan tartans was a recent invention.

The Society’s correspondence reveals that most of the chiefs had no idea what their ‘true clan’ tartan was. The chief of MacPherson supplied a tartan that only a few years before had been a Wilsons’ fancy pattern which they called No.43, Kidd or Caledonia. So many chiefs submitted a piece of Government (Black Watch) tartan, probably because they’d served in the army, that the Society’s officers had to restrict the number that they would accept.

 

The world is becoming a global village. Is it important for tartan to be celebrated and held in high esteem around the world?

 For me, it’s more important to preserve an understanding of the historical use and traditions of tartans for future generations. I was fortunate to have met and learned from some of the significant tartan researchers of the past – now there’s just me. Where is the next generation and how do we collate and preserve our history? The work of the Scottish Tartans Authority is important in helping to preserve knowledge but there’s always more to do.

 

What is the most obscure tartan that you know of?

Goodness, where to start? The Scottish Tartans Authority has over 9,000 tartans on its database; fewer than one hundred pre-date 1800, so my answer would have to be one of the early 18^th century cloths.

Undoubtedly the most obscure tartan, in terms of rarity and uniqueness, is that from the only known surviving coat of the Ancient Caledonian Society (ACS). The coat, which is in the collection of the Scottish Tartans Authority, dates to c1786 when the ACS was formed. The previously unknown tartan was almost certainly designed for the Society and is unusual in having a decorative silk motif woven into it. On each of the red squares there is a white rose and two buds representing King James VIII/III and the Princes Charles and Henry. The use of such obvious Jacobite iconography only thirty-three years after the last execution of a Jacobite leader is extraordinary and shows just how safe it had become to make such references without fear of reprisal. Tartan, with a secondary design such as the rose motif, would have been woven on an early Jacquard-type loom, probably outside of Scotland, possibly in Norwich which was famous for this type of weaving.

 

Do you have a favourite, little known story about the cloth you could share?

I wove the material for Prince William and Prince Harry’s first kilts. The tartan was the Prince Charles Edward, an early variation of the Royal Stewart tartan, which is said to have been worn as ribbons on the wedding coat of Charles II.

Thirty-odd years later, I was privileged to work on a version of the Prince Charles Edward Stewart tartan that the Scottish Tartans Authority gifted to HRH Prince Charles; a tartan which he often wears when in Scotland.

 

The Secret Life of Tartan: How a Cloth Shaped a Nation by Vixy Rae is published by Black and White Publishing, priced £25.00

Towards the end of his life Charles Rennie Mackintosh gave up his principal career as an architect and moved to the south of France where he devoted himself to painting in watercolour. This book published by the National Galleries of Scotland explores his career as a landscape painter there, placing his work in the context of the modern movement. The paintings inside are vibrant and colourful, and here we share a few of them.

 

Charles Rennie Mackintosh in France
By Pamela Robertson
Published by The National Galleries of Scotland

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charles Rennie Mackintosh in France by Pamela Robertson is published by The National Galleries of Scotland, priced £17.95

 

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a few Bond films on the telly. One Bond superfan, John Rain, cannot get enough of 007, turning his fandom into a podcast and now a book. We asked John about his favourite Bond moments.

 

Thunderbook: The World According to Smershpod
By John Rain
Published by Polaris Publishing

 

First Bond film you saw

Live and Let Die – saw it on TV as a little kid and loved the snake in the bathroom.

 

Last Bond film you saw (this can be a rewatch)

Spectre – for the book!

 

Favourite Bond film

Heart says Licence to Kill, head says The Spy Who Loved Me.

 

Favourite Bond girl

Pam Bouvier – Licence to Kill. She can handle herself, and isn’t afraid of Q’s hands.

 

Favourite Bond gadget

The Lotus Submarine – it’s a beautiful thing.

 

Favourite Bond double-entendre

“I am now aiming precisely at your groin. So speak or forever hold your piece.”

 

Favourite Bond villain

Hugo Drax: face like Dracula’s accountant, dialogue like Shakespeare.

 

Favourite Bond death scene

Bond shooting Elektra in The World is Not Enough. Cold and hard.

 

Favourite Bond theme song

‘Live and Let Die’ – it’s a masterpiece, and a beautiful combination of McCartney and Martin.

 

Favourite Bond

Head says Roger Moore, heart says Timothy Dalton. Love them both so much. Daniel Craig probably the best, though, just hasn’t had the best films.

 

Thunderbook: The World According to Smershpod by John Rain is published by Polaris Publishing, priced £16.99

Following in the footsteps of Jonathan Meades’ documentary, Off Kilter, Alex Boyd travelled to Lewis and Harris to document his own journey around the islands. Armed with his camera, Boyd took many pictures, capturing the rugged, austere spirit of a special place.

 

Extract from Isle of Rust: A Portrait of Lewis & Harris
By Alex Boyd
Published by Luath Press

 

There are many names for the island known as Lewis and Harris (Leòdhas agus na Hearadh), from the poetic the Heather Isle (Eilean an Fhraoich) to the more prosaic the Long Island (an t-Eilean Fada). A few islanders – no doubt affectionately – refer to the third largest island in the British Isles as The Rock. It is a name that does this most diverse of landscapes and habitats something of a disservice, as it so much more than just an outcrop of metamorphic gneiss, granite, basalt and sandstone on the Atlantic edge of Europe.

To my mind, no sobriquet is more apt than that given over a decade ago by Jonathan Meades, who provided us with the title Isle of Rust in his landmark BBC film of the same name. This name, of course, not only refers to the countless corroding tractors, weaving sheds and other visible signs of human settlement but also to the colours of the land: the reds of deergrass and the purple moor grass which make up so much of the moorland. It is a place of great contrast in both light and land, from the largely flat peatlands of Lewis, where the majority of islanders make their home, to the mountains of Harris that rise abruptly in the south, marking out the rocky landscapes so different to the north of the island. It is in settlements nestled in bays and natural harbours or stretched out along seemingly endless coastal roads that Scotland’s largest concentration of Gaelic speakers can be found. It is a place where old traditions such as peat cutting, weaving and crofting sit alongside the modern demands of island life.

I grew up in the Lowlands of Scotland and until I went there, I thought of the Outer Hebrides as being on the edge of the periphery, a place of barren windswept landscapes, of fishing fleets riding high seas, of croft houses and pristine white beaches – a place which had very little in common with the ordered and picturesque farmlands of my native Ayrshire and the once thriving but now rapidly declining coastal towns of the west of Scotland. The opportunity to visit the islands of the northwest would largely elude me until 2013, when I was offered the role of Artist-in-Residence with the Royal Scottish Academy on the Isle of Skye. Based in a studio at the University of the Highlands and Islands at Sabhal Mór Ostaig, I got my first glimpses of the Outer Hebrides while climbing along the Trotternish Ridge in the north of the island, looking west and observing a long archipelago skirting the horizon.

It was a commission to make artwork about the peatlands of Lewis that summer which finally provided me with the chance to experience first-hand the islands I had come to know largely through the eyes of photographers such as Werner Kissling, Margaret Fay Shaw, Gus Wylie and Paul Strand. I had also recently seen Jonathan Meades’ beautiful and bleak Isle of Rust. His vision of Lewis and Harris provided the inspiration for a new series of work which would combine an antique camera, chemicals and rust collected from the land. Leaving Skye to cross the calm waters of the Minch, that great sense of the unknown was further enhanced by Leaving Skye to cross the calm waters of the Minch, that great sense of the unknown was further enhanced by the play of the light – crepuscular rays of light breaking through black clouds and illuminating the Shiant islands to the north. Home to dramatic volcanic columns which bring to mind Staffa or the Giant’s Causeway, they rose from the depths like broken teeth.

Arriving in the harbour at Tarbert on Harris, I drove south, gaining my first impressions of the island as I climbed high over the pass dominated by the Clisham, the highest mountain in the archipelago and part of the range which separates Harris from Lewis. Before the introduction of the road which winds its way over hills and around boulders and lochs, this was once a journey made by sea, explaining why this single landmass has two separate and distinct communities. As I passed Loch Seaforth and the communities of South Lochs, and onward through the village of Ballalan, the rocky terrain gradually gave way to the wider moorland expanses of Lewis and it wasn’t long before I arrived in the harbour town of Stornoway where I would stay for the night.

The next morning began with an early start. I made my way across the winding moorland road to the village of Bragar, where I met local artist and archeologist Anne Campbell. We drove on together to Ness and my first introduction to the Lewis peatlands. We were joined by Anne’s enthusiastic border collie, Bran, who ran ahead of us, stopping only to dig in the mud and occasionally bark at his own reflection in the many pools of water which made up this unfamiliar landscape. In the distance, we observed only a few lonely figures out gathering peat. As we made our way deeper into the moor, with the clouds low and dark above and a featureless horizon beyond, I started to feel a slight sense of oppression, peculiar in such an open landscape. Perhaps it was partly to do with being disorientated, the damp and humid conditions or my first encounter with Lewis’s many insects that flew curiously around us, occasionally biting.

Lining the sides of the road I noticed the many peat banks stretching out towards the water’s edge, the marks of the shovels still apparent. Above them, small stacks of peat awaited collection, laid out in herringbone patterns or scattered around the landscape in rows. Further up the track, we examined peat cut by machine, which, instead of having a pleasing briquette form, was heaped up in piles of cracked and broken cylinders due to being bored from the land. Having seen the industrial-scale destruction that such machines have wrought on the moors of Ireland, Anne and I remarked that they should be banned entirely from the moor. As we began to gain height, we could see the peat road dropping below to reveal a small valley dotted with an eclectic range of buildings: the shieling village of Cuidhsiadar, our destination.

Cuidhsiadar is the site of a practice once integral to island life: transhumance. Islanders would take animals out to graze on the moorland in summer, living there and collecting produce such as milk and butter, which would then help sustain them through the harsh winter months. Structures used to house people here over hundreds of years are now reduced to piles of stones. Around them are scattered a selection of much more contemporary huts, several constructed from tin and some simple wooden dwellings in various states of disrepair. In the far distance, we could see a much older turf-covered structure on the moor, but it was a modern shieling in front of us which drew the most attention. From beneath wooden panels, the vague form of one of the tour buses which used to cross the island could be discerned, gutted and then converted into a makeshift home on the moor. Open to the elements, we headed inside it for shelter and between the upholstery we noticed beds, as well as bags of peat still to be processed. The ingenuity of islanders to re-use and re-purpose items which would long since have been consigned to the scrapheap elsewhere is something I would see again and again.

Following a few days of exploring the island, visiting familiar tourist landmarks such as the standing stones of Callanish, the Broch at Dun Carloway and many journeys back and forward over the Pentland moor road, I started to get a better idea of the landscape that I was working within. Staying in a small post-war croft house in Anne’s home village of Bragar, I began to appreciate the vastness of the moor, the complete absence of trees. Visible from my kitchen window, the North Atlantic stretching uninterrupted to the west. It is an environment where individuals are quietly reminded of their place; of their own smallness in comparison to the sheer vastness of the natural world around them. It is a feeling often lost in towns and cities.

My own experience of moorland had previously been limited to my own wanderings around the south-west of Scotland and my work as a photographer on the vastness of Rannoch Moor, an area claimed to be one of the last true wild places by writers such as Robert Macfarlane, who Anne had guided across the moors of Lewis. Anne had recently published a beautiful collection called Rathad an Isein (The Bird’s Road), a moorland glossary which she had collected along with her sister Catriona, Finlay Macleod and Donald Morrisson. It gives a unique insight into how the moorland is viewed in the Gaelic imagination and experience and includes terms used by those who have worked and cut peat on the moors for many generations. Her offer to accompany me on a walk across the Lewis peatland and to spend a night in her family shieling at the heart of the island was one I immediately agreed to. In the days leading up to the walk, the weather shifted from sunny and pleasant to increasingly cloudy conditions. A change was in the air. As is not unusual on these islands, weather and storm warnings became the main topic of conversation but we decided that we would make the trip out onto the moor regardless. We could only hope that the wind and rain would stay away long enough for us to reach the shieling on the slopes of Beinn a’ Chanaich Mhoir, by the waters of Loch nan Leac.

Looking at an os map our destination seemed remarkably close – only five or six miles away – but with the ground waterlogged and marshy, every step promised to be a torturous effort. The next morning, with a heavy rucksack laden with a camera, food and camping equipment and the prospect of terrible weather and harsh terrain, I still felt energised and enthusiastic about the challenge to come. Leaving the car at the end of the track, I joined Anne and Bran, and we began to make our way along the drowned peat road towards the moor. Our path would follow along the course of the Abhainn Arnol, a shallow river which runs the length of Glen Bragar. To our right loomed Beinn Choinnich (the Hill of Kenneth) while in the distance, the distinctive pyramid form of Stacashal kept my eyes fixed on the horizon.

Passing men loading dry peat into the back of tractors, my eye was caught by something small, box-like and metallic at the edge of the riverbank. On closer inspection, Anne informed me that it was a trap for mink, which, along with hedgehogs, were introduced to the island in the 1950s and ’60s. The mink caused widespread damage to the birds of the moorland and it is only now that many of them are beginning to return in number to the moor. The story emphasises the fragile balance which often exists in such places. Our next pause on the moor was signalled by an excited bark from Bran, who started digging furiously into the peat. Anne explained that we had arrived at her own peat field and that Bran was simply imitating the actions of Anne and her sister, who still dig peat to warm their homes. It was on this site that Anne, whilst digging into a peat bank, found a wooden bowl, the earth giving it up after holding on to it for over a millennium. It was one of undoubtedly many thousands of objects that the moor has held onto, waiting for an archaeologist such as Anne to uncover it and learn something of the people who once made their home there.

It is unfortunate that, unlike the well-excavated and fascinating Céide Fields in the north-west of the Republic of Ireland, little archaeological research has gone into the north of Lewis, an area obviously rich in potential finds. It was this frustration which led Anne to return to university to study archaeology. As part of her Masters dissertation, she walked the land and recorded finds. What she uncovered added hugely to existing knowledge, yet there is still more work to be done. Whatever lies beneath the many levels of sphagnum moss is no doubt well-preserved from the elements, dating from a time when the island was warmer and more densely populated. The villages of the west side suffered worst during the Clearances, a legacy that rings in the phrase ‘Mìorun Mór nan Gall’ – ‘the great ill will of the Lowlander’ – and one I came to understand more deeply in the years to come, as I returned to Lewis to explore township after abandoned township. On a bend in the river, Anne showed me the remains of Thulachan, five grass-covered mounds which were once part of a settlement. Slowly, the river had changed course and begun to erode the site, causing one of the mounds to collapse, spilling its contents into the fast-flowing water. Anne and I explored what was left, finding only charred wood, and then continued on our way, fording the brown, peat-coloured water.

Once across, the landscape stretched out with small undulations to the far hills, with every step across the peat made carefully. I was reminded by Anne that what appears as solid ground on the moor is often treacherous terrain. At one point, my walking pole slid effortlessly down into the bog, disappearing almost completely. The fear of a misplaced step into earth which could swallow me whole helped focus my mind and I followed Anne’s barefoot steps intently. Other dangers included hidden river courses, holes and, of course, being exposed to the elements. Anne told me that on her last trip out, a lightning storm had made its way over the moor and, having known a good friend to have been struck while undertaking a similar expedition (the photographer Finn Ó Súilleabháin), my mind became intent on reaching shelter. We had been walking and exploring now for the best part of an hour. With the weather closing in, wind and rain moving visibly toward us across the open moor, we took shelter and ate a quick snack in the ruins of a shieling with no roof. Sheltering against the high walls and waiting for the rain to pass, Anne commented that this type of easterly weather is known as a ‘Red Wind’ (Gaoth an ear-dheas – Dhearg) in Gaelic. As we listened to the low wind howling around us, I occupied myself by exploring the walls of the shieling, finding rusted pots and an old kettle amongst the long grass. With a break in the rain, we pushed on, at times following the footprints left by Anne from a previous journey made a week before, her tracks still perfectly preserved in the peat.

Passing a picturesque loch ringed by sundews, we stopped by the shieling once used by Anne’s father before making our way onto the final hurdle, going over the top of Beinn Thùlagabhal. Having made it up the muddy flanks, we sat exhausted on the grassy top. Observing the wind and clouds moving quickly over the scene, I saw her family shieling for the first time. Thankfully, it was now close by and I couldn’t wait to get there and find some shelter from the elements. It wasn’t long before we had skirted the edges of Loch nan Leac and were finally sitting inside the shieling, the wind howling relentlessly around us. Having come this far, we decided to erect an improvised roof over the shieling, something Anne had done many times before. Using nothing but plastic piping it wasn’t long before she had created a rigid, skeleton-like frame, which we moved into position on the top of the structure. Standing a few metres above the ground, we teetered on the edge of the building as the wind blew us around, trying to anchor the ribs of the frame using rocks and the heaviest stones we could find. After several failed efforts we finally secured it, something which proved much easier than attaching the roof covering!

The wind caught the canvas roof like a sail, the material whipping around violently as we tried to anchor it. We both danced around the edge of the shieling trying to keep it down, the wind billowing up from the open doors below. After a long struggle – and collecting a few additional rocks – it was finally in place, yet threatened to blow off any time. The rain was now driving hard and the wind getting stronger. Bran refused to come inside the shieling, as he was terrified by the horrendous noise made by the sheets flapping and cracking violently in the wind. It sounded as if a freight train was passing overhead and, although there was only a few feet between us, Anne and I had to shout our conversation to each other. Amidst the chaos of the storm, Anne lit a fire using dried peat and boiled water that she had collected from the loch. After two cups of warm Darjeeling tea, we reached the decision that staying out on the moor in this weather was probably not advisable.

While a quick meal cooked over the peat fire, filling the shieling with smoke, I examined the walls and noticed the carvings for the first time. The oldest – from 1821 – marked the date that the shieling was rebuilt from an earlier structure and another from 1921 commemorated this date. Anne was hopeful that she might add 2021 to the walls of the shieling, which were otherwise bare, save for a carving of a deer and the initials of those who had come before, including the much-loved Gaelic poet, Peter Campbell. Looking out through the open door facing out of the wind, I gazed out onto the moor while slowly starting to warm up. Time seemed briefly to have stopped. With our meal over, we knew that there were only a few hours of light left and that if we didn’t leave soon, we would be forced to walk across the land in darkness, a prospect that could prove dangerous. Still exhausted from our exertions, we packed the roofing materials away and began our long journey back. In my tiredness, I fell into a hollow, my body sinking into a hidden river, a caochan, up to my waist. Completely unexpected, it forced me to focus. Recovering quickly, we forded a succession of rivers and made our way towards the coastline and the village of Bragar beyond. In our tired state, we still managed to make good time.

The light turned from blue to grey to black and as we finally left the moor I had to make use of a torch to see the path in front of me, very thankful that I had Anne as a guide over the unfamiliar terrain. For days after I would be reminded of the journey, as the smell of peat smoke rose again from my belongings; but the memory of experiencing the moor in all weathers I will carry with me for years to come. A few years would pass before I returned to Lewis and Harris, this time with my wife, Jessica. We were on the island to visit friends, to travel out to St Kilda where I was making images for a book, and to spend some time in Stornoway where I’d been offered an interview for a new role at An Lanntair Arts Centre as a curator and help/mentor working with artists from across the Outer Hebrides.

To my great shock, I was offered the job and it wasn’t long before we’d moved our possessions to the village of Bragar, setting up our home in that same croft house from my first visit. We would spend two years on the island, experiencing its stunning summer mornings, with mist hanging above the mirror lochs, through to its harsh winters, where wind and driving rain force you round the fire and keep you indoors for months on end. We slowly began to meet friends, mostly ‘incomers’ like ourselves who had moved to the Hebrides to experience a different way of living. We spent our time with people who had come from across the world to set up homes on Lewis and Harris and received such warmth and kindness during times of both happiness and hardship.

It is the collision of both old and new that makes the Isle of Rust so fascinating to outsiders such as myself and also provides many of the tensions for its inhabitants. It is undeniable that life on the island is changing. The gradual erosion of the influence of the Free Church of Scotland (and Free Church of Scotland Continuing) is accompanied by problems with an ever-ageing population and the greatest issue facing the Outer Hebrides today: that of depopulation, which is far above the uk average. Tourism helps to revitalise island life during the summer months but brings with it many problems, from overcrowded single track roads, to the shortage of housing brought on by second homes and holiday lets, depriving local people of places in which to raise their families. While large parts of Lewis and Harris remain in private hands as sprawling sporting estates, thankfully communities are now taking back control, most notably in Galson in Lewis and the North and West Harris Trusts.

This book then is a collection of photographic sketches I made while living on Lewis, not as a touristic guide, more as a diary made over several years and seasons. It is a visual response to Jonathan’s essay of the same name, which I often had in mind as I explored the themes of ‘Isle of Rust’ in mountains, moors and lochs. Jonathan’s writing has been highly influential on me throughout my life; his essay ‘Death to the Picturesque’ having been a particularly formative influence on my early photographic approach. I’m greatly honoured by the opportunity to include his work within this book and I have tried my best not to deviate from his direction to ‘Emphasise the contrast between natural grandeur and scrap squalor’.

The Outer Hebrides have of course long attracted photographers. However, I have chosen not to follow in the footsteps of Paul Strand, Werner Kissling, Fay Godwin, Gus Wylie and Robert Moyes Adams, who captured the island in stark monochrome, opting instead for colour. I took a truly Calvinistic approach to making images and limited myself to minimal equipment, in this case a camera and two lenses which I could carry across moors or up mountainsides. I photographed things as I found them. There are no attempts to create postcard images, no specialist filters, no long exposures of the incoming tide at Luskentyre, no misguided attempts to create anthropological studies of the islanders. There is only the available light, and the colours as my eyes experienced them. The beauty of the Hebridean landscape and light speak clearly enough without my interventions. This approach does come with its own limitations, the most challenging of which is to communicate the endless changeability of light, the sheer variety of landscape and the complex, multifaceted nature of the place.

It would, as poet Norman MacCaig once said in ‘By the Graveyard, Luskentyre’, take a volume ‘thick as the height of the Clisham’ and ‘big as the whole of Harris’ to even begin to scratch the surface of gneiss, peat and lochan.

 

Isle of Rust: A Portrait of Lewis & Harris by Alex Boyd is published by Luath Press, priced £20.00.

A few of the books we’ve been showcasing this issue celebrate the beauty of Scotland’s landscape. Scotland’s Mountain Landscapes by Colin K Ballantyne is a brilliant guide to how our landscapes were formed through time, perfect reading for hillwalkers everywhere who want to understand more about the ground beneath their feet.

 

Extract taken from Scotland’s Mountain Landscapes: A Geomorphological Perspective
By Colin K Ballantyne
Published by Dunedin Academic Press

 

Mountains represent the essence of Scotland’s scenery. Postcards, calendars, shortbread tins and dishtowels seeking to capture ‘Scotland’ in a single image almost invariably depict a mountainous Highland landscape, sometimes with a loch or castle in the middle distance and a kilted bagpiper artfully (and sometimes digitally) inserted in the foreground. They are a fundamental part of Scottish identity, for though most Scots live in the towns and cities of the lowlands, the mountains are close by on the horizon, a line of purple or snow-covered peaks that reminds us of another Scotland where the interplay of sunshine and cloud over rocky crags, deep lochs, windswept plateaux and lonely moorlands creates a sense of wilderness and an opportunity to escape from our urban hinterland.

And escape we do. When the weather is favourable, thousands of hillwalkers visit the summits of Scotland’s mountains every week, many with the aim of completing the ascent of the 282 Munros (summits over 3000 feet or 914 m). Rock climbers are drawn to the crags and corries of Skye and Glen Coe, skiers to the snowy slopes of Glen Shee and the Cairngorms, and others come to the mountains for fell running, mountain biking and even hang gliding. Outnumbering all of these, however, are the visitors who come simply to marvel at the most wonderful scenery in the British Isles.

Nobody who has explored the mountains of Scotland can fail to have been impressed by their sheer diversity. The isolated sandstone peaks of the far northwest, the serrated gabbro ridges of Skye, the granite high plateaux of the Cairngorms, and the rolling uplands of southern Scotland represent a variety of mountain landscapes that rivals any on Earth. Such diversity
reflects not only Scotland’s tumultuous geological evolution, which has created a mosaic of contrasting rock types, but also the operation of a wide range of erosional processes that have sculpted the underlying rocks into the wonderful topographic variety of Scotland’s mountain landscapes. Some of these processes operated in deep time, many millions of years ago, others throughout the
Ice Age, and many, such as frost action, rockfall and river erosion, have continued to modify mountain landscapes since the disappearance of the last glaciers.

In this book we shall take a journey through time, beginning with the formation of the oldest rocks and ending with the manifold processes that are still operating on high ground. We shall visit past eras when Scotland lay near the Equator, when alpine-scale mountains towered over the landscape, when volcanoes spewed out copious lava flows, when ice covered the land, and when earthquakes triggered major landslides. Mountain scenery is always inspirational; but understanding how mountain landscapes have evolved deepens our perspectives of time and space, and the transience of human existence. Just 12,500 years ago, for example, Scotland looked like high-arctic Svalbard today: a great icefield occupied the western Highlands, a valley glacier was advancing to the southern end of Loch Lomond, permafrost underlay the ground beyond the glaciers and mean July temperatures were no higher than those in November at present. Understanding such events and their effects on the landscape can make a day in the Scottish mountains a thrilling excursion that spans millions of years.

 

The images here are examples of the diversity of Scotland’s mountain landscapes. (a) Suilven (731 m) in NW Scotland, a sandstone mountain rising above glacially scoured gneiss (photograph by John Gordon). (b) Sgùrr Dubh Mór (944 m) and Sgùrr Dubh an Da Bheinn (938 m), Cuillin Hills, Skye. (c) The eastern Grampians, with the Cairngorms on the skyline. (d) The Southern Uplands: White Coomb (821 m) from Hart Fell.

 

Scotland’s Mountain Landscapes: A Geomorphological Perspective by Colin K Ballantyne is published by Dunedin Academic Press, priced £28.00

Eating vegan is becoming increasingly common, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that this healthy diet means no indulgences are allowed. Stefanie Moir, has written an excellent book on vegan eating and fitness, but hasn’t forgotten to put in the treats! Here are two of her very delicious recipes . . .

 

Recipes taken from Naturally Stefanie: Recipes, Workouts and Daily Rituals for a Stronger, Happier You
By Stefanie Moir
Published by Black and White Publishing

 

Tofu Chocolate Mousse

 

I know, tofu and chocolate do not sound like a winning combination but, trust me, this mousse is utterly delicious. Served in cocktail glasses or ramekins, it’s a perfect pudding for dinner parties.

 

Ingredients

300g silken tofu
100g vegan-friendly chocolate
80g maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of sea salt

 

1. First melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water or in the microwave.
2. Drain and remove excess moisture from the tofu.
3. Add the tofu, maple syrup, vanilla and salt to a food processor and combine until smooth.
4. Then add in the melted chocolate and pulse until well combined.
5. Pour the mixture into ramekin-style dishes, filling up around a quarter of the dish and place in the fridge to set.
6. To serve, top with vegan whipped cream and chocolate – optional!

 

Blueberry and Lemon Pancakes

Ingredients

200ml almond milk
100g oats
35g vegan vanilla protein powder or
substitute with 35g of oats
1 ripe banana
1 tsp baking powder
150g blueberries (plus extra for topping)
juice and zest of 1 lemon

 

1. First, juice and zest the lemon. Set the zest to one side – you’ll use it as a topping for the pancakes later
2. Lightly grease and preheat a non-stick pan over a medium heat.
3. Using a blender or whisk, mix together the oats, protein powder, banana, baking powder, lemon juice and almond milk to form a smooth batter. Then add the blueberries.
4. Once the pan is hot, pour the batter into the pan until desired pancake size is reached.
5. Cook the pancakes until the surface begins to bubble and the edges turn brown then flip and cook on the other side. This should take between 4 and 6 minutes.
6. Remove from the heat and transfer to your plate or into the oven to stay warm.
7. Top with the extra blueberries and lemon zest.

 

Naturally Stefanie: Recipes, Workouts and Daily Rituals for a Stronger, Happier You by Stefanie Moir is published by Black and White Publishing, priced £16.99

Following your local football team, it’s often the hope that kills, but not if you’re Mat Guy. He has travelled the world cheering on the small teams, the teams without the million pound sponsorship deals but with a loyal, loving following. BooksfromScotland spoke to Mat about his travels and his love of the game.

 

Barcelona to Buckie Thistle: Exploring Football’s Roads Less Travelled
By Mat Guy
Published by Luath Press

 

Your new book Barcelona to Buckie Thistle: Exploring Football’s Roads Less Travelled has just been published. What is it about the ‘minnow’ football teams playing out of the limelight that keeps you coming back?

For me they are the very essence of the beautiful game, these smaller teams. Shorn of crowds in the tens of thousands, there is time and space to see the small acts of love and devotion that any given supporter performs on a match day. From passing through a ‘lucky’ turnstile that they first used as a child, hand in hand with a parent or grandparent, to meeting up with old friends on the same scrap of terrace – a spot made sacrosanct by the generations before, who assembled there in days long gone.

The smaller the team, the greater the connection between club and community, who rely on each other to survive and thrive. Meaning, belonging, identity fuels any supporter’s passion for their club or national team. At a club attracting crowds in the hundreds, or low thousands, it is easier to see just how important these sporting institutions really are. How much they really mean. It chimes with my first trips to see my grandfather’s team, Salisbury, as a young boy.

 

The book visits teams from the Scottish Highlands right across to places like the Faroe Islands, Azerbaijan and Liechtenstein. How did you find out about the teams included in the book?

I have always held a fascination for the unknown, fuelled by a box of old National Geographic maps at my Grandfather’s house. We would pour over them and imagine what far away places looked like. When I fell in love with football, I began to do the same to far away national teams, or obscure sounding club sides. They fascinated me far more than the bigger teams. So, in that respect, I have been training all my life to seek out those teams on football’s road less travelled!

In researching for Barcelona To Buckie Thistle, I went back to that tried and tested method, albeit aided by modern cheats such as google maps and Wikipedia! Being the most northerly senior football league in Britain, the Highland League really did stand out to me as a league I needed in my life. I was proved right!

 

So many football teams, whether playing in league teams or not, exist around the world. Have you found many differences in the game being played by teams in different countries?

No matter the cultural or religious differences from country to country, the language barriers in place, as soon as players cross that white line and the whistle is blown, we all speak the same language: football. No matter where I have been in the world in the name of football, I have had immersive, enthralling experiences with people whom I couldn’t understand a word of, and they couldn’t me! Cheers, sighs, gesticulations, smiles, shakes of the head and raised eyebrows – we all understand the passions the beautiful game instils in us. It is a universal, wordless language just like mathematics. It is joyous.

 

Is there a moment from your travels researching the book that stands out for you?

There are so many moments! But one that stands out came from a UEFA Nations League match between Liechtenstein and Armenia.  As the turnstiles opened and the 1,000 or souls brave enough to face down a bitterly cold Alpine night in late November began to file in, two boys stood handing out match programmes. One, so eager to make sure everyone got a copy, had overloaded himself, his arms stuffed. As he tried to hand them out, they began to cascade to the floor. Mortified, he bent down to try and collect them, only for more to tumble! Thankfully a few locals helped him corral them back up – though his colleague didn’t, bent double as he was in fits of laughter!

But it served to highlight to me, this boys desire to do his job well, the pride he had in serving his national team in this menial task. It meant something. Possibly the world to him. Doing it right mattered. Just as fixtures down among the small print in newspapers matter, to the passionate few whose teams and communities live there.

 

This is your third book on the beautiful game – is there anything new that you’ve learned about the sport or from the teams that you’ve met?

I’ve learnt humility from the Bhutanese and Tibetan teams I have met, who bring a unique, Buddhist perspective to the sport. Meeting a Palestinian player whose career was cut short by detention in an Israeli prison certainly opened my eyes to a world I had never seen before. But, ultimately, it is the same precious lessons that I have re-affirmed on almost every trip I take, that football is about community, people, friendship, belonging. It is purpose, pride and identity. Whether at Victoria Park, Buckie, or the Camp-Nou, Barcelona, the meaning is the same. The only difference are the numbers in attendance.

 

Barcelona to Buckie Thistle: Exploring Football’s Roads Less Travelled by Mat Guy is published by Luath Press, priced £12.99.

Andy Howard’s photography books are becoming very popular on people’s Christmas lists, his obvious love for nature shining through in every picture. BooksfromScotland caught up with him to chat to him about his photography career so far.

 

The Secret Life of the Cairngorms
By Andy Howard
Published by Sandstone Press

 

What came first, your love of nature or photography?

My love for nature started at about the age of five when my parents gave me the AA Book of British Birds. It has the edition with a tawny owl on the cover, which I remember vividly. I spent hour upon hour soaking up the images of birds.

 

Do you remember when you first picked up a camera? Did your ‘eye’ come naturally?

My early attempts were with a Kodak box brownie. The results were not special, but the experience gave birth to my present passion for photography. On my sixteenth birthday I progressed to a Minolta SLR, and my first wildlife camera, a Canon, on my eighteenth.

 

How and when did you make your hobby into a profession?

With a leap of faith! I’d been working in Retail and catering for twenty eight years and, by that time, had enough. It was time for a major change in my working life. I formulated a business plan, ran it by some friends, who were also business advisors, and off Lindsay and I went. In the first year I had to combine my new profession with consultancy work and even worked as a’ mystery shopper’ to make ends meet. Luckily, things took off in year two.

 

Do you have any easy tips for capturing perfect moments?

The first and most important is follow your heart. No one succeeds without a passion for the subject. Secondly, my best images are pre-planned, sometimes months, even years, in advance. Thirdly, know your subject, the more you work with a species the more predictable its behaviour will become. Utilise this knowledge! Lastly, master the technical aspects of digital photography. Do all this and your creative juices will start to flow. Remember that photography is an art form.

Your first book The Secret Life of the Mountain Hare had a great reception. How long did it take to put that book together?

The images took approximately seven years to capture, and the process of getting the book onto the shelves took ten months from the first meeting with Sandstone Press.

 

Your latest book widens out to include more Highland wildlife. How often are you roaming the Cairngorms with your camera?

It seems that the busier I get both in my roles as a guide and author, the less time I have to capture new images. It’s now six months since I was in the Cairngorms. Another good reason for my attention being elsewhere is that I am now working on my third book, which takes me to the beautiful islands of Mull and Shetland.

 

The Cairngorms feel like an endless subject for a photographer. How did you whittle your images down?

I’ve learned to take fewer photographs, and be more frugal with my shutter release button. This helps. I find that after a day in the field there is likely to be only one or two images that make the cut. All others get filed on a hard drive, often never to see the light-of-day again.

Do you have any ‘bucket list’ places you’d like to take your camera?

Lindsay and I fell in love with Canada a few years ago and have so far returned twice. I’d love to go to Antarctica, St. Georgia and Svalbard, but would prefer not to be surrounded by hundreds of other wildlife watchers and photographers. That’s one of the many reasons I love Shetland. Through three weeks there in September I didn’t see another photographer. I love the solitude; just me, the wildlife and my camera.

 

What are you looking forward to this festive season?

Time with my family. For the first time in many years we’re making the journey south of the border to be with my mother in the Cotswolds, where a few mince pies may be consumed.

 

The Secret Life of the Cairngorms by Andy Howard is published by Sandstone Press, priced £24.99

Glasgow Museums have an impressive array of ship models in their collections and have gathered them together in a lovely volume that’s an ideal gift for model enthusiasts. We hope you can appreciate the intricacy of the craft in these images, even inspire a trip to their museums in the Christmas holidays!

 

Images taken from Glasgow Museums: The Ship Models
By Culture and Sport Glasgow
Published by Glasgow Museums

 

 

Both of these ships are prisoner-of-war models made by French sailors held in Britain during the Napoleonic Wars, early 19th century; bequeathed by Col CL Spencer.

 

 

This prisoner-of-war model is shown at more than twice its actual size in this picture.

 

The top ship, Finisterre, is a shipbuilder’s display model given by Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd.

The bottom left hand ship, City of Chester, is a shipbuilder’s display model given by Barclay, Curle & Co.

The bottom right hand ship, Kaimanawa, is a shipbuilder’s plating model by Henry Robb Ltd, Leith, for the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand Ltd.

 

Glasgow Museums: The Ship Models by Culture and Sport Glasgow is published by Glasgow Museums, priced £35.00