THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Today the Christmas movie is considered one of the best-loved genres in modern cinema, entertaining audiences across the globe with depictions of festive celebrations, personal reinvention and the enduring value of friendship and family. But how did the themes and conventions of this category of film come to take form, and why have they proven to be so durable that they continue to persist and be reinvented even in the present day?

From the author of A Righteously Awesome Eighties Christmas, this book takes a nostalgic look back at the Christmas cinema of the 1940s and 50s, including a discussion of classic films which came to define the genre. Considering the unforgettable storylines and distinctive characters that brought these early festive movies to life, it discusses the conventions which were established and the qualities which would define Christmas titles for decades to come.

Examining landmark features such as It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, The Bishop’s Wife and White Christmas, The Golden Age of Christmas Movies delves into some of the most successful festive films ever produced, and also reflects upon other movies of the time that—for one reason or another—have all but disappeared into the mists of cinema history. Considering films which range from the life-affirming to the warmly sentimental, The Golden Age of Christmas Movies investigates the many reasons why these memorable motion pictures have continued to entertain generations of moviegoers.

The cinema of the festive season has blazed a trail through the world of film-making for more than a century, ranging from silent movies to the latest CGI features. From the author of The Christmas Movie Book, this new text explores the different narrative themes which emerged in the genre over the course of the 1980s, considering the developments which have helped to make the Christmas films of that decade amongst the most fascinating and engaging motion pictures in the history of festive movie production.

Released against the backdrop of a turbulent and rapidly-changing world, the Christmas films of the 1980s celebrated traditions and challenged assumptions in equal measure. With warm nostalgia colliding with aggressive modernity as never before, the eighties saw the movies of the holiday season being deconstructed and reconfigured to remain relevant in an age of cynicism and innovation.

Whether exploring comedy, drama, horror or fantasy, Christmas cinema has an unparalleled capacity to attract and inspire audiences. With a discussion ranging from the best-known titles to some of the most obscure, A Righteously Awesome Eighties Christmas examines the ways in which the Christmas motion pictures of the eighties fit into the wider context of this captivating and ever-evolving genre.

A comic novel told in the distinctive voice of the bibulous old Sir John Falstaff, A Fool’s Pilgrimage is a daybook written in the early years of the fifteenth century. However, life in the late Middle Ages is often far from comical, and our hero’s adventures often reveal the seamier side of the period.

Peopled with strange and wonderful characters, such as Denys the Mad Holy Man, Guillermo the Gypsy Prince, Jeanne the Whore, and Jean-Baptiste of the Bone-Handled Knife, we are whisked through medieval France in a series of hilarious escapades. But the sardonic wit seventy-year-old Falstaff uses to characterise his fellow travellers is also turned unsparingly on himself. Sir John knows he is lying, untrustworthy, opportunistic, but also resourceful, adaptive and in the end, however battered, a survivor.

Like the true hero of the picaresque story, he is at once a lamentable rogue and great fun, deplored but held in real, if guilty, affection.

The latest book by the Sarah Maguire Prize-winning poet and translator Brian Holton, Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds is a collection of Scots translations of poetry by Li Bai and Du Fu, two of the most renowned poets of Ancient China. By bringing two of the world’s great poets – from the oldest continuous literary tradition in the world – into the library of Scots writing, Brian Holton creates a text as valuable in its own way to the literary tradition as Lorimer’s wonderful ‘New Testament in Scots’.

Published in stunning hardback with calligraphy by Chinese artist Chi Zhang, Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds was the beneficiary of a Scottish Book Trust Scots Publication Grant.

Snow. Every language has its own words for the feather-like flakes that come from the sky. In Japanese we find Yuki-onna – a ‘snow woman’ who drifts through the frosted land. In Icelandic falls Hundslappadrifa – ‘big as a dog’s paw’. And in Maori we meet Huka-rere – ‘one of the children of rain and wind’.

From mountain tops and frozen seas to city parks and desert hills, writer and Arctic traveller Nancy Campbell digs deep into the meanings of fifty words for snow. Under her gaze, each of these linguistic snow crystals offers a whole world of myth and story.

Inspired by Walter Scott’s novel of the same name, the original publication contained the instructions for six country dances. However, this 2021 anniversary issue is much more than a book of dance instructions – it aims to take you on a journey through 19th century Scotland, sharing the life of Walter Scott, bringing to life the novel’s characters, while helping the reader experience the Scottish dancing scene of Edinburgh in the 1820s.

Illustrations from the period sit side by side with the original dance instructions and music. Modern reconstructions and music arrangements help dancers enjoy an influential time in dancing history.

The Hill MS is possibly one of the most important surviving manuscripts about Scottish Traditional Dance. It dates from 1841 and was compiled by Frederick Hill of Alford. We know very little about Frederick Hill other than that he was born in Hammersmith in London, was a Tailor and Clothier by trade and that he settled in Clatt in Aberdeenshire when aged about 25, subsequently moving to Alford not far from Clatt. The original notebook is possibly his aide-memoire recording the instructions for the dances he had been taught (probably by itinerant dancing masters). It is interesting in that it includes Quadrilles, Country Dances and High or Step Dances, and is the source of several dances published by the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.

The book comprises of 40 pages of scanned images of the original notebook.

As an archaeologist, Steven Mithen has worked on the Hebridean island of Islay over a period of many years. In this book he introduces the sites and monuments and tells the story of the island’s people from the earliest stone age hunter-gatherers to those who lived in townships and in the grandeur of Islay House. He visits the tombs of Neolithic farmers, forts of Iron Age chiefs and castles of medieval warlords, discovers where Bronze Age gold was found, treacherous plots were made against the Scottish crown, and explores the island of today, which was forged more recently by those who mined for lead, grew flax, fished for herring and distilled whisky – the industry for which the island is best known today.

Although an island history, this is far from an insular story: Islay has always been at a cultural crossroads, receiving a constant influx of new people and new ideas, making it a microcosm for the story of Scotland, Britain and beyond.

Viral Scottish yoga star Finlay Wilson is back with Wild Kilted Yoga. Get ready for more tartan, more dramatic scenery and more tips and tricks to make your yoga practice extra special. This beautiful book features four special yoga sequences that can be done alone, plus a bonus fun sequence for couples to do together.

Finlay’s book will take you on a journey through some of Scotland’s most stunning locations and will leave you feeling zen and grounded. Building on the foundations of yoga from his bestselling first book, Kilted Yoga, Finlay guides you through unique yoga sequences which are suitable for all levels: strong heat-building poses for Fire, flowing and graceful movements for Water, steady and grounded poses for Earth, and lightness and poise for Air.

All you have to do is enjoy the stunning photography, feel at one with nature and roll out your yoga mat – kilt optional!

Ewan Forbes was born Elisabeth Forbes to a wealthy landowning family in 1912. It quickly became clear that the gender applied to him at birth was not correct, and from the age of six he began to see specialists in Europe for help. With the financial means of procuring synthetic hormones, Ewan was able to live as a boy, and then as man, and was even able to correct the sex on his birth certificate in order to marry.

Then, in 1965, his older brother died and Ewan was set to inherit the family baronetcy. After his cousin contested the inheritance on the grounds that it could only be inherited by a male heir, Ewan was forced to defend his male status in an extraordinary court case, testing the legal system of the time to the limits of its understanding.

In The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes, Zoë Playdon draws on the fields of law, medicine, psychology and biology to reveal a remarkable hidden history, uncovering for the first time records that were considered so threatening that they had been removed from view for decades.

On a clear, moonlit night, DCI Kelso Strang stepped outside the bothy on Suilven and heard, faint but unmistakable, the howl of a wolf. An unsettling sound, but not the only unsettling thing about the remote township of Inverbeg, where he is taking a break with an old army friend.

Sean Reynolds is obsessive about rewilding his Auchinglass estate and there are rumours that he’s taken illicit steps to hurry that on, to the anger of the local farmers. There are other tensions too. An elderly lady had died some months before, officially in a tragic stumble off a cliff path but she was a woman burdened with many secrets and her closest friend believes her death was not an accident, but retribution.

In October 2007, writers Mike Small and Kevin Williamson launched Bella Caledonia at the Radical Book Fair in Edinburgh.

Since then, Bella has consistently explored ideas of self-determination and offered Scotland’s most robust political commentary.

In the run up to Scottish independence referendum, international interest grew and Bella Caledonia had more than 500,000 unique users a month, with a peak of one million in August – in 2015, the site was named as one of the top 10 political blogs in the UK by Cision.

This anthology, curated by Mike Small, is a flavour of Bella’s output over these 14 years the editor’s pick. Bella is aligned to no political party and sees herself as the bastard child of parent publications too good for this world; from Calgacus to Red Herring, from Harpies & Quines to the Black Dwarf.

Under Mike’s editorship, Bella has developed a ‘Fifth Estate’ as a way of disrupting the passive relationship of old media, creating something more active and appropriate for the 21st century – it’s about concentration of ownership, and bringing together radical coverage with cultural analysis. Hence the plethora of wide-ranging voices in this anthology, each representing outlier viewpoints in contemporary society – novelists, poets, bloggers and journalists publishing in non-mainstream media outlets, and the social media.

At the very end of the road is a seven-bar metal gate. It is chained and padlocked and marks the exact line where the tarmac stops. Beyond that is a track, twelve pasture and hay fields, and an area of saltmarsh, bounded on one side by a river and on the other by vast tidal mudflats. Deep in the west of England, this is a place sculpted by the wind and painted by the tides. It is a place full of wildlife. This immersive and carefully crafted book of place explores the impact of season and tides and weather upon this land at the edge through a series of literary pictures crafted through lyrical imaginative language. The author attempts what few, if any, have tried to do, namely to render meticulous observations of the intimate details of wildlife and landscape to depict a place as faithfully and transparently as possible.

This is a bold book, one that tries to capture the elusive soul of a place; a daring examination of both what makes a place and how it is remade daily through the interactions between landscape and observer. It is also radical for its approach challenges the current orthodoxy of nature writing that in order to supply a connection between author, subject, and reader, some sort of narrative framework of human emotion is required to provide it with a rationale. So, although the prose is subjective, the book is framed in such a way as to remove the author’s presence almost completely. There is no story save that of the eternal change of the seasons, no narrative connection, no focus on a single species, no discussion or allusion to the environmental issues of our age, no characters. Indeed, there is barely any mention of people at all. Although it rarely tries to explain or educate, it simply places observations at centre stage. Yet in trying to unearth what it is precisely that constructs our relationship with place, the author has, paradoxically, produced one of the most deeply personal and unusual nature books.

Clifton Bain now completes his trilogy with this look at the Peatlands of Britain and Ireland. A source of fuel for many generations, they are now a haven for wildlife and plants as well as a storehouse of greenhouse gasses. Their social history is one of exploitation and the value of mending and restoring is a major theme of the book.

Like its predecessors, The Peatlands of Britain and Ireland will be a sumptuous volume richly illustrated with photographs and with drawings by the wildlife artist Darren Rees.

Pájaro Tamai and Marciano Miranda, two young men, are dying in a deserted amusement park. The story begins almost at its end, just a little after the two main characters have faced off in a knife fight: the culmination of a rivalry that has pitted them against one another since childhood. The present in Brickmakers is a state of impending death, at moments marked by oneiric visions: Marciano is visited by the ghost of his father, who was murdered when he was a teenager, a father he had sworn to avenge, in a promise he could not keep. Pájaro is also visited, in a recurring nightmare, by his abusive father who disappeared years earlier.

Narrated with fury and passion, reminiscent of the pace in Faulkner and Hemingway’s prose, Almada’s second novel is a rural tragedy in the great American tradition, a story of love and violence where everything is put at stake. Continuing with the force and imagery of the filmic landscape of The Winds That Lays Waste, and the threatening atmosphere of Dead Girls, Brickmakers is yet another proof of Almada’s talent.

World of Plants: Stories of Survival tells the story of 100 plants which are part of the Living Collection at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and are endangered or threatened in the wild. This beautiful and fascinating book introduces readers to a host of charismatic plants that contribute to the rich biodiversity of our world. It features images and descriptions of each plant, identifying its origins, highlighting the nature of threats it faces and what is being done to save it.

The book is your chance to explore the stories of some of the world’s rarest and most threatened species through the Living Collections of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

These are stories of loss, resilience and restoration. Stories of what can be achieved when individuals, communities, organisations, governments and international bodies pull together. Stories of survival, in which we can all play a part.

• Draws on etho-ethnographic fieldwork with flying fox scientists, conservationists and rehabilitation carers, as well as with Australian Aboriginal communities – a leading example of interdisciplinary, multispecies scholarship
• Paints a vivid portrayal of the art of multispecies care amidst ongoing peril
• Eloquently reflects on death and persecution in a time of extinctions
• Elaborates Aboriginal philosophies of ancestral power, brought into contact with other philosophical and scientific traditions
• Engages with decolonial ecological ethics and contributes to environmental philosophy
• The highly anticipated final book by the leading anthropologist and environmental humanities scholar Deborah Bird Rose (1946–2018)

Deborah Bird Rose explores the shimmer of life – the iridescent pulse of beauty and power, the processes of transition and transformation – that flows across and between generations. Grounded within this insight, she develops and advocates for an ethics of attention, that is in the world within everyday practices, and in this case for and with flying foxes and their worlds. A deeply personal book, her struggle with cancer is gently woven into the account she offers of flying fox life and death.

Combining her research expertise in a number of fields – multispecies studies, extinction studies, anthropology and environmental philosophy – Rose paints a vivid portrait of flying fox life and death in the Anthropocene that has important wider lessons for ecological and decolonial ontologies and ethics.

Building from sources such as Hoffmeyer’s biosemiotics, Lévy-Bruhl’s philosophical anthropology, Levinas’ post-Holocaust ethics, Shestov’s existentialism, Stengers’ cosmopolitics and the many insights of her Indigenous Australian friends and teachers, she articulates her own uniquely situated testament to the intergenerational gifts of ancestral power, ever more threatened, yet preciously shared and affirmed.

AMAZON, BRAZIL 1965. The government offers land and money to those brave enough to travel 2000 kilometres to make a new life in the jungle.

A brave young woman, Idenea, and her family are given a 50 hectare plot and begin clearing 40 metre high trees. Malaria is rampant; Indians watch; life is hard. When her baby is stolen, she is forced to flee in search of her child.

Nearby, is an unlikely ally. Bobby, an ex British soldier, has turned to ranching to hide from the demons of his past. Meeting in the Perfect Peace Motel they fall in love. He tries to protect her from slavery and his troubled history.

Full of reckless youth, they build a life together. But when political violence strikes can their love survive?