![]() “From this evocative title comes a powerful novel set in the city of Glasgow in 1939. These are not high recommendations, but for Gunn, and at times his fellow voyagers, the vessel was an argosy of freedom, of adventure and misadventure – for they were fairly inexperienced sailors, and the waters of the region are by no means placid.” The boat had outlived its first youth, and its engine was somewhat cranky she went tolerably under sail. ![]() With his wife and his brother John, he set off on a three-month voyage around Inner Hebrides. “In 1937, the Scottish writer, Neil Gunn, gave up his job in the civil service, sold his house in Inverness, and bought a boat. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial prize when first published in 1937, it has over the years become established as one of the greatest pieces of twentieth century Scottish fiction.” “Written in prose as cool and clear as the water it describes, Highland River is one of Neil Gunn’s most lyrical and popular novels. Whisky and Scotland reads as freshly and relevantly now as it did then.” True connoisseurs can identify the products of individual distilleries, for each derives its own distinctive character from the surrounding soil and water. For the purist, Scotland’s own barley gives the finest results and no water can compare with that which has flowed off the peat, imparting a subtle flavour that survives years in the cask. “ Whisky and Scotland describes in loving detail the traditional techniques, still to be found, whereby barley grains become an amber spirit unequalled in the world. At the centre of the novel is Dark Mairi who embodies what is most vital and lasting in mankind, whose values encapsulate what was lost in Scotland to make way for progress while her land was cleared to make way for wintering sheep.” Gunn captures the spirit of Highland culture, the sense of community and tradition, in a manner that speaks to our own time. “ Butcher’s Broom is one of Gunn’s epic recreations of a key period in Scottish history, the Highland clearances of the nineteenth century. Assailed by the pagan Vikings from across the sea, the clash of Christianity and paganism, of old and new, of Viking and Pict, is a conflict from which the Scottish nation is forged.” A story of love and awakening set in a time of critical upheaval during the dawn of Scottish history, Breeta’s people are the ancient, newly Christianized Pictish tribes living in remote Northern Scotland in the 9th century. “First published in 1933, Sun Circle belongs to Gunn’s most creative period. But though it was the sea after a storm it was still sullen and inclined to smooth and lick itself, like a black dog bent over its paws as many black dogs as there were boulders black sea-animals, their heads bent and hidden, licking their paws in the dying evening light down by the secret water’s edge’.” ‘The tide was at low ebb and the sea quiet for a restless seeking among the dark boulders. Morning Tide opens with a most powerfully written description of the boy Hugh, sent down to the beach to collect mussels for his father’s fishing. The cultural collision and its effects are explored through Ewan, a young local man recently returned from university in disgrace, and a retired English colonel staying at the village hotel.” “ The Lost Glen vividly portrays a clash of cultures and personalities against a background of a landscape in visible decay. It was a hard, almost bitter book, probably caused in part by the shock Neil received when he returned to Lybster in 1922 and instead of finding again the land of his childhood which perhaps he had grown to idealise, he found a people fallen on hard times, struggling for survival.” ![]() Gunn’s crofter-fishermen blend like their crofts into a harsh landscape. “ The Grey Coast is the coast of the Moray Firth, where Neil M.
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