Search results for ""birlinn""

Benedict Blathwaytspent much of his youth, childhood and early years of married life on Mull. He has written and illustrated over 50 picture books for Julie MacRae, Walker Books, Hutchinson, OUP and Rex Fox, among others, and his work has appeared in 14 languages. He won the Smarties Prize in 1988 forTangle and the Firesticks.

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Ron Butlin is an award-winning poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer chidlren's au-thor and librettist whose works have been translated into many languages. He regularly gives creative writing workshops in schools, and was Edinburgh Makar from 2008 to 2014.James Hutcheson is Creative Director at Birlinn. He has been designing books, book jackets and album covers for many years.

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Allan Burnett is a freelance writer and editor based in Sweden. He has worked as deputy editor for the Scottish Standard and as deputy foreign editor for the Sunday Herald. He is the author of a number of bestselling children's history books, including World War I Tales of Adventure, World War II Tales of Adventure, The Story of Scotland and Invented in Scotland (all Birlinn).

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Accompanying the immense success of the Hebridean diaries and address books, Birlinn has added a birthday book to its attractive range of Hebridean stationery. Illustrated throughout with Mairi Hedderwick’s beautiful sketches of the Hebrides, this hardback book is the perfect way to remember birthdays of friends and family. It also makes an excellent gift.

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Born in 1953, John Sadler has law degrees from Northumbria University and the University of Westminster. A part-time lecturer in military history at Sunderland University Centre for Lifelong Learning, he is currently studying toward a PhD in history and is soon to begin an Imperial War Museum Fellowship in Holocaust Studies. He is the author of over 20 books, including Scottish Battles(Birlinn, 2010). He lives in Newcastle.

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Robbie Grigor is an expert on Scottish comedy and culture and author of Just Daft: The Chic Murray Story, also published by Birlinn.

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The classic folk tales of Scotland were passed down from storyteller to storyteller, and from the first sentence they held the attention of the listeners and readers as though a spell had been cast over them, transporting them to a magical realm where mermaids and men, selkies and sailors, ogres and princesses all mingle and are miraculously transformed. First published in 1956, the Montgomeries, distinguished folklorists, gathered these captivating stories from all parts of Scotland. This collection became a classic of the storytelling tradition retold in a simple, dramatic style, appealing to adult and child alike. Now published by Birlinn Limited in a handsome gift edition and illustrated with Norah Montgomerie's own original drawings, it is a book to be treasured for years as the key to an enchanted, timeless world.

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Thomas Pennant's first tour of Scotland started at Chester in 1769. Passing through Yorkshire and Durham he paid a brief visit to the Farne Islands in a coble - 'a hazardous species of boat' - entering Scotland at Berwick. Proceeding via Edinburgh the tour continued through Perth by way of Elgin and Inverness to Caithness, returning the way he came as far as Inverness. He made a brief visit to Moy before turning westward along the Great Glen. He then journeyed via Inverary and Loch Lomond to Glasgow, through Moffat and finally leaving Scotland near Carlisle. At this time North Britain was virtually terra incognita to the southerner. The era of the tourist had hardly downed despite Martin Martin's visits to the Hebrides at the end of the previous century. Pennant's candid account of Scotland was so popular that it sold through four editions in quick succession, and it remains a vital and fascinating historical record to this day.

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Andy Bollen is a cultural commentator, drummer, gag writer and now football historian. The author of the critically-acclaimed Nirvana: A Tour Diary, the political spoofSandy Trout: The Memoir, and Labelled With Love. He has written forChewin' The Fat, Pulp Video, Naked Radio, Watson's Wind Up and Des Clarke's Breaking the News, as well as being a former columnist withThe Sunday Mailand The Glasgow Herald. He has contributed to various publications includingThe Mail on Sunday, Scotland on Sunday and The New York Times andwrites material on a freelance basis for comedians and performers. He lives in Coatbridge.

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Enter the locker room: this is a history of the Ryder Cup like you have never experienced it before. From the origin matches that preceded the first official trans-Atlantic encounter between Britain and America at Worcester Country Club in 1927, all the way through to the fortieth installment at Gleneagles in 2014, this is the complete history of the Ryder Cup – told by the men who have been there and done it. With exhaustive research and exclusive new material garnered from interviews with players and captains from across the decades, Behind the Ryder Cup unveils the compelling truth of what it means to play in golf's biggest match-play event, where greats of the game have crumbled under pressure while others have carved their names into sporting legend.

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Daniel Fieldsend is a UEFA qualified academy coach and scout working for Liverpool Football Club. He has worked in the football industry for many years, following the completion of a BSc degree in Football Studies. Alongside his current academy role, he is the Liverpool FC researcher for the Football Manager series. As a writer, he is the founder and editor of leftwingsoccer.com.

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Douglas MacGowan was born in Chicago in 1963 and has lived in California since 1968. He received a Bachelor of Public Administration degree from the University of San Francisco in 1988 and has contributed articles to the Scottish Journal, The Scotsman and Celtic Heritage. He has been married for ten years and currently lives on the San Francisco peninsula with his wife, far too many cats and one dog.

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Helen FitzGerald is the second youngest of thirteen children. She grew up in the small town of Kilmore, Victoria, Australia, and studied English and History at the University of Melbourne. Via India and London, Helen came to Glasgow University where she completed a Diploma and Masters in Social Work. She has worked as a probation and parole officer for ten years, most of it in Barlinnie, where she helps to prepare serious offenders for release. She's married to screenwriter Sergio Casci, and they have two children.

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Ron Butlin is an award-winning poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer children's author and librettist whose works have been translated into many languages. He regularly gives creative writing workshops in schools, and was Edinburgh Makar from 2008 to 2014.

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First in a brand new series of murder mysteries featuring a truly unique protagonist and touches of the supernatural

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This island of Lismore boasts a remarkably rich heritage, both in terms of historic monuments and of an unbroken tradition of Gaelic culture. From their first sight of Tirefour Broch, dominating approaches from the mainland, visitors to the Isle of Lismore can explore an outstanding heritage of monuments to the past - Bronze Age cairns, medieval castles, the Cathedral of Argyll, carved graveslabs, deserted townships and watermills, not to mention a Stevenson lighthouse. Because of its strategic position at the mouth of the Great Glen and its fertility, the island played an important part in the prehistory and early history of the West Highlands and Islands.In this book, Robert Hay tells the story of Lismore from earliest times to the present day, providing fascinating insights into the island''s history, as well as that of the whole area.

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All they wanted was land: land for crofting and land on which to build a house. In 1908, ten desperate men from the islands of Barra and Mingulay in the Western Isles were imprisoned in Edinburgh for refusing to leave the island of Vatersay, where they had built huts and planted potatoes without permission. The case caused an outcry throughout Scotland, and led eventually to the purchase of the island by the government for crofting. This book, the first about Vatersay, tells the remarkable story of the raiders and their struggle to escape from the poverty which the policies of an absentee landowner forced them to endure. The Vatersay Raiders documents not only these events, which had enormous significance in the history of crofting, but also the fascinating earlier history of Vatersay and its now-deserted neighbour Sandray. An outline of more recent developments brings the account up to date.

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Richard Frazerwas minister of Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh. He founded and chairs the Grassmarket Community Project, which helps the most vulnerable. He has been influential in the revival of pilgrimage in Scotland and in the Church of Scotland's decision to officially promote and revive pilgrimage after 450 years.

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Ian Buxton has been working in and around the drinks industry for close to 30 years, but has been drinking professionally for a good deal longer. He writes in a variety of trade and consumer titles here and abroad.

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New title in the same series as bestselling The Stornoway Black Pudding Bible, The Italian Sausage Bible and The Macsween Haggis Bible Salmon can be eaten any time, and makes excellent starters, main courses, breakfasts and snacks, and there suggestions for all of these in this book. Due to its high protein content, omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D, salmon is one of the most nutritious fish available, with many health specialists recommending that it should be eaten three times a week. In this handy and varied collection of recipes, award-winning chef Claire Macdonald demonstrates the enormous versatility of salmon in forty mouth-watering recipes which show you could eat salmon seven days a week and still never tire of it. Hot-smoked salmon, cold-smoked salmon, salmon fillets and Gravalax (salmon cured with sugar, salt and dill) all feature, together with a huge range of imaginative accompaniments, from beetroot, cheese and cream to bananas,tomatoes, garlic and prosciutto.

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The latest in Birlinn's bestselling Food Bible series features the succulent soft fruits for which Scotland is so renowned - raspberries, Tayberries, redcurrants, blackberries - and shows how to get the best out of them. So much baking and cookery knowledge is packed into the compact Food Bible format, illustrated with Bob Dewar's delightfully quirky cartoons. Sue combines new and traditional recipes, including Bramble Clafoutis, Strawberry Risotto, Chocolate Raspberry Brownies, Duck with Blackcurrants, Redcurrant and Apple Lattice Pie and Blaeberry Polenta Cake. Sue is a real cook's cook, providing recipes that are easy to cook but reliably produce delicious results. As Nigella Lawson says: 'There couldn't be a book by Sue Lawrence that I wouldn't want to own and, indeed, I'd be horrified to learn that there were any titles I don't own. She writes beautifully, is as much chatty historian as cookery writer and her recipes always interest me and make me ravenous.'

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Go behind the scenes with England''s Red Roses for the first time.In January 2019, England's Red Roses became the first fully professional women's rugby team in the world their abiding mission being to win back the Rugby World Cup. After their narrow defeat against New Zealand in 2017, the formidable squad developed a hugely successful game plan that earned them the longest winning streak in rugby union history.Acclaimed sports journalist Jessica Hayden, who has had unprecedented access to the Red Roses during the writing of this book, goes behind the scenes to follow their challenges, heartbreaks and triumphs. Featuring interviews with all the major players, including Marlie Packer, Jess Breach, Emily Scarratt and many more, this is a truly inspirational story.The Red Roses will host the Rugby World Cup in 2025. The stakes have never been higher for one of the most dedicated teams in the history of rugby.

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'EIGHT YEARS WITH RANGERS, MORE THAN 300 GAMES, INCREDIBLE HIGHS, PAINFUL LOWS – AND IT ALL CAME DOWN TO ONE NIGHT IN THE NOU CAMP' 24 May 1972. The biggest night in the history of Rangers. Having overcome the might of Italian giants Torino and Beckenbauer’s Bayern Munich en route to the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup, Dynamo Moscow stood between the Light Blues and the trophy. The stage was set in Barcelona for an unsung hero: Dave Smith. Creator of two of the goals on the night and arguably man of the match. In a rollercoaster career, Smith joined the Ibrox club from Aberdeen in 1966 for a record fee. He tasted defeat in the 1967 European Cup Winners’ Cup final and had his career blighted by two horrific leg breaks during a period in which he also experienced the tragedy of the Ibrox disaster. But by 1972 Smith was a lynchpin of Willie Waddell’s team. Playing as sweeper, he dicated the tempo of games with his vision and pinpoint passing. The star of the Nou Camp victory was voted Player of the Year in Scotland to cap the most memorable of seasons. He departed Rangers in 1974, making a shock switch to Arbroath after a fallout with new Ibrox manager Jock Wallace, before going on to star overseas in South Africa and then alongside George Best for the LA Aztecs in America. Rejecting the chance to join Paris Saint-Germain, Smith chose to end his career in Scotland’s lower leagues as player-manager at Berwick Rangers where he would find success and happiness playing the game the way it was meant to be played.

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In 1938 John Lorne Campbell bought the Hebridean isle of Canna. He wanted to prevent it becoming a rich man's playground (like so many other islands and Highland estates), to preserve a part of traditional Gaelic culture and show that efficient farming methods could be compatible with wildlife conservation and sustainability. But his determination to get the island left him burdened by debt, and even after he gave it to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981 he still had to fight to secure his legacy. This acclaimed book is an insightful and human portrait of one of the twentieth century's most significant scholars of the Gaelic world, and of his 60-year partnership with Margaret Fay Shaw, who together created the world-famous library of Gaelic song and other material at Canna House.

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The Highlands and Islands of Scotland experienced massive changes during the nineteenth century. Economic restructuring, introducing sheep and deer and encouraging clearance and eviction, is the best known change, but it was by no means the only one. Transport and communication improved massively, and the region was exposed to an ever-widening range of external influences. Many Highlanders reached out to the wider world, as soldiers, sailors and emigrants. Others remained steadfastly on their crofts, and maintained vigorous Gaelic communities, while those who left their homeland also created Gaelic communities in the Scottish Lowlands or overseas. In different contexts, at home and abroad, they reflected on the vicissitudes of their lives, and no small number expressed themselves eloquently in song and verse. This is the first general anthology of nineteenth-century Gaelic verse to be published since 1879. It covers all the main types of poetry produced in Gaelic during the nineteenth century. Thirteen themes are represented – among them homeland, clearance, emigration, transport, life in Lowland cities, love, war and protest. Theis anthology thus offers a fresh look at the poetic creativity of the nineteenth century, and the way in which song and verse were refashioned to meet the challenges of the time. As the poets respond to 'the wiles of the world', their output covers the full sweep of human emotions, from sadness to rollicking humour, from nostalgia to robust protest and great hope for the future. The poems are reproduced with English translations. These will allow the non-Gaelic reader to sample their stylistic sparkle, which has been seriously neglected until now.

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The small island archipelago of St Kilda, which rises majestically from the stormy waters of the North Atlantic, has a magic and allure which is both enduring and inexplicable. For centuries, St Kilda’s remoteness (it lies sixty miles west of the Scottish Hebrides), together with the way of life of its inhabitants, has attracted huge attention from outsiders, who have been fascinated by this small community literally clinging to the edge of the world. Although St Kildans were always few in number (the population was under 100 when Hirta, the only inhabited island, was evacuated in 1930), their society was extraordinarily well developed – they famously had their own daily ‘parliament’, at which the men of the island would meet and discuss the tasks of the day. This remains a work of vital importance for the understanding of this fascinating island society.

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When did thousands of people last crowd into Edinburgh’s High Street to witness an execution? Three brass bricks on the pavement mark the spot, but how many people notice them or know what they mean? As a fire engine roars along the road sirens blaring and lights flashing, what has that got to do with a fire of 1824? Why was Leith in mourning one bleak day in 1915 and where can you find a monument which commemorates the tragic event? The answers are all in an expanded and revised edition of Edinburgh Curiosities. Thomson and Coghill have trawled through the city’s characters to bring together a collection of the men and women who scandalised and inspired the city over the years. But in addition to the notorious, like the Porteous Riot, Deacon William Brodie – the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde – or Madeleine Smith, they look at other lesser known, but nevertheless fascinating, people and events. Stories you’ve maybe heard something about but don’t know the detail. They also float intriguing speculation like the possibility of members of Ned Kelly’s gang carrying out armed robberies in Leith after the bushranger was hanged in Australia. The result is a fascinating dip into Edinburgh’s rich and varied past, which will appeal to natives and visitors alike.

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Labels such as ‘icon’ or ‘legend’ are rarely attached to one individual to the degree that they are to Bruce Lee. He only made a handful of films, yet four and a half decades after his untimely death at the age of 32, the Little Dragon’s influence on culture is as strong as ever. Named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of the 20th century, Lee wasn’t just an actor and martial artist, but a director, inventor, husband, father and philosopher. His martial art, jeet kune do, is still practised around the world, while UFC champions credit him with inspiring the growing sport of mixed martial arts. His films kick-started a global kung fu boom and retain the power to awe today, while his thoughts – collected in a series of books from Lee’s own notes – still inspire. Bruce Lee: The Life of a Legend is a unique oral biography that combines the memories of Lee’s original students, close friends, co-stars and colleagues – those who knew him best – to provide a candid view on the action movie star adored by millions, capturing the essence of a complex man in a way no straightforward narrative ever could. Further, for the first time ever in print, legendary professional boxing, bodybuilding and MMA champions and personalities from the motion picture industry pay homage to Lee, giving a blend of unique perspectives on a man who changed the face of their respective sports.

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Murrayfield, the Calcutta Cup, March 1990. England vs. Scotland – winner-takes-all for the Five Nations Grand Slam, the biggest prize in northern hemisphere rugby. Will Carling’s England are the very embodiment of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain – snarling, brutish and all-conquering. Scotland are the underdogs – second-class citizens from a land that’s become the testing ground for the most unpopular tax in living memory: Thatcher's Poll Tax. In Edinburgh, nationalism is rising high – what happens in the stadium will resound far beyond the pitch. The Grudge brilliantly recaptures a day that has gone down in history when a rugby match became more than a game. This is the real story of an extraordinary conflict, told with astounding insight and unprecedented access to key players, coaches and supporters on both sides (Will Carling, Ian McGeechan, Brian Moore and the rest). Tom English has produced a gripping account of a titanic struggle that thrusts the reader right into the heart of the action. Game on. Fully revised and updated, this special hardback edition is published to mark the thirtieth anniversary of Scotland’s most storied rugby season.

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*Suitable for reading aloud - a lot of similar anthologies have weddings as their subject but don't offer really public poems *Chosen by the Scottish Poetry Library's Assistant Librarian, who has been answering the constant stream of requests for such poems for the last ten years, and knows what is valued *Introduction by one of Scotland's most famous poets *New pieces by well-known poets specially written for this volume

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What really counts in this life? For the writer, Alexander McCall Smith, it is friendship and love themes that crop up time and again in his novels. And it is these themes that he explores in this collection of poems, with moments that swoop and soar, and descriptions that will make you laugh and realign your view.This collection reminds us to look at the world differently, to stop once in while and look up at the sky.

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George Orwell’s vivid memoir of his time living among the desperately poor and destitute, Down and Out in Paris and London is a moving tour of the underworld of society. Written when Orwell was a struggling writer in his twenties, it documents his ‘first contact with poverty’. Here, he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor – sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses of last resort, working as a dishwasher in Paris’s vile ‘Hôtel X’, surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, living alongside tramps, a star-gazing pavement artist and a starving Russian ex-army captain. Exposing a shocking, previously-hidden world to his readers, Orwell gave a human face to the statistics of poverty for the first time – and in doing so, found his voice as a writer.

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Investigative journalist Shona Sandison is attending the wedding of her closest friend and former colleague, Vivienne. But the night before the wedding, Vivienne''s reclusive school friend, Dan, jumps from a roof to his death. Shona is the only witness to the suicide - and so the only person who saw the occult tattoos covering Dan''s body, and heard the unsettling, mystical phrases he was uttering.Compelled to look further into the tragic incident, Shona sets off on a quest to find out why Dan killed himself and what happened to Vivienne''s missing brother 20 years prior. Despite knowing that investigating Viv''s family will mean she could lose her friend forever, Shona travels to a small, forgotten town in the north of England to investigate an insular group of classmates who have held a dark secret for decades.Haunting and hypnotic,The Hollow Tree is a return to Philip Miller''s dark world of subterfuge, betrayal, and fragile justice.

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The characters in this delicious book are pushed to the point of no return and seek retribution. But how we get even is not always the best road to redemption. On the island of Mull, it takes an incomer to make the locals realise that they need to take matters into their own hands to maintain the community’s reputation. In ‘The Principles of Soap’ the value of friendship overcomes adversity and opportunistic nepotism. In suburban Edinburgh opposing neighbours find out the hard way that the best method of dealing with a canine disturbance is not to bury one’s head in the sand. And in the final tale we meet an author on the brink of public ruin who sees the error of his ways after an act of kindness saves the day. These four tales show that the exquisite art of getting even is a skill that sees kindness win over malice. Tantalising and amusing, these stories show off a darker side but carry with them the author’s trademark warmth and humour.

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'[A] warm and witty exploration of our hidden vulnerabilities' - Catherine Simpson Ellis’s life has crumbled without warning. Her boyfriend has fallen in love with someone else, her job’s insecure, her bank account’s empty and she has a mouthful of unreliable teeth. Forced back to her childhood home, there is little in the way of comfort. Her mum is dating a younger man (a dentist, no less) and is talking of selling the house, her sister, Lana, is furious all the time, and a distant cousin has now arrived from the States to stay with them. During a long, hot Edinburgh summer, Ellis’s world spins out of control. She’s dogged by toothache, her ex won’t compensate her for the flat and somehow she’s found herself stalking his new lover on Facebook. Will Ellis realise before it’s too late that the bite she was born with is worth preserving? 'There's a huge emotional punch packed into this deceptively light novel' - Sally Morris, Daily Mail For fans of Sally Rooney, Meg Mason and Marian Keyes.

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Longlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award 2023 ON THE ROAD TO DISCOVERY, EVEN THE DEAD HAVE SECRETS. High up on a mountain road in the Balkans, former Olympic cyclist Heather Bishop races her journalist boyfriend Ryan. But when he suddenly disappears during the ride, suspicion falls on her. Local police inspector Simo Subotić already has his hands full investigating two mutilated bodies that have washed up on the banks of the River Drina. Something is telling him that these two cases are connected but nothing could prepare him for what is to come. Only together can Simo and Heather hope to uncover the truth in time. Their search not only exposes the darkness of Ryan’s past but exhumes dangerous secrets of a region still reeling from the trauma of war. Are some secrets so devastating that they should remain buried?

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'An outstanding mystery thriller… Noir fans won’t want to miss it' - Publishers Weekly (Starred) 'A riveting, brutal journey into the high stakes world of legacy art and inherited wealth' - Denise Mina, author of the Garnethill trilogy and The Long Drop The Goldenacre – a masterpiece by the painter and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh – has been given to the people of Scotland. The beautiful canvas, the last work by the artistic genius, enthrals the art world, but behind it lies a dark and violent mystery. Thomas Tallis, an art expert with a trouble past, is trying to uncover the truth about the painting's complex history, while dogged newspaper reporter Shona Sandison is investigating a series of shocking murders in Edinburgh. Both investigators soon become engulfed in the machinations of money, crime and identity in a literary thriller set amid the seen and unseen forces at work in modern Scotland. Winner of the Shamus Award for the Best First P.I. Novel

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His name and image are everywhere - from Bank of Scotland fivers to the bizarre monument in Edinburgh's city centre. Scott-land presumes that the reader will have only a hazy awareness of Sir Walter Scott, and, although Stuart Kelly will offer insights into Scott's works and biography, this is emphatically not a conventional literary biography, nor is it a critical study. Partly a surreptitious autobiography - Stuart Kelly was born near Abbotsford - his examination of Scott's legacy and character come to change his own thoughts on writing, reviewing, being Scottish, and being human.

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'A memoir which is also a work of art' – Allan Massie, The Scotsman The story begins with Campbell, aged 14, in a police cell in Glasgow. He’s been charged with stealing books – five Mickey Spillane novels and a copy of Peyton Place. At 15, he became an apprentice printer, but gave that up in order to ‘go on the road’, fulfilling the only ambition he ever had while a pupil at King’s Park Secondary School in Glasgow – to be what RLS called ‘a bit of a vagabond’. On his hitchhiking journeys through Asia and North Africa, an interest in music, reading and writing grew. Campbell also took a keen interest in learning from interesting people. In 1972 he worked on a kibbutz, living in the neighbouring cabin to Peter Green, the founder and lead guitarist of Fleetwood Mac, with whom he formed a two-man musical combo. At the same time, he was part of a group of aspiring writers in Glasgow, including Tom Leonard. His literary heroes of the time were Alexander Trocchi and John Fowles: Campbell tracked them down to their homes and wrote extensively about both. The stories Campbell are recounted in this book. A crowning moment of his life was forming a friendship with the American writer James Baldwin. Campbell visited him more than once at his home in the South of France, and persuaded him to come to Edinburgh for the Book Festival in 1985. Campbell later wrote the acclaimed biography of Baldwin, Talking at the Gates.

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George’s memory is inseparable from Orkney, where he was born the youngest child of a poor family and which he rarely left. His mother was a beautiful woman who spoke only Gaelic and his father was a wit, mimic and singer, who also doubled as postman and tailor. Tuberculosis framed George’s early life and kept him in a kind of limbo. He discovered alcohol which gave him insights into the workings of the mind. While attending the University of Edinburgh he came into contact with Goodsir Smith, MacDiarmid and Norman MacCaig – and Stella Cartwright with whom perhaps all of them were in love. By the time of his death in 1996 he was recognised as one of the great writers of his time and country.

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Vinland follows the turbulent life of Ranald Sigmundson, a young boy born into the Dark Ages when Orkney was torn between its Viking past and its Christian future. Struggling to understand the conflicts of his home, Ranald seeks adventure and knowledge across the seas, his journeys taking him as far as Norway, Iceland and Ireland. Through Ranald’s story, many elements of early mediaeval life – of seamanship, marriage customs, beliefs and traditions – are brought vibrantly to life, and the traditional poetry interwoven through the prose adds a richness and poignancy to the tales he tells. In Vinland, Mackay Brown’s fourth novel, lore and legend, the elementary pull of the sea and the land, the sweetness of the early religion and the darker, more ancient rites, create an exquisite celebration of Orcadian history.

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These two long stories are set, like most of George Mackay Brown’s work, in Orkney and in a period, the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the pattern of island life, little changed since Viking times, was beginning to be threatened. The Golden Bird tells the story of the slow decline of an island community: a scattered village dependant on the sea for its livelihood and at risk from it, a place subject to the peculiar tensions of isolation and the unsettling influence of new values. The Life and Death of John Voe looks at the life of a typical young Orkney man: after whaling and sailing and gold-mining he comes home to devote the rest of his days to a beautiful country girl. These stories are the creation of a very rich imagination, of a practised and skillful writer, but they also have the power and simplicity of the traditional ballad. They will delight Mackay Brown’s fans.

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Now a Major Feature Length Documentary: 'Cassius X: Becoming Ali’ (Cinema release Spring 2023) Miami, 1963. A young boy from Louisville, Kentucky, is on the path to becoming the greatest sportsman of all time. Cassius Clay is training in the 5th Street Gym for his heavyweight title clash against the formidable Sonny Liston. He is beginning to embrace the ideas and attitudes of Black Power, and firebrand preacher Malcolm X will soon become his spiritual adviser. Thus Cassius Clay will become ‘Cassius X’ as he awaits his induction into the Nation of Islam. Cassius also befriends the legendary soul singer Sam Cooke, falls in love with soul singer Dee Dee Sharp and becomes a remarkable witness to the first days of soul music. As with his award-winning soul trilogy, Stuart Cosgrove’s intensive research and sweeping storytelling shines a new light on how black music lit up the sixties against a backdrop of social and political turmoil – and how Cassius Clay made his remarkable transformation into Muhammad Ali.

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LONGLISTED FOR THE MCILVANNEY PRIZE 2019 From the pen of the biggest selling crime writer published in Scotland... When the luxury cruiser, hastily renamed Great Britain, berths in Kinloch harbour, the pressure is on DCI Jim Daley. The UK Government are taking a high-powered group of businessmen and women on a tour of the British isles, golfing and seeing the sights, as part of a push for global trade. But when one of the crew goes missing , and an elderly local ornithologist disappears, will the pressure become too great? The arrival of a face from the past, sends Daley’s world into a tailspin. And the lives of the passengers and crew of SS Great Britain, as well as the country’s economic future are in jeopardy. DS Brian Scott comes to the fore, and replete with a temporary promotion, is once more - most reluctantly, in his case - back at sea. Daley faces a life and death struggle, but is this his last throw of the dice?

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After his father dies, nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd is sent to South Africa to seek his fortune. A strange encounter on the voyage suggests that a tribal uprising is afoot, and David soon finds himself involved - at great risk to his life - with the charismatic leader, John Laputa. Prester John was John Buchan's first adventure story and is comparable in style and place to Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson. With an introduction by Trevor Royle. This edition is authorised by the John Buchan Society.

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Oyster is the second collection from prize-winning Edinburgh poet Michael Pedersen. From Grez-sur-Loing and festive nights to sizzling summers stretched out in the Meadows and Portobello, Michael Pedersen’s unique brand of poetry captures a debauchery and a disputation of characters, narrated with an intense honesty and a love of language that is playful, powerful and penetrative; he vividly illuminates scenes with an energy that is both witty, humourous but also deeply intelligent. Oyster is iced, spiced, baked and beaming for your pleasure. Oyster features bespoke illustrations from Frightened Rabbit lead singer and songwriter Scott Hutchison.

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Sir Edward Leithen - perhaps the autobiographical of Buchan's characters - is dying of tuberculosis and has been given a year to live. After this prognosis, Leithen undertakes a profoundly heroic quest from London to the Canadian Northwest, tracking down a missing man who is literally 'sick at heart'. In the course of this epic journey, Leithen finds redemption for himself. Sick Heart River is John Buchan's most powerful novel, completed just days before his death. The rich, authentic descriptions of the rugged Canadian landscape were influenced by a voyage down the Mackenzie River in 1937, at which time Buchan was Governor-General of Canda. With an introduction by James Buchan. This edition is authorised by the John Buchan Society.

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