Search results for ""Author Andrew Greig""

Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2014. 'One of the best historical novels of recent years, Greig dusts off the past and presents it with tremendous skill' - Literary Review 'A Triumph of suspense' - Guardian Saltire Award-winning author Andrew Greig reimagines the Border Ballad Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Lea as a dark romance and stirring adventure. Often called the Scottish Romeo & Juliet, here it is re-presented as the source of an equally famed, more complex drama. The Scottish Borderlands, 1590s Harry Langton is called back to the country of his childhood to aide an old friend, Adam Fleming, who believes his life is in danger. He's fallen for Helen of Annandale and, in turn, fallen foul of her rival, Robert Bell: a man as violent as he is influential. In a land where minor lairds vie for power and blood feuds are settled by the sword, Fleming faces a battle to win Helen's hand. Entrusted as guard to the lovers' secret trysts, Langton is thrust into the middle of a dangerous triangle; and discovers Helen is not so chaste as she is fair. But Langton has his own secrets to keep - and other friends to serve. Someone has noticed his connections, and recruited him in their bid to control the hierarchy of the Border families; someone who would use lovers as pawns in a game of war.

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A stunning novel set in the stark beauty of Orkney and the heady atmosphere of Penang in the 1930s 'Two small, confined communities in which established connections are cut across by shifting allegiances as people come and go: in cold climate as in hot, now as then, love is a complicated, compromising business' Times Literary Supplement A young man leans over the railings of the ocean liner bound for the exotic shores of Penang. It is early in the 1930s and Dr Alexander Mackay is on his way to take up his post running a maternity hospital in the colony. During the voyage he meets two beautiful sisters and the seeds of a scandal are sown. Seventy years later Edward Mackay wakes after a major brain trauma. In the hazy shadowlands of illness, he conjures the figure of his dead father, a man he knew so little about. This near-death experience provokes a move to the wilds of Orkney, where Edward joins a project to harness the tides around the island as a renewable source of energy. But in the tight-knit island community passions also run high.

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At the centre of Electric Brae is the crumbling sea-stack of the Old Man of Hoy and the consuming relationship between a young artist, Kim, coldly passionate, talented, secretive, and Jimmy, a North Sea roughneck, engineer and climber. Acclaimed on publication for marking a brave new direction in the course of Scottish fiction, Electric Brae is a story of love and loss, loyalty and betrayal, and fathers and children.

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'Highly Engaging' - Sunday Herald'You could easily make a case that Andrew Greig has the greatest range of any living Scottish writer' - Scotsman The wagerTo poach a salmon, grouse and a deer from three Royal Estates. The challengersThree men in a mid-life crisis who should know better. The wild cardA flirtatious female journalist who won't take no for an answer. Striding over the Scottish Highlands with a poet's eye on the wilderness and a firm grip on the adventure, Andrew Greig re-imagines John Buchan's classic novel with a little less tweed, a little more sex, and just the right measure of whisky.

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A homage to a remarkable poet and his world.'At The Loch of Green Corrie is more than merely elegant, more than a collection of albeit fascinating insights, laugh-out-loud observations and impressively broad erudition' - Sunday Herald'You could easily make a case that Andrew Greig has the greatest range of any living Scottish writer' - ScotsmanFor many years Andrew Greig saw the poet Norman MacCaig as a father figure. Months before his death, MacCaig's enigmatic final request to Greig was that he fish for him at the Loch of the Green Corrie; the location, even the real name of his destination was more mysterious still. His search took in days of outdoor living, meetings, and fishing with friends in the remote hill lochs of far North-West Scotland. It led, finally, to the waters of the Green Corrie, which would come to reflect Greig's own life, his thoughts on poetry, geology and land ownership in the Highlands and the ambiguous roles of whisky, love and male friendship. At the Loch of the Green Corrie is a richly atmospheric narrative, a celebration of losing and recovering oneself in a unique landscape, the consideration of a particular culture, and a homage to a remarkable poet and his world.

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'A tale I have for you.'Embra, winter of 1574. Queen Mary has fled Scotland, to raise an army from the French. Her son and heir, Jamie is held under protection in Stirling Castle. John Knox is dead. The people are unmoored and lurching under the uncertain governance of this riven land. It's a deadly time for young student Will Fowler, short of stature, low of birth but mightily ambitious, to make his name.Fowler has found himself where the scorch marks of the martyrs burned at the stake can be seen on every street, where differences in doctrine can prove fatal, where the feuds of great families pull innocents into their bloody realm. There he befriends the austere stick-wielding philosopher Tom Nicolson, son of a fishing family whose sister Rose, untutored, brilliant and exceedingly beautiful exhibits a free-thinking mind that can only bring danger upon her and her admirers. The lowly students are adept at attracting the attentions of the rich and powerful, not least Walter Scott, brave and ruthless heir to Branxholm and Buccleuch, who is set on exploiting the civil wars to further his political and dynastic ambitions. His friendship and patronage will lead Will to the to the very centre of a conspiracy that will determine who will take Scotland's crown.Rose Nicolson is a vivid, passionate and unforgettable novel of this most dramatic period of Scotland's history, told by a character whose rise mirrors the conflicts he narrates, the battles between faith and reason, love and friendship, self-interest and loyalty. It confirms Andrew Greig as one of the great contemporary writers of fiction.

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What are the contours of a life? For Andrew Greig: childhood, adolescence, the country then the city, sex, love, marriage, break-ups and breakdowns personal and political, mountain adventures, illness and recovery, increased awareness of mortality and the preciousness of the moments left, late love...they're all here in these wildly diverse, affirmative, open-hearted poems. As a poet and latterly as a novelist, Andrew Greig is one of Scotland's most esteemed writers. Each of his poetry books has been distinctively different, from the early and late poems rooted in the natural world, to the game-playing extended narratives of exultation and risk, from human love to the mountaineering poems. But this selection covering 35 years of his poetry shows how the thrust of all his work is the re-enchantment of this life.

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In March 1985, Mal Duff led a new expedition to conquer Everest by the unclimbed north-east ridge.The last attempt by a Chris Bonington team had ended in failure and tragedy - with the deaths of two great climbers, Joe Tasker and Pete Boardman.Everyone knew the risks as well as the excitement of the challenge. In this extraordinary book, Greig chronicles not only the assault on the peak but also the complex inter-relationships of nineteen very different personalities living together.

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The hunt for the crowning stone of the Dalriadic kings, the Stone of Scone, has begun.'You could easily make a case that Andrew Greig has the greatest range of any living Scottish writer' - ScotsmanA motorcyclist with a stolen ring walks into Rothiemurchus Forest and finds a quiet place to die. A woman with an eventful past has signed the Official Secrets Act and gone to Dumfries to forget a man and keep out of trouble. In comfortable Crieff, a retired historian publishes an obscure article on the survival of the Stone of Destiny then has his throat cut. A man with a long blade in a tan holster under his suit, a fondness for bird-watching, and memories of his short-lived Punk band Anger Management, has taken a commission to retrieve an object so valuable and mythic it might not exist. A rugby-playing half-Maori named Leo Nagotoa stands in the sleet by Romanno Bridge in the Scottish Borders, trying to thumb a lift when his Destiny slithers up alongside him. Some of the cast of The Return of John Macnab are back, but the times and the mood have changed. Romanno Bridge is a wintry thriller, an entertainment, a quest and an exploration of contemporary themes of fakes, frauds, copies, and a struggle to find the Real Thing, wherever and whatever it might be.

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A book about golf that will appeal to both players and non players, by Scottish poet and novelist.Surely golf is a game for posh people, country clubs and networking businessmen, for unfortunate sweaters, politics and trousers? Andrew Greig grew up on the East coast of Scotland, where playing golf is as natural as breathing. He sees the game as the great leveller, and has played on the Old course at St Andrews as well as on the miners' courses of Yorkshire. He writes about the different cultural manifestations of the game, the history, the geography, the different social meanings, as well as the subjective experience, the reflections between shots. He plays alone, with friends and brothers, with ghosts. He is looking for the essence of golf, the pure heart of it, which can be found, Andrew Greig believes, on the free 9 hole course on North Ronaldsay.

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When poet Andrew Greig was asked by Scottish mountaineer Mal Duff to join his ascent of the Mustagh Tower in the Karakoram Himalayas, he had a poor head for heights and no climbing experience whatsoever. The result is this unique book.Summit Fever has been loved by climbers and literary critics alike for its refreshing candour, wit, insight and the haunting beauty of its writing.Much more than a book about climbing, it celebrates the risk, joy and adventure of being alive.

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'Mike Heron, as part of the Incredible String Band, changed the way I looked at music. Read it!' Billy Connolly'Mike Heron's lyrics always sparkled with wit and warmth and his prose is a delightful continuation. The book evokes a smoky, unheated eccentric Edinburgh that was a crucible for so much creativity.' Joe Boyd, author of White BicyclesThis singular book offers two harmonising memoirs of music making in the 1960s. Mike Heron for the first time writes vividly of his formative years in dour, Presbyterian Edinburgh. Armed with a love of Buddy Holly, Fats Domino and Hungarian folk music, he plays in school cloakrooms, graduates to rock, discovers the joy of a folk audience, starts writing songs, tries to talk to girls, wishes he was a Beatnik all while training as a reluctant accountant. When asked to join Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer, the Incredible String Band are formed - and their wildly innovative, astounding music became indelibly linked with the latter Sixties.Andrew Greig was a frustrated provincial schoolboy when he heard their songs. It changed everything. Undaunted by a lack of experience and ability, he formed a band in their image. Fate & Ferret populated back-country Fife with Pan, nymphs and Apollo, met the String Band and caught the fish lorry to London to hang around Joe Boyd's Witchseason office, watching at the fringes of the blooming Underground scene. It was forty years later that he and Mike became friends.These entwined stories will delight anyone who has loved the Incredible String Band; and their differing portraits of that hopeful, erratic and stubborn stumble towards the life that is ours will strike a chord with everyone.

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