A Scottish Journey


Book Description

'Scotland as I saw it on this journey is vibrant and exciting and very much alive, a tartan patchwork of the past, present and future of the country woven together by all those people who have ever called it 'home' and all the others who will.' James McEnaney sees Scotland as a 'complicated and conflicted place' that needs a disruption of the status quo. He presents the country as he found it on his journey – struggling with contemporary mistakes and historic wrongs, but also bustling with energy and expectation, ultimately offering glimpses of the better, brighter future which might just be on the way.




Scottish Journey


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The Scots


Book Description

History has always mattered to Scots, and rarely more so than now at the outset of a new century, with a new census appearing in 2011 and after more than ten years of a new parliament. An almost limitless archive of our history lies hidden inside our bodies and we carry the ancient story of Scotland around with us. The mushrooming of genetic studies, of DNA analysis, is rewriting our history in spectacular fashion. In The Scots: A Genetic Journey, Alistair Moffat explores the history that is printed on our genes, and in a remarkable new approach, uncovers the detail of where we are from, who we are and in so doing colour vividly a DNA map of Scotland.




Outlander


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A STARZ ORIGINAL SERIES Unrivaled storytelling. Unforgettable characters. Rich historical detail. These are the hallmarks of Diana Gabaldon’s work. Her New York Times bestselling Outlander novels have earned the praise of critics and captured the hearts of millions of fans. Here is the story that started it all, introducing two remarkable characters, Claire Beauchamp Randall and Jamie Fraser, in a spellbinding novel of passion and history that combines exhilarating adventure with a love story for the ages. One of the top ten best-loved novels in America, as seen on PBS’s The Great American Read! Scottish Highlands, 1945. Claire Randall, a former British combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding clans in the year of Our Lord . . . 1743. Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of a world that threatens her life, and may shatter her heart. Marooned amid danger, passion, and violence, Claire learns her only chance of safety lies in Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior. What begins in compulsion becomes urgent need, and Claire finds herself torn between two very different men, in two irreconcilable lives. This eBook includes the full text of the novel plus the following additional content: • An excerpt from Diana Gabaldon’s Dragonfly in Amber, the second novel in the Outlander series • An interview with Diana Gabaldon • An Outlander reader’s guide Praise for Outlander “Marvelous and fantastic adventures, romance, sex . . . perfect escape reading.”—San Francisco Chronicle “History comes deliciously alive on the page.”—New York Daily News




Scottish Golf Links


Book Description

Lowe takes us along the rugged eastern coast, from St. Andrews up to Montrose and Cruden Bay and Royal Aberdeen, "from heather, whin and sand, to points north," to Nairn and Dornoch. Then to the west coast, to Prestwick and Troon. It's not only the courses themselves that Lowe illuminates along the way, but the winding roads, the ancient villages, the farms and whiskey distilleries, and the people who call this land their home as well. Each step of his pilgrimage is given its due.




A Course Called Scotland


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “One of the best golf books this century.” —Golf Digest Tom Coyne’s A Course Called Scotland is a heartfelt and humorous celebration of his quest to play golf on every links course in Scotland, the birthplace of the game he loves. For much of his adult life, bestselling author Tom Coyne has been chasing a golf ball around the globe. When he was in college, studying abroad in London, he entered the lottery for a prized tee time in Scotland, grabbing his clubs and jumping the train to St. Andrews as his friends partied in Amsterdam; later, he golfed the entirety of Ireland’s coastline, chased pros through the mini-tours, and attended grueling Qualifying Schools in Australia, Canada, and Latin America. Yet, as he watched the greats compete, he felt something was missing. Then one day a friend suggested he attempt to play every links course in Scotland and qualify for the greatest championship in golf. The result is A Course Called Scotland, “a fast-moving, insightful, often funny travelogue encompassing the width of much of the British Isles” (GolfWeek), including St. Andrews, Turnberry, Dornoch, Prestwick, Troon, and Carnoustie. With his signature blend of storytelling, humor, history, and insight, Coyne weaves together his “witty and charming” (Publishers Weekly) journey to more than 100 legendary courses in Scotland with compelling threads of golf history and insights into the contemporary home of golf. As he journeys Scotland in search of the game’s secrets, he discovers new and old friends, rediscovers the peace and power of the sport, and, most importantly, reaffirms the ultimate connection between the game and the soul. It is “a must-read” (Golf Advisor) rollicking love letter to Scotland and golf as no one has attempted it before.




Scottish Journey


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Hell of a Journey


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Hell of a Journey describes what is arguably the last great journey to be undertaken in Britain: the entire Scottish Highlands on foot in one winter. On one level it is a vivid and evocative account of a remarkable trek - never attempted before - on another it celebrates the uniqueness of the Highlands, the scenery and ecology of 'the last wilderness in Europe'. The challenge Mike Cawthorne set himself was to climb all 135 of Scotland's 1,000-metre peaks, which stretch in an unbroken chain through the heart of the Highlands, from Sutherland to the Eastern Cairngorms, down to Loch Lomond, and west to Glencoe. His route traversed the most spectacular landscape in Scotland, linking every portion of wilderness, and was completed in the midst of the harshest winter conditions imaginable. Acclaimed on its first publication in 2000, this edition contains an epilogue in which Mike Cawthorne reflects on his trek and wonders what has changed since he carried it out. He warns that 'wild land in Scotland has never been under greater threat'. Hell of a Journey is a reminder of what we could so easily lose forever.




Jimmy Reid


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Jimmy Reid's funeral in 2010 was attended by Gordon Brown the former Prime Minister, Alex Salmond the First Minister and other leading politicians. Eulogies were given by his friends Sir Alex Ferguson and Billy Connolly. Crowds lined the streets for the funeral cortege. The Daily Telegraph described Reid as the 'greatest MP Scotland never had' in its obituary. Yet to date there has been no biography of the man who was an iconic figure in Scotland and hugely popular both as a politician and then as a TV and media commentator. Written with the approval and input of his family and friends it provides an insight into the man and his life. MacAskill's biography describes Jimmy Reid's rich and varied life from his upbringing in Govan, a senior full time official for the Communist Party of Great Britain, as well as his role in the Upper Clyde Shipbuilder's work-in which ran for 16 months from June 1971 to October 1972. He was active in the trade union movement, and his political career took him from the CPGB to the Labour Party and eventually to the SNP and the cause of Scottish independence. The biography also covers his later career in the media as an acclaimed newspaper and magazine columnist and gifted television presenter. Underpinning the personal story is Scotland's changing political landscape, transforming a land of council housing and manufacturing industry to owner occupied and financial services.




The Marches


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This father-and-son trek through the history and landscape of the United Kingdom is “a sensitive exploration of what borders mean and don’t mean” (The Wall Street Journal). In The Places in Between, Rory Stewart walked some of the most dangerous borderlands in the world. Now he travels with his eighty-nine-year-old father—a comical, wily, courageous, and infuriating former British intelligence officer—along the border they call home. On Stewart’s four-hundred-mile walk across a magnificent natural landscape, he sleeps on mountain ridges and in housing projects, in hostels and farmhouses. With every fresh encounter—from an Afghanistan veteran based on Hadrian’s Wall to a shepherd who still counts his flock in sixth-century words—Stewart uncovers more about the forgotten peoples and languages of a vanished country, now crushed between England and Scotland. Stewart and his father are drawn into unsettling reflections on landscape, their parallel careers in the bygone British Empire and Iraq, and the past, present, and uncertain future of the United Kingdom. And as the end approaches, the elder Stewart’s stubborn charm transforms this chronicle of nations into a fierce, exuberant encounter between a father and a son. “[Stewart] anchors his lively mix of history, travelogue, and reportage on local communities in a vibrant portrait of his father, who was both a tartan-wearing Scotsman and a thoroughly British soldier and diplomat.”—Publishers Weekly “Stewart brings a humane empathy to his encounters with people and landscape.”—The Washington Post “An unforgettable tale.” —National Geographic