Fiction
Birlinn & Polygon New TiTles 2015
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Birlinn Limited was established in 1992 by Managing Director Hugh Andrew, and is comprised of a number of imprints. Birlinn publishes Scottish and general UK interest books, from biography to history, military history, sport and Scottish Gaelic. Children’s books are also included in this list. The name comes from the old Norse word ‘birlinn’, meaning a long boat or small galley used especially in the Hebrides and West Highlands of Scotland in the Middle Ages. Polygon publishes literary fiction and poetry, both classic and modern, from Scottish writers such as Robin Jenkins, George Mackay Brown and the author of the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Alexander McCall Smith, as well as selected music and film titles. International writers including Jan-Philipp Sendker, Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti are also published under this imprint. Polygon was originally set up by students of Edinburgh University in the late 1960s. Arena Sport is Birlinn’s sport imprint and is designed for the general trade. The sport books range from football and rugby, to golf and cycling. These books have an international as well as national appeal. Arena’s first titles were published in June 2013. John Donald publishes academic books.
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2015 NEW TITLES BIRLINN POLYGON ARENA SPORT JOHN DONALD
www.birlinn.co.uk
CONTENTS FICTION 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 14 15
The Revolving Door of Life Alexander McCall Smith Stories of Love Alexander McCall Smith Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party Alexander McCall Smith Precious and the Zebra Necklace Alexander McCall Smith Shore to Shore Kevin MacNeil A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle Hugh MacDiarmid Wasp Ian Garbutt Friend & Foe Shirley McKay Queen & Country Shirley McKay Whisky from Small Glasses Denzil Meyrick Dark Suits and Sad Songs Denzil Meyrick The Good Priest Gillian Galbraith Troubled Waters Gillian Galbraith British Bulldog Sara Sheridan The Art of Waiting Christopher Jory Penelope’s Web Christopher Rush Lie of the Land Michael F. Russell Dacre’s War Rosemary Goring Ascension Gregory Dowling I Knew George Wyllie Jan Patience & Louise Wyllie Magicians of Scotland Ron Butlin
NON-FICTION 16 16 17 18 18 19 20 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 26 26 27 27 28 29 29
SY StorY Donald Murray & Douglas Robertson Set in Stone Alan McKirdy Sikkim Andrew Duff Nicola Sturgeon: Biography David Torrance Salmond: Against the Odds David Torrance Self-sacrifice Struan Stevenson Famous for a Reason Charles MacLean 101 Gins Ian Buxton The Scottish Berries Bible Sue Lawrence Venison Bible Nichola Fletcher Cruachan! Marian Pallister Understanding Scottish Buildings Daniel MacCannell The Best of Scotland John Macleod None Dare Oppose John Macleod A History of Scotland Alistair Moffat The History of Scotland without the Boring Bits Ian Crofton Scotland Forever Iain Gale Corunna Max Benitz Whispering Oats Mary C. Carmichael The Scottish Railway Atlas David Spaven Little Sparta Jessie Sheeler Impossible Gardening Rosa Steppanova
CONTENTS CHILDREN’S 30 31 31 32 33
Sixteen String Jack Tom Pow Silver Skin Joan Lennon The Secret Dog Joe Friedman Peter Pan Stephen White Here Come the Trolls! Ron Butlin
NEW EDITIONS 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 37 38 39 40 40 40 41 41
Rowing After the White Whale James Adair Orkney: A Historical Guide Caroline Wickham-Jones The World’s End Murders Tom Wood & David Johnston The Scottish Empire Michael Fry Lismore Robert Hay In the Front Line Alec Glen Heist Paul Smith St Kilda Roger Hutchinson A Capital View Alyssa Popiel Shredded Ian Fraser Hebridean Calendar 2016 Mairi Hedderwick Hebridean Pocket Diary 2016 Mairi Hedderwick Hebridean Desk Diary 2016 Mairi Hedderwick The Great Tapestry of Scotland Calendar 2016 Andrew Crummy The Puffer Cookbook Calendar 2016 David Hawson
SPORT 42 43 44 45
Lost John Deering No Straight Lines Edmond Hood Behind the Shamrock Tom English Money Tris Dixon
JOHN DONALD 46 46 47 47 48 48 49 49 50 50
The Cradle of Chemistry Robert W. G. Anderson A Maritime History of Scotland Eric Graham Voices of the Forest Mairi Stewart Vikings in Islay Alan Macniven The Wolf of Badenoch Stephen Boardman The Antonine Wall David Breeze The Campbells of the Ark Ronald Black Our Ashes Glow with Social Fires Davies, Granger, Jupp, White & Raeburn Dr Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish, 187 –1945 Annie Tindley & Ewen Cameron The Legacy of Rome Lawrence Keppie
Fiction
Alexander McCall Smith The Revolving Door of Life A 44 Scotland Street Novel ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH is one of the world’s most prolific and most popular authors. For many years he was a professor of Medical Law, then, after the publication of his highly successful No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which has sold over twenty-five million copies, he devoted his time to the writing of fiction and has seen his various series of books translated into over fortysix languages and become bestsellers throughout the world.
Praise for the 44 Scotland Street series:
‘A treasure of a writer whose books deserve immediate devouring’
A chance encounter with Armistead Maupin in San Francisco inspired Alexander McCall Smith to write this series of novels based around the fictional No. 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh’s New Town. On his return to Edinburgh he agreed to write a serial novel through the pages of the Scotsman newspaper. These daily episodes were then published in the first of now ten books, 44 Scotland Street. Today, fans around the world follow the series which continues to appear in the Scotsman for four months every year.
The Times
Stories of Love
‘It is hard to think of a contemporary writer more genuinely engaging...[his] novels are also extremely funny: I find it impossible to think about them without smiling’
Shorn of context, unknown people look out to us from old and anonymous photographs, and each image has magical appeal. Alexander McCall Smith, one of the world’s best-loved writers, has reimagined the stories of these individuals in this charming, humorous, unexpected and poignant collection.
Mail on Sunday
‘As charming as the bohemian street in which it’s set’ Daily Record
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Catch up with all your favourite faces down in Scotland Street as we follow their daily pursuit of a little happiness. The Revolving Door of Life is the tenth book in this series and revolves around the many colourful characters that come and go at No. 44 Scotland Street. McCall Smith handles the characters with his customary charm and deftness – the stalwart Tory chartered surveyor, the pushy mother, and, perhaps most importantly, the beleaguered Italian-speaking prodigy, Bertie. This is classic McCall Smith – clever, witty and entertaining – and beautifully illustrated.
The 15 photographs captured here are all from days long gone – some are formal in setting with a sepia tone, some are hazy family snaps. Every one of these images is powerful and intriguing in its own way and in Alexander’s hands, each reveals a story of love . Format: 178 x 114mm hbk Price: £9.99
ISBN: 9781846973291 Rights: UK & Commonwealth November 2015
ISBN: 9781846973284 Price: £16.99 Format: 216 x 138mm hbk Rights: UK & Commonwealth August 2015
Fiction
Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party Praise for Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party:
It takes a lot to get under the skin of Cornelius ‘Fatty’ O’Leary, but then there is a lot of skin to get under.
‘All you can eat platter of humour . . . once again McCall Smith doles out an appropriately extralarge helping of fun’
The heroically proportioned Fatty can normally take life as it comes. Right at home in easy-going Fayetteville, Arkansas, he is happily married to his childhood sweetheart Betty, and likes nothing better than the company of good friends Tubby O’Rourke and Porky Flanagan. But when Fatty and Betty head off to Ireland on the trip of a lifetime, they find that they have left their comfort zone far behind. Calamity and mayhem ensue as one mishap after another befalls the beleaguered couple.
Scotland on Sunday
‘McCall Smith’s generous writing and dry humour, his gentleness and humanity, and his ability to evoke a place and a set of characters without caricature or condescension have endeared his books to readers’
Can Fatty’s broad shoulders take the strain or will he suffer one indignity too many? Will he get his just deserts, or just dessert? Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £7.99 176pp
ISBN: 9781846973239 Rights: UK & Commonwealth April 2015
The New York Times 9781846972454 £9.99 hbk 9781846972638 £7.99 pbk
Precious and the Zebra Necklace Precious and the Mystery of the Missing Lion was shortlisted for Scottish Children’s Book of the Year.
Praise for the Precious series:
‘Great for children, and one for grown-up fans to sneak a read of too!’ Bookbag ‘This delightful tale for children reveals how the young Precious became the crafty and intuitive private investigator we all know and love!’ Western Morning News
Once upon a time in the African country of Botswana, there was a little girl who would grow up to be one of the most famous detectives in the world: Precious Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. When Precious finds out that all schoolfriend Nancy has of her missing parents is a photograph and a necklace, she offers to help. Precious and Nancy find themselves on an exciting adventure that takes them into the remotest parts of Botswana in their search for Nancy’s family. Format: 185 x 125mm hbk
ISBN: 9781846973048
Price: £9.99
Rights: English language (UK, Europe & Commonwealth) July 2015
9781846973185 9781846972546 £6.99 pbk £6.99 pbk
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Fiction
Kevin MacNeil (editor) Shore to Shore
KEVIN MACNEIL was born and raised in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Novelist, poet, playwright, editor, aphorist and lyricist, his books include A Method Actor’s Guide to Jekyll and Hyde, The Stornoway Way, Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides and Be Wise, Be Otherwise. He was the editor of These Islands, We Sing.
Gaelic, now regarded as a minority language, was once spoken in almost every part of Scotland. The descendants of the Gaels are scattered far and wide across the world – a diaspora that is at once cherished and overlooked. This unique book brings vividly to life, in poetry and prose, the Gaelic experience as it was, is and might be. In exclusively commissioned poems and essays, leading Gaelic writers offer perspectives that are by turns innovative, inspiring, heartfelt and provocative. From Gaelic raps to secular psalms, love poems to aphorisms, ceilidhs to collateral damage via Western modernity, Shore to Shore memorably demonstrates editor Kevin MacNeil’s assertion that inside every culture is to be found the whole human condition. Format: 198 x 156mm pbk Price: £9.99 120pp
ISBN: 9781846973178 Rights: World March 2015
Hugh MacDiarmid A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle Edited by Kenneth Buthlay
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HUGH MACDIARMID was born Christopher Murray Grieve in 1892 in the Scottish Borders. He started out as a journalist, working in Scotland and Wales before joining the Royal Army Medical Corps on the outbreak of the First World War. MacDiarmid was an ardent believer in socialism, later communism, and he was a founding member of the Scottish National Party in 1928. A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle was MacDiarmid’s second poetry collection, published in 1926. He died in 1978.
Hugh MacDiarmid’s masterpiece in Scots, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, is a richly rewarding work encompassing fine lyrics, hard-hitting satires of contemporary Scotland and displays of metaphysical wit. The stream of consciousness of the ‘drunk man’ of the poem twists and turns as he reflects on the fate of the nation, the human condition in general and his own personal fears. Kenneth Buthlay’s thoroughly annotated and glossed edition of MacDiarmid’s work is widely considered to be definitive, guiding the reader through the poem’s often dense allusions and complex language. Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £12.99 264pp
ISBN: 9781846970269 Rights: World February 2015
Fiction
Ian Garbutt Wasp
Or, A Very Sweet Power
IAN GARBUTT has worked in journalism and publishing. He was awarded a Scottish Arts Council New Writer’s Bursary and attended Napier University, in Edinburgh, where he obtained a Master of Arts with Distinction in Creative Writing.
For a gentleman seeking more prestigious company amidst the seedy bawdy houses of an eighteenth-century city, the House of Masques provides the perfect no-touch escorts. Girls, highly educated and socially trained, are geisha-like status symbols for politicians, bankers and minor royalty. But these girls are the condemned, the exiled and the abandoned, who are given new identities to service the needs of the House. Among them is the Abbess, the white-haired proprietor, the Fixer, a disgraced surgeon, and Kingfisher, an African tribesman who is now a slave. Into this world comes Bethany Harris, a disgraced governess who has been rescued from a madhouse and transformed into the Masque, Wasp. She soon discovers that everyone in the House has a past, and that personal horrors, coupled with dark ambition, are leading to a crisis that not only threatens to destroy the House of Masques and everyone in it, but reaches to the heart of government and the throne itself. ISBN: 9781846973079 Price: £12.99 Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Rights: UK & Commonwealth March 2015 368pp
Hummingbird leans forward and clasps Wasp’s knee. ‘We all inhabit a half-world, a demi-monde. It draws admiration yet allows people to socially exclude you in the same turn. Ladies will curse you for a harlot yet slavishly copy your fashion. Society has built a complex house. We can ascend to the top, but only if we are shut in a separate room.’ She gestures at the onlookers’ rapt faces. ‘They all come here to see us. To try and touch the stars. Never underestimate your power. You need only to be spotted in public wearing a new style of choker and within a week a score of society ladies will parrot the fashion. Charm is also a powerful weapon. With it you can turn a papist to a Baptist in the breath of a sentence.’ Wasp peers out of the window. ‘Those men watching, they remind me of hungry dogs.’ ‘Things can get out of hand. Last month the landau belonging to one famous courtesan struck a pothole as big as a pit and snapped the axle. Her carriage was mobbed. Grown men scrambled like urchins around a dropped farthing. Items were snatched: a strip of lace from her sleeve, a bead from her reticule. She was plundered like a shipwreck.’ Hummingbird laughed. ‘Don’t go so wide-eyed, Sister. Leonardo will look after us. Sit back and enjoy the 5 ride.’
Fiction
Shirley McKay Friend & Foe
A Hew Cullan Mystery SHIRLEY MCKAY was born in Tynemouth but now lives with her family in Fife. At the age of fifteen she won the Young Observer playwriting competition, her play being performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. She went on to study English and Linguistics at the University of St Andrews before attending Durham University for postgraduate study in Romantic and
St Andrews, 1583. The young King James VI is confined at Falkland Palace, plotting his escape. Dissension rages between Kirk and Crown, the king and his ‘lord enterprisers’, and between the separate factions of the church. In St Andrews Castle, a bishop in decline plays out his darkest fantasies, while Hew and his friend Giles investigate the true source of his sickness, uncovering corruption at its heart. The death of a young soldier, implicating Hew’s sister and Giles’s wife Meg, leads Hew to an astonishing discovery, and towards his blackest hour, his fortunes inextricable from those of James himself. Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £7.99 320pp
ISBN: 9781846973222 Rights: World English Language February 2015
Seventeenth-Century prose. She was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger.
Praise for Friend & Foe:
‘Intoxicating mix of dramatic crime and repressed passion’ New Books
‘A gripping mystery that holds the reader to the very last page, and a marvellous portrait of St Andrews in the sixteenth century’ John Burnside
Queen & Country A Hew Cullan Mystery
1587. Three years after his enforced departure to London, Hew is reconciled with King James VI and recalled to Scotland. He elopes to St Andrews with a young Englishwoman. The death of Mary, Queen of Scots has unleashed a wave of anti-English sentiment among the Scottish people, and fear and confusion in the king himself. James will grant his blessing to their controversial marriage on the condition that Hew discovers what lies behind a painting cunningly contrived to prick the young king’s conscience – an anamorphic death’s-head with his mother’s face. Meanwhile in St Andrews, the death of a painter is troubling to Giles Locke, and the English Frances, struggling to adapt to a foreign town and culture, helps Hew find the link among the artists and intriguers of opposing courts, a quest for love – and life - requiring all his skills. Format: 229 x 150mm pbk Price: £12.99
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ISBN: 9781846973123 Rights: World English Language September 2015
9781846971525 £8.99 pbk
9781846971808 £8.99 pbk
9781846972188 £8.99 pbk
Fiction
Denzil Meyrick Whisky from Small Glasses A DCI Daley Thriller DENZIL MEYRICK was born in Glasgow and brought up in Campbeltown. After studying politics, he pursued a varied career including time spent as a police officer, freelance journalist, and director of several companies in the engineering, leisure and marketing sectors. He lives in Loch Lomondside with his wife Fiona.
DCI Jim Daley is sent from the city to investigate a murder after the body of a woman is washed up on an idyllic beach on the West Coast of Scotland. Far away from urban resources, he finds himself a stranger in a close-knit community. Love, betrayal, fear and death stalk the small town, as Daley investigates a case that becomes more deadly than he could possibly imagine, in this compelling novel infused with intrigue and dark humour. Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £8.99 February 2015
ISBN: 9781846973215 Rights: English language (UK, Europe & Commonwealth)
Praise for The Last Witness:
‘Touches of dark humour, multi-layered and compelling’ Daily Record
‘The right amount of authenticity ... gritty writing ... most memorable’ Herald
‘Has the ability to give even the least important person in the plot character and the skill to tell a good tale’ Scots Magazine
‘Soon to be mentioned in the same breath as authors such as Alex Gray, Denise Mina and Stuart Macbride ... very impressive’ Ian Baillie, Lennox Herald 9781846972881 £8.99 pbk
Dark Suits and Sad Songs A DCI Daley Thriller
When a senior Edinburgh civil servant spectacularly takes his own life in Kinloch harbour, DCI Jim Daley comes face to face with the murky world of politics. To add to his woes, two local drug dealers lie dead, ritually assassinated. It’s clear that dark forces are at work in the town. With his boss under investigation, his marriage hanging on by a thread, and his sidekick DS Scott wrestling with his own demons, Daley’s world is in meltdown. When strange lights appear in the sky over Kinloch, it becomes clear that the townsfolk are not the only people at risk. The fate of nations is at stake. Jim Daley must face his worst fears as tragedy strikes. This is not just about a successful investigation, it’s about survival. Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £8.99 May 2015
ISBN: 9781846973154 Rights English language (UK, Europe & Commonwealth)
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Fiction
Gillian Galbraith The Good Priest
A Father Vincent Ross Mystery GILLIAN GALBRAITH grew up near Haddington. For seventeen years she was an advocate specialising in medical negligence and agricultural law cases. She also worked for a spell as an agony aunt in teenagers’ magazines.
In the house of a Roman Catholic bishop a man lies in a pool of blood. Out in the bishop’s diocese the quiet life of parish priest Father Vincent Ross is about to be thrown into turmoil by a terrifying revelation. There are ugly scandals being hidden by the church he has served for so long, and a murderer is on the prowl. The police and the authorities are groping in the dark, but Father Ross has been given special information that he cannot disclose to anyone. It gradually dawns on him that he and he alone can unravel the mystery and to do this he must put his personal safety, his reputation and finally his life on the line.
Since then, she has been the legal correspondent for the Scottish Farmer and has written law reports for The Times.
Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £7.99 256pp
ISBN: 9781846973109 Rights: World English Language April 2015
She lives deep in the country near Kinross with her husband and daughter, plus assorted cats, dogs, hens and bees.
Praise for Gillian Galbraith:
‘Highly readable’ Alexander McCall Smith
‘An author to watch’ Publishing News
‘[Galbraith] offers a much needed female perspective on the city and the genre’ Scottish Field
Troubled Waters An Alice Rice Mystery
A young, disabled girl is lost on a winter’s night in Leith, unable to help herself or find her way home. Someone is combing the streets, frantically searching for her. Within hours of her disappearance, a body is washed up on Beamer Rock, a tiny island in the Forth being used as part of the foundations for the new Queensferry Bridge. No sooner has Detective Inspector Alice Rice managed to discover the identity of that body than another one is washed up on the edge of the estuary, in Belhaven Bay. What is the connection between the two bodies? Has the killer any other victims in their sights and if so, can Alice solve the puzzle before another life is taken? In this novel, the sixth in the series, appearances belie reality, and truths and falsehoods gradually merge, becoming indistinguishable. Format: pbk Price: £7.99
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ISBN: 9781846973161 Rights: World English Language September 2015
Fiction
Sara Sheridan British Bulldog
A Mirabelle Bevan Mystery British Bulldog sees Mirabelle on the trail of an RAF pilot who went missing during the war and mysteriously never came home.
SARA SHERIDAN writes fiction for adults and children. Previous recent novels include The Secret Mandarin (2009) and Secret of the Sands (2011), both published by HarperCollins. She studied English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin. Sara sits on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland and was Project Manager for the 26 Treasures Project in Scotland 2011. Sara is very active on Facebook and Twitter and has her own website – www.sarasheridan.co.uk. She lives in Edinburgh with her family.
Her search takes her to Paris where she discovers an espionage operation smuggling secrets out of Russia. Her investigations also uncover some unwelcome truths about her wartime lover Jack and the true nature of his intelligence work in France. This is the fourth installment in Sara Sheridan’s best-selling cosy crime noir series featuring heroine Mirabelle Bevan. ISBN: 9781846973253 Price: £16.99 Format: 234 x 156mm hbk Rights: World English Language May 2015
Praise for the series:
‘Mirabelle has a dogged tenacity to rival Poirot’ Sunday Herald
‘I was gripped from start to finish’
9781846972287 £7.99 pbk
9781846972430 £16.99 hbk
9781846972812 £16.99 hbk
9781846972652 £7.99 pbk
9781846972904 £7.99 pbk
Newbooks
‘Unfailingly stylish, undeniably smart’ Daily Record
‘Plenty of colour and action, will engage the reader from the first page to the last. Highly recommended’ Bookbag
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Fiction
Christopher Jory The Art of Waiting A Novel
Russia, 1943. A girl from Leningrad, a soldier from Venice, stand together on the edge of wilderness. He is a shadow of a man, trapped behind wire, an enemy in her land. She takes something from her pocket, slips her hand through the wire, and catches her skin on one of the barbs. Up comes a tiny sphere of blood. CHRISTOPHER JORY was born in 1968 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He spent his early childhood in Barbados, Venezuela and finally Oxfordshire. He did a degree in English Literature and Philosophy at Leicester University and then worked as an English teacher for the British Council and other organisations in Italy, Spain, Crete, Brazil and Venezuela. He is currently a Publisher at Cambridge University Press. His first book, Lost in the Flames (Troubadour, 2011), is a moving account of RAF Bomber Command airmen and their families.
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‘Have this,’ the man takes the gift – a small crust of bread, a little piece of hope. Its memory will keep him alive on his long journey home. And when home again, which way will he tip, which sentiment will be strongest? His quiet love for the girl who saved his life, his unfulfilled desire for vengeance, a burning desire to see Fausto Pozzi finally pay the price for the terrible thing that he has done? ISBN: 9781846973086 Price: £12.99 Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Rights: World April 2015 304pp
A whistle blew and the trucks pulled away and as he was passing out through the gate, Aldo looked over to where the Romanian stood digging at the earth beneath the gaze of the guard. Then the guard looked at his watch and raised his rifle. The Romanian stopped digging and looked at the guard. There was the sound of a shot and the Romanian fell into the semi-dug grave. Aldo spent the rest of the day chopping logs into bits, lifting the dead weight of his axe time after time, but all the while he thought of Katerina. What on earth had compelled her to come over to him, to risk herself for him? Why him out of all the others in the camp? And anyway, wasn’t he the enemy? Shouldn’t she be afraid of him? Shouldn’t she hate his guts? As he dwelt on what she had done, he allowed himself to dream, that one day the world might be at peace and he and Katerina might meet again after the war, and she would come to visit him at his home in Venice, and he would show the most beautiful person in the world the most beautiful city that had ever existed. And they would be together there forever, that’s how it would be. He was still thinking of her late that night as he lay on the concrete floor of the bunker and listened to men all around him tormented in their sleep. And as he wondered if she really would come back to see him again, he was suddenly aware of it, that feeling again, something he had forgotten, something lighting up in him, something she had lit in him. It was hope. And he loved her for it.
Fiction
Christopher Rush Penelope’s Web
CHRISTOPHER RUSH was born in St Monans and taught literature for thirty years in Edinburgh. His books include A Twelvemonth and a Day and the highly acclaimed To Travel Hopefully. A Twelvemonth and a Day served as inspiration for the film Venus Peter, released in 1989. The story was also reworked by Rush in a simplified version in 1992 as a children’s picture book, Venus Peter Saves the Whale, illustrated by Mairi Hedderwick, which won the Friends of the Earth 1993 Earthworm Award for the book published that year that would most help children to enjoy and care for the Earth.
Odysseus returns to Ithaca after nearly twenty years, half of it spent as a soldier and the other half as a soldier of fortune. During his absence his wife Penelope remained faithful, despite Odysseus being missing and presumed dead, but when her husband suddenly reappears he confronts those who have been trying to seduce his wife and kills them all. The perspectives of Odysseus and Penelope question one another, as do their distinctly contrasting voices, the lines between them often blurring as the reader is led deeper into the question of what constitutes reality and truth. Odysseus’ account of his long journey home (his womanising, uncertainties and ambivalence about home) contrasts with Penelope’s web version, into which she weaves an idealised account of that reality, and one much more flattering to her and to her (apparently) faithful and heroic husband.
9781846972782 £9.99 pbk
Praise for Will:
‘Startlingly poetic – excellent’ The Spectator
‘This fictional autobiography does more than eulogize – Burgess is the only other novelist to pass this test’ Times Literary Supplement
‘A brilliantly witty and imaginative piece of writing’ Classic FM
ISBN: 9781846973093 Price: £12.99 Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Rights: World August 2015
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Fiction
Michael F. Russell Lie of the Land For investigative journalist Carl Shewan, the Scottish coastal village of Inverlair is a picturesque cage.
MICHAEL F. RUSSELL grew up on the Isle of Barra before leaving to study Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow, followed by a postgraduate diploma in Journalism Studies at the University of Strathclyde. He is deputy editor at the West Highland Free Press and writes occasionally for the Sunday Herald. His writing has appeared in Gutter, Northwords Now and Fractured West.
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Imprisoned in this remote refuge by a technological catastrophe for which he feels partly responsible, Carl struggles to adapt to impending fatherhood and to a harsh new existence in an ancient landscape, until a childless gamekeeper offers him an alternative to guilt and alienation. ISBN: 9781846973192 Price: £12.99 Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Rights: World June 2015
Some way off the road was a derelict old house, windowless, with a ragged corrugated-iron roof. To his left, the hills rose to the fissured rocky summit of Ben Bronach, and beyond, to the deer forest. After a few minutes Carl got up and, standing at the roadblock with his hands in his coat pockets, considered the road ahead. He stepped over the painted boulders. Maybe today was the day when the world would open up again. He could drive away from Inverlair. He could leave Room 14 and Simone and the baby, today, the eighty-second day of his confinement. This would be the last day he’d have to spend here, in this prison refuge. The redzone would open. Its signal would fail. He took Howard’s deltameter out of his pocket and watched the EMF waveform on the screen, spiking at 85 microtesla today, close to the active neural level. Another hundred metres or so and, he knew, the buzzing sound would start in his head. Another two hundred after that and the pain would skewer through his head, from temple to temple. Any further and sleep was death. Today was not the day. But he’d known that anyway. There would be no escape. Even Before he took his dead friend’s gadget out of his pocket to check the signal he knew what it would tell him.
Fiction
Rosemary Goring Dacre’s War The sequel to Rosemary Goring’s acclaimed After Flodden. ROSEMARY GORING was born in Dunbar and studied social and economic history at the University of St Andrews. She was the literary editor of Scotland on Sunday, followed by a brief spell as editor of Life & Work, the Church of Scotland’s magazine, before returning to newspapers as literary editor of the Herald, and later also of the Sunday Herald. In 2007 she published Scotland: The Autobiography: 2000 Years of Scottish History By Those Who Saw it Happen, which has since been published in America and Russia.
9781846972720 £14.99 hbk 9781846972836 £8.99 pbk
Praise for After Flodden:
‘A well-crafted tale which drives forward with unremitting pace’ Scotland on Sunday
‘A swashbuckling tale in the best tradition of adventure fiction ... charged with melancholy and menace’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Goring has a fine story to tell, a keen sense of place, and the ability to evoke mood. It’s a compelling and gripping novel’
Dacre’s War is a story of personal and political vengeance. Ten years after the battle of Flodden, Adam Crozier, head of his clan and of an increasingly powerful alliance of Borderers, learns for sure that it was Lord Thomas Dacre – now the most powerful man in the north of England – who ordered his father’s murder. He determines to take his revenge. As a fighting man, Crozier would like nothing better than to bring Dacre down face to face but his wife Louise advises him that he must use more subtle methods. So he sets out to engineer Dacre’s downfall by turning the machinery of the English court against him. A vivid and fast-moving tale of political intrigue and heartache, Dacre’s War is set against the backdrop of the Scottish and English borders, a land where there is never any chance of peace. ISBN: 9781846973116 Price: £14.99 Format: 215 x 153mm hbk Rights: UK & Commonwealth excl Canada May 2015
The Fleet Prison, 1488-9 The river seeped into his clothes, food and dreams. In the first few days after the key turned in the lock behind him and the bolts were thrown, the stench of oily water and tidal slime was his only companion. The cell’s walls glistened, as if from the poisonous breath that crept under the iron door and through the shuttered bars. A hand put to the bare bricks came away damp and smelling of rot. Some nights he caught a whiff of putrid flesh, borne downstream at a doleful pace. Whether it was a corpse, a dead cat, or merely butcher’s scraps, he did not care to know. He pulled his cloak over his nose and turned to the wall, hoping for a cleansing breeze to freshen the air. Weeks later, it had yet to appear. After Christmas came the cold. London turned white and brittle under frost and snow, and though the prisoner’s meagre ration of coal did no more than melt the icicles on the low ceiling, he did not complain. The chill had cleared the air. As he rubbed his knuckles and stamped his feet, he found his appetite. Wolfing the bread and broth his servant brought each evening, he longed for ale and lark pies, for roasted boar and hot-smoked eels, but such fare was not allowed in this place. Each day his ribs lost an ounce more fat, in time growing as taut to the touch as the bars at his needle-thin window.
Scotsman 13
Fiction
Gregory Dowling Ascension A Novel GREGORY DOWLING grew up in Bristol before studying English at Christ Church, Oxford where he obtained a First Class Degree. He moved to Venice in 1981, where he is Associate Professor of American Literature at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Gregory has published four novels, co-edited two anthologies of poetry, written various non-fiction books, and academic articles. He is non-fiction editor for the journal Able Muse and editor of the British section of the Italian poetry-journal Semicerchio, and writes for and regularly updates the sightseeing pages of the Time Out Guide to Venice.
This novel is set in Venice in the mideighteenth century, when the city had lost its political and financial primacy but had become Europe’s pleasure capital, famous for its gambling dens, its courtesans, its hectic carnival, its music, art and theatre – and the most highly organised secret service in Europe. The hero-narrator is Alvise Marangon, a Venetian in his early twenties who is unwillingly recruited into the Secret Service. Ascension is a witty, pacy spy thriller. Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Price: £12.99
ISBN: 9781846973130 Rights: World September 2015
Jan Patience & Louise Wyllie I Knew George Wyllie 1921 – 2012 Voyage of a Lifetime I Knew George Wyllie has been co-written by his elder daughter, Louise Wyllie, and arts journalist, Jan Patience. Containing never-before-seen images and fresh insight into his influences and early life, this book seeks to answer questions about the forces which shaped Wyllie’s unique view of the world. The voyage begins with Wyllie’s Glasgow childhood; a period ‘disadvantaged by happiness’, and moves on to time spent serving in the Pacific with the Royal Navy during WW2, when he witnessed first-hand the devastation caused by an atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. After the war, like Robert Burns and Adam Smith before him, Wyllie became an Excisemen. He made ‘time for art’ in his 40s, going on to create memorable public art works such as a life-sized Straw Locomotive, which hung from the Finnieston Crane in Glasgow, and a giant sea-worthy Paper Boat, with the letters QM (Question Mark) on her side. By the time of his death at the age of 90 in 2012, Wyllie had laid out his vision of himself as the artist-Shaman, arrow in hand, making a last Cosmic Voyage. 14
I Knew George Wyllie animates the life and times of George Wyllie, creating a vivid portrait of an artist who came into his own in later life.
ISBN: 9781846973062 September 2015
Non-Fiction
Ron Butlin Magicians of Scotland
RON BUTLIN is a poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer and opera librettist whose works have been broadcast in the UK and abroad and have been translated into many languages. His volumes of poetry include the award-winning Ragtime in Unfamiliar Bars (Secker & Warburg, 1985) and Histories of Desire (Bloodaxe, 1995). His New and Selected Poems was published by Barzan in 2005. His novels include the novels The Sound of My Voice (winner of the Prix Mille Pages 2004 and Prix Lucioles 2005, both for Best Foreign Novel), Night Visits and most recently Belonging. He was appointed Edinburgh Makar in May 2008.
The Magicians of Scotland builds upon the success of The Magicians of Edinburgh (reprinted five times) and on that book’s critical acclaim. Ron Butlin is the former Edinburgh Makar and this collection seeks to celebrate and interrogate Scotland and its people at a crucial turning point in our country’s history. Just as The Magicians of Edinburgh’s themes ranged from Sir Walter Scott to the new Parliament, from Greyfriar’s Bobby to the trams, the themes of the new collection include Scotland’s past, present and future, its landscape and people, its myths and politics – from Bannockburn, Flodden to Faslane, the Loch Ness Monster, wind farms, Hutton to Higgs, Bonnie Prince Charlie to Donald Trump. It is accessible, serious and entertaining. ISBN: 9781846972911 Price: £9.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World August 2015 112pp
Magic Edinburgh
9781846972362 £9.99 pbk
Praise for The Magicians of Edinburgh:
‘A lively collection of poems that will entertain, move and frequently amuse . . . this book confirms [Butlin] as one of our finest contemporary poets’ Alexander McCall Smith
‘The poetical genius of Butlin . . . Ron Butlin is the voice of Edinburgh’ FringeReview.com
‘Butlin is the best, the most productive Scottish poet of his generation’ Douglas Dunn
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Non-Fiction
Donald Murray & Douglas Robertson DONALD S MURRAY was born in Ness in the Isle of Lewis. An author and journalist, his poetry, prose and verse have been shortlisted for both the Saltire Award and Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. His work has also appeared in a large number of national anthologies and on BBC Radio 4 and Radio Scotland. He won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2012 and a Jessie Kesson Fellowship in 2013. His most recent book, The Guga Stone, was nominated as one of the Guardian Best Nature Books of 2013. He lives and works in Shetland. DOUGLAS ROBERTSON has exhibited widely throughout Scotland and the UK, and has collaborated with Donald Murray on a number of projects.
SY StorY
A Portrait of Stornoway Harbour Lewisman Donald S Murray tells in his inimitable verse and prose Stornoway’s story from the days when Mesolithic people sheltered there to its present-day life as a bustling, modern harbour, casting light on men and boats, native herring girls and island visitors, the town’s triumphs and tragedies. These include such events as the sinking of the Iolaire, the ship which went down with over 200 soldiers as they returned home from World War I, the departure of the Metagama to Canada in 1923, packed with islanders on their way to start a new life in North America, and the dramatic arrival of the fishing boat the Astrid, with 29 refugees from Soviet Estonia, in 1948. Accompanying the work are 20 striking and distinctive illustrations from Douglas Robertson, as well as over 30 photographs. All of this comes together to capture both the past and present of the port, making the book a delight both for those who know the town well and the many holiday-makers who explore its harbour during summer months.
ISBN: 9781780272603 Price: £12.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World January 2015 192 pp
Alan McKirdy Set in Stone The Geology and Landscapes of Scotland ALAN MCKIRDY has written many popular books and book chapters on geology and related topics and has helped to promote the study of environmental geology in schools. Before his recent retirement he was Head of Information Management at Scottish Natural Heritage.
The land that was to become Scotland has travelled across the globe over the last 3,000 million years – from close to the South Pole to its current position. During these travels, there were many continental collisions, creating mountain belts as high as the present-day Himalayas. The Highlands of Scotland were formed in this way. Our climate too has changed dramatically over the last 3 billion years from the deep freeze of the Ice Age to the scorching heat of the desert. And within a relatively short time – geologically speaking, we will plunge back into another ice age. In this book, Alan McKirdy traces Scotland’s amazing geological journey, explaining for the non –specialist reader why the landscape looks the way it does today. He also explores how Scots and those working in Scotland have played a seminal role in the development of the science of geology, understanding Earth processes at a local and global scale. Format: 246 x 189mm pbk Price: £9.99 96pp
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9781841586267 £20 pbk
ISBN: 9781780271514 Rights: World June 2015
Non-Fiction
Andrew Duff Sikkim
Requiem for a Himalayan Kingdom This is the true story of Sikkim, a tiny Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas that survived the end of the British Empire in India only to be annexed by India in 1975.
ANDREW DUFF is a freelance journalist based in London and Scotland who writes on India and related subjects. In the UK his work has appeared in The Times, The Financial Times and the Sunday Telegraph, and in India in the Times of India and the India Quarterly. He travels frequently in India and East Asia.
It tells the remarkable story of Thondup, the last King of Sikkim, and his American wife Hope Cooke, thrust unwittingly into the spotlight as they sought support for Sikkim’s independence after their ‘fairytale’ wedding in 1963. But as tensions between India and China spilled over into war in the Himalayas, Sikkim became a pawn in the Cold War ideological battle that played out in Asia during the 1960s and 1970s. Rumours circulated that Hope was a CIA spy. Meanwhile a shadowy Scottish adventuress, the Kazini of Chakung, married to Sikkim’s leading political figure, coordinated opposition to the Palace. As the geopolitical tectonic plates of the Himalayas ground together, forming the political landscape that exists today, Sikkim never stood a chance. On the eve of declaring Emergency in India, Indira Gandhi brazenly annexed the country. Thondup died a broken man in 1982; Hope returned to New York; Sikkim began a new phase as India’s 2nd state.
ISBN: 9781780272863 Price: £20 Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Rights: World May 2015 320pp
Based on interviews and archive research, as well as a retracing of a journey the author’s grandfather made in 1922, this is a thrilling, romantic and informative glimpse of life in Shangri La.
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Non-Fiction
David Torrance Nicola Sturgeon A Political Life DAVID TORRANCE was born and brought up in Edinburgh and educated at Leith Academy, Aberdeen University and Cardiff University’s School of Journalism. He was formerly political reporter for STV and is now a freelance writer, journalist and broadcaster. He lives in Edinburgh.
Praise for Salmond: Against the Odds:
‘[A] very thorough and conscientious study’ Paul Henderson Scott ‘Torrance’s work is a classic’ Dorothy Grace Elder ‘Torrance is a scrupulous, respectful biographer’ Harry Reid, The Herald
From the age of just 16, Nicola Sturgeon has devoted her life to the SNP – her determination and grit finally winning her one of Labour’s stronghold seats in Govan in 2007, a constituency she battled to win for almost a decade. Self-evidently a rising star within the SNP, when the party formed its first (minority) administration in 2007 Sturgeon swiftly became one of the Scottish Government’s most successful ministers. Her reputation for efficiency and shrewd political judgement grew even more during the referendum negotiations of 2012 and the subsequent independence campaign. By the time Alex Salmond resigned as First Minister and SNP leader in the wake of a No vote Sturgeon was viewed as his inevitable successor. Ten years earlier she’d been perceived as what some called a ‘nippy sweetie’, a street-fighting Glaswegian politician lacking Salmond’s broad populist appeal. But in the intervening period she had softened her image and even begun to outstrip her mentor and boss in terms of voter approval. As the country prepares for a General Election, Nicola Sturgeon could hold the balance of power in her hands, not just in Scotland, but in the United Kingdom.
Salmond
Against the Odds NEW POST-REFERENDUM EDITION Alex Salmond is known throughout Scotland, the UK and beyond as the leader of the Scottish National Party and Scotland’s First Minister, but relatively little is understood about Salmond as a human being, what makes him a Nationalist, what shaped his political views, and what sort of country he believes an independent Scotland can be. In this biography, with which close colleagues and friends have co-operated, acclaimed political biographer David Torrance turns his attention to one of the most capable and interesting politicians Scotland has produced in the last few decades. Utilising a raft of published and unpublished material, Torrance charts the life and career of Alex Salmond from his schooldays right up to the SNP’s victory at the 2011 Scottish election.
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Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £12.99 448p 16pp b/w plate section
ISBN: 9781780272979 Rights: World March 2015
ISBN: 9781780272962 Price: £8.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World March 2015 208pp 8pp col plate section
Non-Fiction
Struan Stevenson Self-sacrifice Life with the Mojahedin
STRUAN STEVENSON has served as a Conservative Euro MEP for Scotland since 1999. He is President of the Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development Intergroup and Chairman of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq. In 2010 he was appointed by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation Europe (OSCE) as a Personal Representative (Roving Ambassador) of the Chairman in Office (Kazakhstan) responsible for Ecology and Environment with a particular focus on Central Asia. His book, Stalin’s Legacy, was published in August 2012 and So Much Wind in February 2013.
The People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) is an Iranian opposition movement in exile and the key component of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Regarded as a terrorist organization in the EU until 2009, and in the USA and Canada until 2012, it renounced violence in 2001. Whilst its leaders are based in Paris, some 3,500 are currently held in Camp Liberty, near Baghdad Airport, in appalling conditions. In this book, former MEP Struan Stevenson tells how he became an active collaborator and supporter of the PMOI, visiting Baghdad and Erbil on several occasions and meeting political and religious leaders, despite being warned to sever links with the organization by the UK government and MI5, and facing constant threats and smear campaigns from the Iranian mullahs. He exposes the brutality of the clerical regime in Iran and their execution of over 130,000 PMOI supporters, interspersing his own story with short interviews with PMOI political prisoners who were tortured and held in inhumane conditions. His excoriating conclusion lays the blame for the escalating crisis in the Middle East firmly at the door of failed UN, EU and US policies. ISBN: 9781780272887 Price: £9.99 Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Rights: World June 2015 272pp
9781780271132 £7.99 pbk
9781780270906 £20 hbk
Praise for So Much Wind:
‘A timely and important book . . . This should be compulsory reading for all national and local politicians, to encourage them to stop more wind turbines being erected; either that, or voters make the choice for them’ Martin Livermore of the Scientific Alliance
‘Thought-provoking’ Scottish Field Praise for Stalin’s Legacy:
‘Celebrating life in areas condemned by industrialism, this book is as much a conscientious call to arms as it is an act of love’ Publishers Weekly (US)
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Non-Fiction
Charles MacLean Famous for a Reason
The Story of the Famous Grouse
CHARLES MACLEAN has spent the past 30 years researching, writing and lecturing about Scotch whisky. He is the author of nine books on the subject, including the standard work on whisky brands, Scotch Whisky, and the authoritative, Malt Whisky, both of which were shortlisted for Glenfiddich Awards. His Scotch Whisky: A Liquid History won Wine & Spirits Book of the Year in the 2004 James Beard Awards and Best Drink Book in the World at the Food Media Awards. He is a consultant to the whisky industry, and to Bonhams International Auctioneers, and sits on the judging panel of the International Wine & Spirits Awards.
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From humble beginnings in Perth in the early nineteenth century Matthew Gloag established a thriving whisky business that found favour with the royal household and the Scottish public alike. The family business he established struck gold in 1896 when they created the The Famous Grouse – a blended whisky that became a national favourite. Through innovative and entertaining marketing campaigns it has developed into a much-loved and bestselling brand. Celebrated whisky writer Charles MacLean has been granted unique access to the company archives and granted interviews with surviving family descendants and compiled a fascinating story rich in anecdote and social historical commentary. Illustrated throughout in full colour. Praise for Whiskypedia:
‘Whisky’s finest guru’ The Sunday Times
‘Charles MacLean writes like no other expert on the subject. His prose is informed and highly entertaining’ Independent
9781780272535 £14.99 pbk
ISBN: 9781780272528 Price: £35 Format: 280 x 220mm hbk Rights: World April 2015 352pp
Non-Fiction
Ian Buxton 101 Gins We’re in the middle of a new Gin Craze. From being the drink of choice of middle-aged, Jaguardriving golfers and an easy target for stand-up comedians, today it’s harder to find anything hipper on the international bar scene.
IAN BUXTON has been working in and around the whisky industry for about 20 years, but has been drinking professionally for a good deal longer. He began writing regularly for Whisky Magazine shortly after it launched, and now also writes for The Keeper, Country Life, Scotland Magazine, Scottish Field and in Russia for Whisky and Magnum magazines. Ian has published three books: Whisky History, Hints & Tips, a facsimile edition of Aeneas MacDonald’s 1930 classic Whisky and 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die.
But how do you choose? Is Edinburgh Gin a style, or just a brand name? Can a rose-flower and cucumber infusion properly be called gin? Can gin be aged in wood or does that just make it a strange tasting young whisky? What tonic to choose, and why? Perhaps it’s safer to stick to the classic brands your parents drank? From Adnams to Zuidam; Beefeater to Bombay and London to Plymouth (and beyond) this new book from best-selling drinks writer Ian Buxton will be the authoritative guide to the new world of gin. It may have taken more than 250 years, but gin has now shaken off its reputation for debauchery and ruin to take its place as one of the hottest of world spirits. Not that a hint of debauchery and ruin does its image any harm.
Praise for 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die:
‘Whiskey expert Ian Buxton does away with connoisseur pomp to deliver this smartly designed little guide to the best brown stuff around’ Time Out (New York)
‘Concise and comic . . . you don’t need to be a whiskey aficionado for this to warm your cockles ’ Scottish Field
‘Rather like a drop or two of water in a dram of single malt, Ian Buxton’s lively guide opens the subject of whisky up and lets it breathe...entertaining, enlightening, opinionated and irreverent’ The Skinny
‘His writing is downto-earth, humorous and unpretentious’ Scottish Life
ISBN: 9781780272993 Price: £14.99 Format: 178 x 114mm hbk Rights: World August 2015
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Non-Fiction
Sue Lawrence The Scottish Berries Bible SUE LAWRENCE is an acclaimed food writer and journalist who has written many books on cooking and baking, including The Scottish Kitchen (2002), The Sue Lawrence Book of Baking (2004), Eating In (2011), and most recently, Scottish Baking. She lives in Edinburgh. 9781780272009 £17.99 hbk
‘Sue Lawrence is a rock star’ Guardian
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.’
Format: 156 x 112mm pbk Price: £4.99 112pp
ISBN: 9781780272665 Rights: World June 2015
Nichola Fletcher
9781780271057 £4.99
9781841589084 £4.99
9781780270500 £5.99
The Venison Bible
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NICHOLA FLETCHER, MBE, has advised businesses all over the world on venison production and processing, and is a member of the Guild of Food Writers. She is past Chairman of the British Deer Farmers Association Promotions Committee, and was also a Director of Scottish Farm Venison Ltd. As Deputy Chair of the Food Trust of Scotland she is a champion of the small specialist food producer and a founder member of the Scottish Food Group. She was awarded the 1994 Scottish Food Achievement Award for her work for the Scottish venison industry.
A new addition to Birlinn’s bestselling Food Bible series, illustrated with Bob Dewar’s delightfully quirky cartoons. Nichola Fletcher is widely known for her work with venison and game. She and her husband John started Britain’s first deer farm in 1973, and Nichola has devoted her life since then to helping people to appreciate, understand and cook venison and other game meats. The Fletchers have been nominated for a Slow Food Award, and were joint winners of the Best Food Producer category in the 2006 BBC Food & Farming Awards for their work with venison. This book will combine new and traditional recipes for venison. Format: 156 x 111mm pbk Price: £4.99 112 pp
ISBN: 9781780272825 Rights: World July 2015
9781780271811 £4.99
9781780271729 £4.99
9781780272283 £4.99
Non-Fiction
Marian Pallister Cruachan!
The Hollow Mountain ‘Cruachan!’ was the battle cry of the Campbells. MARIAN PALLISTER has worked as a features writer and commentator covering social issues in Scotland and round the world, particularly in disaster and war zones. She previously taught journalism at Napier University and is currently tutor in English subjects at Argyll College. She also founded the Mhuthanzia Lilanda Initiative, a charity which supports the education of vulnerable young people in Zambia.
In the early 1960s, the invasion of the 3,000 men who hollowed out Argyll’s noblest and highest mountain as part of a massive hydroelectric project could have annihilated the local community. Instead, the people of Loch Awe, Dalmally and Taynuilt welcomed the invaders, embraced the project and emerged the winners. Fifty years on, an integrated community still lives under the Hollow Mountain, and the cry ‘Cruachan!’ signifies a Scottish success story. In this book, based on interviews, media reports, court reports and film archive material, Marian Pallister tells the story of the project – featuring the extraordinary experience of those who worked on the mountain as well as the effects on the local community of one of the biggest civil engineering projects ever to have been undertaken in Scotland. She also considers the long-term effects of the project, looking at how the community was changed by the experience Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £9.99 224pp 16pp b/w plate section
ISBN: 9781780272207 Rights: World April 2015
Daniel MacCannell Understanding Scottish Buildings
DANIEL MACCANNELL, a graduate of Aberdeen University and UCLA Film School, is a widely published writer who has received the Jack Nicholson prize and has been nominated for the Fotokem Maverick Award for his fictional work. He edited the highly acclaimed The Lost City: Old Aberdeen, also published by Birlinn. His latest books are, Lost Deeside and Lost Banff and Buchan.
Scotland has a huge and diverse amount of built heritage. Yet most writing about this fascinating subject is overly technical – an alphabet soup of L-plans, Z-plans and bartizans. Understanding Scottish Buildings is a unique, informative and refreshing companion to Scottish architecture that dispenses with jargon to enable us to appreciate Scottish buildings with regard to their ages, styles, influences, and functions, as well as the messages that their builders, owners and occupants intended them to convey. Readers will be able to answer for themselves a whole host of questions about function, style, age and building techniques that will make a visit to any historic Scottish building a rewarding and enriching experience
ISBN: 9781780271187 Price: £9.99 Format: 164 x 134mm pbk Rights: World March 2015 208pp
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Non-Fiction
John Macleod The Best of Scotland
JOHN MACLEOD was born in Lochaber in 1966. After his 1988 graduation from Edinburgh University, he began his career at BBC Highland in Inverness and quickly established himself as a freelance writer. He has won several awards, including Scottish Journalist of the Year in 1991, and has contributed to many publications including the Scotsman and the Herald. He currently writes a Thursday column for the Scottish Daily Mail and is the author of a number of highly acclaimed books.
In this imaginative, informative and amusing miscellany, award-winning journalist John MacLeod explores some of the well-known symbols of Scottish culture (as well as some of the quirkier ones) and looks beneath the surface to shatter some long-held assumptions that will surprise even the most wellinformed Scotophile. Did you know, for example, that the kilt was actually banned in Scotland at one point, and that particular tartans were never originally identified with specific clans, let alone surnames? From bagpipes, haggis, whisky and the midge to The Falkirk Wheel, John Knox, Loch Lomond and Dolly the Sheep, this book is a fascinating celebration of Scotland that will appeal to visitors and locals alike. Format: 226 x 246mm hbk Price: £12.99 112pp Illustrations: colour throughout
ISBN: 9781780272016 Rights: World July 2015
None Dare Oppose NEW EDITION 9781841588520 £12.99 pbk
9781841588582 £9.99 pbk
9781841589688 £9.99 pbk
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In 1844 Sir James Matheson bought the Isle of Lewis, awash with hope and good intentions, only, in 1853, to put a rat-faced factor from Tain in sole charge of the estate. Within months Donald Munro, the self-styled ‘Chamberlain of the Lews’, had seized practically every office of civic, legal and industrial power in the community and for the next two decades held the entire island under an absolute reign of terror. This is a study of Highland landlordism at once at its most benign - Sir James refused to enact Clearances in Lewis and vested thousands of his own fortune in assorted well-intended schemes, for little return; its most self-indulgent - as the baronet built a mock-Tudor castle, imported soil and trees and constructed his own Arcadian fantasy; and at its most blind - as he gaily left his tenants under the jackboot of a factor so monstrous he is still remembered with blazing hatred on Lewis, recalled in such nicknames as ‘the Shah’, ‘the Beast’ and ‘Red Donald of the Hens’. In None Dare Oppose, John Macleod paints a stunning portrait of island society in Victorian Scotland held under a capricious and feudal oppression - until one quiet, decent corner of that island fearlessly rose against the subjugation, marching on Stornoway to a gripping court-room finale. It is an astonishing and powerful tale, beautifully accomplished and compellingly told.
ISBN: 9781780272894 Price: £9.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World June 2015 256pp
Non-Fiction
Alistair Moffat A History of Scotland
ALISTAIR MOFFAT was born and bred in the Scottish Borders. A former Director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Director of Programmes at Scottish Television, he now runs the Borders Book Festival and the DNA testing company, BritainsDNA (www.britainsdna.com). He is the author of a number of highly acclaimed books and is currently Rector of St Andrews University. 9781780271606 £30 hbk
From the Ice Age to the recent Scottish Referendum, historian and author Alistair Moffat explores the history of the Scottish nation. As well as focusing on key moments in the nation’s history such as the Battle of Bannockburn and the Jacobite Risings, Moffat also features other episodes in history that are perhaps less well documented. From prehistoric timber halls to inventions and literature, Moffat’s tale explores the drama of battle, change, loss and invention interspersed with the lives of ordinary Scottish folk, the men and women who defined a nation. ISBN: 9781780272801 Price: £25 Format: 234 x 156mm hbk Rights World July 2015 320pp
Praise for Bannockburn:
‘Moffat’s account of the mustering of the English army and its march north is splendid. He is a master of historical geography and deeply versed in the techniques of medieval warfare’ Scotsman
‘Alistair Moffat’s Bannockburn is a pacy account of the days leading up to the battle’ Saturday Herald
‘A carefully considered account of a well-trodden historical event, Moffat enlightens and educates with an up-to-date interpretation of a battle firmly cemented in Scottish history’ Scottish Field
9781841589411 £16.99 hbk 9781780270326 £9.99 pbk
9781780270753 £17.99 hbk
‘Mr Moffat’s account of the duel between Bruce and de Bohun is totally gripping and he is particularly enthralling about the councils of war on the eve of the second day’s battle’ Country Life
9781780271330 £9.99 pbk 9781780272184 £12.99 hbk
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Non-Fiction
Ian Crofton The History of Scotland without the Boring Bits IAN CROFTON has written a wide range of non-fiction books, including a number that look at the quirkier aspects of history and other subjects, e.g. History without the Boring Bits, Science Without the Boring Bits, and A Curious History of Food and Drink. Born in Edinburgh, he studied at the University of Sussex before working as an editor at Collins in Glasgow. He now works freelance.
As an antidote to more sober accounts of Scotland’s history, Ian Crofon offers a colourful chronology of the eccentric, the infamous, the bawdy, the horrific and the hilarious people and events that have spattered across the pages of our nation’s story. From the Royal High School riot to Marocco the Wonder Horse, from the War of the One-Eyed Woman to the MP cleared of stealing his ex-mistress’s knickers, A History of Scotland Without the Boring Bits includes a host of little-known tales that you won’t find in more conventional works of history, including the chatelaine who struck a general over the head with a leg of mutton, the cow that gave birth to fourteen puppies, the clan chief who ripped out the throat of his enemy with his teeth, the surgeon who was so fast with the saw that he inadvertently took off his patient’s testicles as well as his leg, and the mathematician who calculated that the Christian religion would finally disappear in the year 3153. Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Price: £12.99 208pp
ISBN: 9781780272658 Rights: World May 2015
9781841589770 9781780272078 £25 hbk £16.99 hbk
Iain Gale Scotland Forever
The Scots Greys at Waterloo IAIN GALE, art critic, journalist and author, comes from a military family and has always been fascinated by military history. He is a member of the Scottish Committee of the Society of Authors and the Friends of Waterloo Committee. He is the editor of Scotland in Trust, the magazine for the National Trust of Scotland, and founded the Caledonian magazine. He lives in Edinburgh.
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One of the most iconic incidents of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 was the charge of the Scots Greys, a crack cavalry regiment, into the heart of the French army. It was a moment of supreme daring and horse-riding skill, and Sergeant Ewart of the Greys succeeded in snatching one of Napoleon’s coveted eagle standards. However it was also a military blunder. The Greys were quickly surrounded by enemy cavalry and cut to pieces. Of the regiment’s 442 officers and men almost half, 198, were killed or injured. In the end the battle was won by the British and their allies and the eagle of the French 45th regiment is now on show in Edinburgh Castle. Iain Gale brings the bare outline of this legendary military exploit to life, giving the stories of the men involved and reconstructing the prelude, the aftermath, life in the Greys and the Battle of Waterloo as a whole. It is a uniquely exciting story of courage and military tactics in the heat of war. Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Price: £9.99 128pp 8pp b/w plate section
ISBN: 9781843410683 Rights: World May 2015
Non-Fiction
Max Benitz Corunna A Retreat MAX BENITZ was born in London in 1985. He read Modern History at the University of Edinburgh and South Asian History at the University of Calcutta. After graduating in 2008 he took a local media job in Kabul and then worked at the Royal United Services Institute where he focused on the British Army’s role in Afghanistan. He is best known for his leading role in Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. 9781843410522 £16.99 hbk
The Peninsular War began, as would the two world wars, in near disaster for Britain. Lieutenant General Sir John Moore lost nearly a quarter of his men during the retreat to Corunna and was killed as the army reached safety. Eyewitnesses and historians have disagreed about the campaign ever since. Moore, the son of a Glasgow doctor, was at odds with the Tory administration of the time; partisan accounts have variously stated that he rescued an army placed in an impossible situation or charged him with being the architect of its ruin. What is undisputed is the atrocious conduct of many British troops as they passed through the towns and villages of Leon and Galicia in the winter of 1808-9. Drunkenness, theft and arson became the army’s emblems. Were they poorly led or did this volunteer army, effectively, choose to riot in response to the course of the campaign? To attempt to answer these and many other questions, author Max Benitz walked the route of the retreat in the winter of 2013-14. His forthcoming book seeks to tell the story of this controversial episode in British military history and place it in its appropriate cultural and political context. Format: 234 x 156mm hbk Price: £20 256pp 16pp colour plate section
ISBN: 9781780272351 Rights: World August 2015
Mary C. Carmichael MARY CARMICHAEL completed her postgraduate education at the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh. Her interest in the oral history and material culture of the Highlands and islands led her to work in Tiree, Ardnamurchan and Speyside before taking up the post of Museums Officer for the Skye and Lochalsh area. She lives on the Isle of Skye.
Whispering Oats
Island Voices of Colonsay and Oransay This richly illustrated study of two of Argyllshire’s smallest inhabited islands charts the changing life and fortunes of these remote communities through oral sources recorded over a period of nearly sixty years, revealing the dramatic social, economic and cultural changes that have shaped these islands since the 19th century. The recollections of islanders and the detailed accounts of visitors present the parallel lives and contrasting experiences of life in the ‘big house’, work on the home farm, the crofting townships and tenanted farms, the fishing community and the homes of landless cottars; from times of plenty to times of emigration and depopulation; when Gaelic was the native tongue of the majority and entertainment was derived from song-making, music, storytelling and practical jokes; when second sight and premonitions were an accepted part of life and death, and neighbours never knocked on doors. Format: 260 x 189mm pbk Price: £14.99 208pp
ISBN 9781780270432 Rights: World August 2015
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Non-Fiction
David Spaven The Scottish Railway Atlas Published to coincide with the reopening of the Borders railway.
DAVID SPAVEN was born and brought up in Edinburgh, and has lived and worked in Inverness, London and Glasgow. He spent his whole working life in the rail industry and is the author of a number of acclaimed railways books, including Mapping the Railways (HarperCollins, 2011) and Britain’s Scenic Railways (HarperCollins, 2012).
Praise for Britain’s Scenic Railways:
‘The author, Julian Holland and David Spaven, are clearly old hands at exploring the country’s railways – and it shows’ BBC Country File Praise for Waverley Route:
‘Extremely well-researched, and elegantly written’ Daily Express
‘Marvellous’ David Parker, Scottish Borders Council 28
The rich diversity of Scotland’s railway network has never before been the subject of a specialist atlas. This book showcases 100 topographical and railway maps, telling the story of the country’s railways from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Researched and written by David Spaven – who co-wrote the bestselling Mapping the Railways on the history of Britain’s rail network – this beautiful atlas allows the reader to understand the bigger story of the effects of the railways on the landscape and the impact of Scotland’s distinctive geography on the pattern of railway development over a period of nearly 200 years. The unique map selection is supported by an informative commentary of key cartographic, geographic and historical features. This sumptuous atlas will appeal not just to railway enthusiasts and those who appreciate the beauty of maps, but also to readers fascinated by the role of railways in Scotland’s modern developments.
ISBN: 9781780272382 Price: £30 Format: 278x 218mm hbk Rights: World September 2015 224pp
Non-Fiction
Jessie Sheeler Photographs by Robin Gillanders Little Sparta
The Garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay JESSIE SHEELER was brought up in Edinburgh and read Classics at Edinburgh University. In the early 1960s, working with Ian Hamilton Finlay, she co-founded the Wild Hawthorn Press and its poetry magazine Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. After various teaching jobs and a spell as an assistant in day care centres in New York, she settled with her family in Hampshire where she became Head of Classics at the co-educational boarding school Bedales. She now lives in Scotland on the Solway coast, teaching Latin and desperately trying to keep two and a half acres of unruly garden under control.
Nestled in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, Little Sparta is poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay’s greatest work. A garden created from an artistic fusion of poetry and sculpture set in a natural landscape, it now contains over 275 art works. Hamilton Finlay was born in the Bahamas in 1925. His first book, The Sea Bed and Other Stories, was published in 1958 and was followed by a collection of poems The Dancers Inherit the Party in 1961. In that year he also co-founded the Wild Hawthorn Press, which became the vehicle for his own output of poem cards, posters, booklets and small objects. His works are held in major collections worldwide. In 2002 he was appointed CBE on the Queen’s New Year Honours list. He died in 2006. Format: 246 x 189mm pbk Price: £14.99 224pp
ISBN: 9781780272948 June 2015
Rosa Steppanova Impossible Gardening
How to Create a Coastal Garden ROSA STEPPANOVA, originally from Bavaria in Germany, came to Shetland in 1976. She met her future husband James Mackenzie there, and when in 1977 they bought a house and land at Tresta on mainland Shetland she set about creating a garden that would remind her of her native Bavaria. Britain’s most northerly botanic garden, Lea Gardens, now extends to two acres and contains 1500 species and cultivars.
Around three million people live on the coast of Britain, many of them with gardens which they would love to be flourishing and beautiful. All too often they find that gardening near the sea is a constant struggle with the elements: their plants and shrubs are scoured by the wind, blighted by salt spray and weakened by poor, sandy soil. Rosa Steppanova has written this book for them. She herself is the creator of a celebrated botanical oasis, Lea Gardens in the Shetlands, islands which are subject to some of the most extreme climatic and maritime conditions in Britain. Impossible Gardening describes how she established her Gardens, and reveals the secret of making things grow and flourish by the sea. She shows how the right choice of plants, correct feeding and drainage, the providing of shelter and clever growing techniques can combine to make a coastal garden a thing of beauty, the equal of anything inland. Format: 240 x 170mm pbk Price: £14.99 240pp 16pp colour plate section
ISBN: 9781780272719 Rights: World September 2015
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CHILDREN’S
Children’s
Tom Pow Illustrated by Ian Andrew Sixteen String Jack
And the Garden of Adventure
TOM POW is an awardwinning writer and poet. From 2001 to 2003 he was the first writer in residence at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and he was Writer in Residence at the National Library of Scotland in 2013. His books for children in include Callum’s Big Day and Who Is The World For?, which won the Scottish Arts Council’s Children’s Book of the Year (2001). IAN ANDREW is an awardwinning animator and artist who has illustrated the work of numerous authors, from Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson to Russell Hoban, Penelope Lively and Michael Morpurgo. In 2013 he was awarded a prestigious Sendak Fellowship.
9781846972065 £6.99 pbk
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One day, Daisy’s grandmother takes her to an overgrown garden. Many, many years before other children had played in that garden –Sixteen String Jack and Dare Devil Dick were shipwrecked there; and often they fought pirates side by side till the sun went down. But it was only Sixteen String Jack whose fame would never die, for he grew up to become J.M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan. In this poignant and beautifully illustrated story, award winning writer Tom Pow and Sendak Fellow Ian Andrew search out the magic that, in time, would produce the most famous character in children’s literature. Written with the support of Moat Brae Trust, which is currently restoring Barrie’s childhood home as a Centre for Children’s Literature and re-inventing the famous garden for play and active learning.
ISBN: 9781780272269 Price: £9.99 Format: 224 x 259mm hbk Rights: World May 2015 32pp Colour illustrations throughout
Joan Lennon
Children’s
CHILDREN’S
Silver Skin
JOAN LENNON was born in Canada but has lived in Scotland since 1978. She has written a large number of children’s books, including a number of successful series – The Wickit Chronicles, Tales from the Keep and the Slightly Jones series. Her books have been translated into numerous languages.
Skara Brae, Orkney, during the Neolithic period. The sun is dying, crops are failing and the local inhabitants fear that the end of the world is near. When a strange boy appears from nowhere, dressed in an odd silver suit – his ‘silver skin’ – the community is thrown into confusion. Who is he, where is he from, and why has he come? Is he a selkie or seal person, a mythical being believed to have magical powers? For Cait, herself an outsider in the community, the boy, Rab, arouses a strange fascination as she finds herself strangely drawn towards him. For Voy, the Old Woman, Rab represents the only hope for the sun’s regeneration, but only if his silver skin is burnt in a huge sacrificial blaze. As the pyre is built, Rab must fight for his life if he is ever to be able to return to his own time. And if he succeeds, what will be the fate of the islanders he will leave behind?
ISBN: 9781780272849 Price: £7.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World May 2015 208pp
Joe Friedman The Secret Dog JOE FRIEDMAN was born in Chicago but has lived in London for many years, where he divides his time between writing and practising psychotherapy. He is author of the children’s series Boobela’s World, and is actively involved in running creative workshops for children in the 7–11 age range.
After the death of his mother, eleven-year-old Josh goes to live with his uncle, Calum, who has a farm on a remote island. Uprooted and lonely, Josh finds solace in his love of animals. So one day, when he finds a tiny Border collie pup left to drown in the river, he decides to rescue it and keep it as his own. But money is scarce and a dog that can’t earn her keep would not be welcomed by Calum, and Josh must raise his new friend, Reggae, in secret. As the pup grows and demands more attention, Josh’s schoolwork suffers, despite the help of the local vet’s daughter, Yvonne. Josh must also decide what to do with Reggae – he cannot keep her hidden forever – and decides that he will train her for the local sheepdog trials. But the training is tough and time-consuming. Can Josh and Reggae bring it off in time? All is going well until someone discovers Josh’s secret and will stop at nothing to ruin their chances . . .
ISBN 9781780272870 Price: £7.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World May 2015 192pp Illustrations: b/w throughout
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CHILDREN’S
Children’s
Stephen White Peter Pan
The Graphic Novel
STEPHEN WHITE (or ‘Stref’) is an Edinburghbased illustrator, writer, and comic book artist. For a number of years he worked for DC Thomson on The Dandy, The Beano, The Broons and Oor Wullie. His first graphic novel, MILK+ was published in 2010 and was followed by Raising Amy in 2011. He also illustrated The Tattoo Fox written by Alasdair Hutton.
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Peter Pan is a familiar tale to many who have been enchanted by the adventures of the boy who wouldn’t grow up. In this graphic novel Steven White goes back to the very heart of Barrie’s original tale to create a story that is dark, magical, charming and authentic. The complexity of Barrie’s original is drawn out in vibrant illustrations and engaging text to create a new vision of the tale for those familiar with it and to enchant a new generation of readers. The stunning illustrations draw on original, authentic features from the locations that inspired Barrie to write his tale, including Moat Brae House in Dumfries and the garden where he played as a boy. In choosing the format of a graphic novel for this retelling, Steven has created a new and exciting version of Peter Pan that is like nothing that has been done before.
ISBN: 9781780272900 Price: £12.99 Format: 297 x 210mm hbk Rights: UK only June 2015 96pp
Children’s
CHILDREN’S
Ron Butlin Illustrated by Jim Hutcheson Here Come the Trolls! This may be your first meeting with the Trolls but it won’t be your last! Tiny (a mere 7-10 centimetres) and mischievous, they are sociable and go around in swarms - like midges! The are a playful bunch with lots of energy and they live right beneath your feet, emerging out of drains and manholes to create maximum mess, noise and havoc. RON BUTLIN is a poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer and opera librettist whose works have been broadcast in the UK and abroad and have been translated into many languages. His volumes of poetry include the awardwinning Ragtime in Unfamiliar Bars (Secker & Warburg, 1985) and Histories of Desire (Bloodaxe, 1995). His New and Selected Poems was published by Barzan in 2005. His novels include the novels The Sound of My Voice (winner of the Prix Mille Pages 2004 and Prix Lucioles 2005, both for Best Foreign Novel), Night Visits and most recently Belonging. He was appointed Edinburgh Makar in May 2008.
ISBN: 9781780272955 Price: £9.99 Format: 224 x 259mm hbk Rights: World October 2015 32pp Colour illustrations throughout
TROLL NAMES The best names are Troll names, they snarl and they bite – we make up our own, and make them up right! There’s Bog-Breath and Smasher, Nosedrip and Trasher, Gapteeth and Gasher And Basher Boy Blue! There’s Flycatcher, Bumscratcher . . . There’s Hairlsnarl, Slowstart, LipCurl, Fart-Fart, SickBag, SnotRag, And PlukeFace-All-Goo! One for each troll, so each troll can be proud as he shouts out his name and shouts it out loud!
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James Adair
New Editions Rowing After the White Whale A Crossing of the Indian Ocean by Hand JAMES ADAIR read Modern History at the University of St Andrews. He worked for two years as the editor of the Alderney Journal, perhaps the world’s smallest paidfor newspaper, wrote a column in the Guernsey Press and wrote freelance articles for The Times’ Books and News sections. To finance his dream of rowing an ocean he took a job as a shipbroker with
Caroline Wickham-Jones
HSBC in London. In the aftermath of his and Ben’s incredible journey, he has returned to shipbrokerage and is currently based in Ghana.
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PAPERBACK EDITION ‘Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut’ – Ernest Hemingway Over a boozy Sunday lunch, flatmates James Adair and Ben Stenning made a promise to row across the ocean. At first they considered the Pacific, then the Atlantic, but once James Cracknell and Ben Fogle completed the high-profile Atlantic Rowing Race, their thoughts turned to the Indian Ocean, longer and tougher than the Atlantic and having seen fewer people row across its waters than have walked on the Moon. After years of planning and fund raising, they are ready to launch in Spring 2011. Neither James nor Ben had any rowing or sailing experience. To add to this, James had contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome at the age of 14, which had locked his body into total paralysis for three months (while his mind had remained completely active) and which had left him with paralysed feet. This was a challenge that neither man should have ever considered . . .
ISBN: 9781846973277 Price: £8.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World March 2015 272pp
Orkney
A Historical Guide NEW EDITION CAROLINE WICKHAMJONES studied archaeology at Edinburgh University. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and has conducted research throughout Scotland, Ireland and Scandanavia. She is the author of numerous articles and publications, including Scotland’s First Settlers.
Orkney lies only 20 miles north of mainland Scotland, yet for many centuries its culture was more Scandanavian than Scottish. Strong westerly winds account for the scarcity of trees on Orkney and also for the tradition of well-constructed stone structures. As a result, the islands boast a large number of exceptionally well-preserved remains, which help us to form a detailed picture of Orcadian life through the ages. Sites and remains to be explored include settlements from the Stone Age, stone circles and burials from the Bronze Age, Iron Age brochs, Viking castles, the magnificent cathedral of St Magnus in Kirkwall, Renaissance palaces, a Martello tower from the Napoleonic Wars and numerous remains from the Second World War. In this updated edition of her best-selling book, Caroline Wickham-Jones, who has worked extensively on Orcadian sites for many years, introduces the history of the islands and provides a detailed survey of the principal places and sites of historic interest.
ISBN: 9781780272641 Price: £9.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World March 2015 256pp 16pp b/w plate section
New Editions
F. Marian McNeill The Scots Kitchen
Its Traditions and Recipes NEW EDITION F. MARIAN McNEILL (1885–1973) was a journalist and writer with a deep love and knowledge of Scots language, lore and traditions. The Scots Kitchen, her most popular book, first published in 1929, gives a delightful account of eating and drinking in Scotland throughout the ages, with definitive recipes for all the old national dishes. It is widely regarded as the most important book on Scottish cookery yet to appear.
This is the first new edition of The Scots Kitchen for over thirty years. Beautifully laid out for a new generation of readers and with charming line illustrations by Ian Macintosh, it is introduced by the well-known cookery writer and broadcaster, Catherine Brown. She describes the impact this pioneering book has had on the whole of Scottish cuisine and traces the fascinating life story of Marian McNeill herself. Notes explain how to use the book so that its treasure trove of recipes can be explored in the modern kitchen. As well as being a practical guide to all aspects of Scottish cooking, this is above all a book to be read for pleasure, to refer to and savour again and again.
ISBN: 9781780273013 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 190mm pbk Rights: World May 2015 368pp
Michael Fry The Scottish Empire NEW EDITION MICHAEL FRY was educated at Oxford and Hamburg Universities. He has held academic positions in Scotland at Strathclyde and Edinburgh Universities, in the US at Brown University, in Germany at Leipzig University and at the Max Planck Institute, Frankfurt. He is the author of ten books on modern Scottish history, including The Dundas Despotism (1993), The Scottish Empire (2001), Wild Scots: Four Hundred Years of Highland History (2005) and Edinburgh: A History of the City (2009). He has contributed to most major Scottish and British newspapers, and has been a regular columnist for the Scotsman, the Herald and The Sunday Times.
This new edition of Michael Fry’s remarkable book charts the involvement of the Scots in the British empire from its earliest days to the end of the twentieth century. It is a tale of dramatic extremes and craggy characters and of a huge range of concerns – from education, evangelism and philanthropy to spying, swindling and drug running. Stories of Scottish regiments on the rampage, cannibalism and other atrocities are contrasted with the deeds of heroic pioneers such as David Livingstone and Mary Slessor.
Praise for A New Race of Men:
Above all it tells how the British empire came to be dominated and run by the Scots, and how it truly became a Scottish empire. As the empire transformed Scotland beyond recognition, so was the Empire shaped by the Scots – a remarkable achievement from the population of so small a country, which was itself neither nation nor fully province, neither fully colonizer nor fully colonized.
Scotsman
Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £14.99 864pp 4 x 16pp colour plates
ISBN: 9781780271866 Rights: World July 2015
‘A well-researched, enjoyable and fascinating read’ Scottish Field
‘Fry is lively, provocative and pleasure to read’ ‘Never knowingly understating his case, Fry spins a bold, lively, and readable tale . . . Written with flair’ BBC History Magazine 35
Alec Glen
Robert Hay
New Editions ROBERT HAY lives on Lismore and is one of the curators of the island museum (Ionad Naomh Moluag). As a professional agricultural and environmental scientist, most recently at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, he has a particular interest in the history of land use. In 2005 he published Lochnavando No More: The Life and Death of a Moray Farming Community 1750-1850 and he has contributed to the Agriculture volume of Scottish Life and Society: A Compendium of Scottish Ethnology, published by John Donald.
ALEC GLEN was born in Govan, Glasgow, in 1890. While serving in the army in the First World War, he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery. He went on to build up a busy GP and maternity practice in Govan and became a leading figure in Glasgow medical circles. He died in 1972 and is survived by two sons.
Lismore
The Great Garden NEW EDITION From their first sight of Tirefour Broch, dominating approaches from 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. Talking to islanders, they soon realise that there is also a long and unbroken tradition of Gaelic culture. This is a guidebook to the story of Lismore, placing the events in the context of the times. Because of its strategic position at the mouth of the Great Glen and its fertility, as a limestone island, Lismore played an important part in the prehistory and early history of the West Highlands and Islands, not least as the headquarters of the community of Celtic monks founded by St Moluag. Colonised by the Vikings, and forming part of the extensive empire of the Gallgael leader Somerled, it was at the centre of the complex power play between the rulers of Norway and the emerging Scottish nation.
In the Front Line
A Doctor in War and Peace PAPERBACK EDITION At the outbreak of the First World War, recently qualified young doctor Alec Glen joined the army and served as a medical officer for the duration. Early on he provides a shattering account of the hopeless slaughter at Gallipoli,where he survived almost certain death many times as his companions fell around him. Only 100 men survived of his battalion of 1,000. His later service in the Middle East and Mesopotamia is an astonishing tale of courage and endurance, interwoven with spells of leave,during which the Scot encountered exotic experiences undreamed of back home. After the war, Glen became a GP in Govan, one of the poorest areas in Britain, at a time long before the National Health Service. Preventable illnesses were often a death sentence for old and young alike. The extremes of poverty and suffering he witnessed brought home to him that he was in the front line once more, but in a different kind of warfare.
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ISBN: 9781780272986 Price: £9.99 Format pbk: 198 x 129mm Rights: World May 2015 208pp
ISBN: 9781780272627 Price: £9.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World September 2015 320pp Illustrations: 8pp b/w
New Editions The Inside Story of Scotland’s Most Notorious Raids PAPERBACK EDITION
ISBN 9781780272788 Price: £7.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk 224pp Rights: World July 2015
Daring, audacious and mind-blowing – or terrifying, brutal and horrific. Scotland has been home to some of Britain’s most high profile robberies and Heist lifts the lid on some of those notorious raids, reopening the files on both solved and unsolved cases. By retracing the steps of the robbers, and through interviews with experts and those who had their lives hit by the incidents, this book puts a new slant on some jaw-dropping crimes. From one of the highest profile art thefts of the modern era to an SAS style aerial assault on a bank, Heist tracks raids on everything from stately homes to industrial units as a scourge of modern society is highlighted. Heist reveals the lasting repercussions of one of the country’s most high profile thefts, when one of Britain’s richest aristocrats suffered the theft of a GBP5million Leonardo da Vinci painting from his family’s Scottish castle. This book also details the Stone of Destiny’s theft by Scottish Nationalists from Westminster Abbey. And Heist sheds light on the fantastic fifties, the swinging sixties and psychedelic seventies which proved a headache for police, as criminals cottoned on to the rich pickings to be had at Scotland’s banks.
A People’s History PAPERBACK EDITION St Kilda is the most romantic and most romanticised group of islands in Europe. Soaring out of the North Atlantic Ocean like Atlantis come back to life, the islands have captured our imagination for hundreds of years. Their inhabitants, Scottish Gaels who lived off the land, the sea and by birdcatching on high and precipitous cliffs, were long considered to be the Noble Savages of the British Isles, living in a state of natural grace. St Kilda: A People’s History explores and portrays the real life of the St Kildans from the Stone Age to the 20th century. Roger Hutchinson, a bestselling author with 40 years’ experience of Hebridean islands, digs deep into the archives to paint a vivid picture of the life and death, work and play of a small, proud and selfsufficient people. Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £9.99 272pp 9781841586779 9781841589718 £7.99 pbk £8.99 pbk
ISBN: 9781780272931 Rights: World August 2015
moved into the PR industry in 2012. As an author, he has penned more than 10 sports titles as well as ghost-writing several autobiographies.
Roger Hutchinson
St Kilda
PAUL SMITH trained as a reporter with DC Thomson, serving on the Courier, Evening Telegraph and Sunday Post. He went on to work in the weekly press and served as a local newspaper editor for more than three years before returning to the regional sector. After more than 16 years in newspapers, working in news and sport, he
Paul Smith
Heist
ROGER HUTCHINSON is an award-winning author and journalist. After working as an editor in London, in 1977 he joined the West Highland Free Press in Skye. Since then he has published thirteen books, including Polly: the True Story behind Whisky Galore. He is still a columnist for the WHFP, and has written for BBC Radio, the Scotsman, the Guardian, the Herald and The Literary Review. His book The Soap Man (Birlinn 2003) was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year (2004) and the bestselling Calum’s Road (2007) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize.
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New Editions
Alyssa Popiel A Capital View: The Art of Edinburgh
A Hundred Artworks from the City Collection PAPERBACK EDITION
ALYSSA POPIEL grew up on Corstorphine Hill, Edinburgh. In her mother’s antique shop she discovered strange objects, books of old and listened to many a tale and song. After studying History of Art (MA Hons) at Edinburgh University, she worked as an arts researcher for BBC Scotland. She now works as a freelance researcher.
Praise for A Capital View:
‘A beautifully produced book’ Scotsman
‘Popiel brings a hugely creative mind to this project . . . she deftly captures the immense aesthetic beauty of Edinburgh’ Scottish Field
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Edinburgh boasts one of the largest and most diverse collections of art of any city in Britain. In this book, Alyssa Poppiel features a hundred artworks from the city collection, from the Enlightenment to the present day, which feature Edinburgh and its surroundings. All are accompanied by extended captions which set the context and provide a huge amount of lively historical and anecdotal material. Artists include: John Slezer, Paul Sandby, Henry Raeburn, Alexander Nasmyth, Walter Geikie, David Roberts, Sam Bough, John Bell, James Paterson, Francis Cadell, William Crozier, Stanley Cursiter, Jessie M. King, Anne Redpath, and John Bellany.
ISBN: 9781780272542 Price: £14.99 Format: 280 x 238mm pbk Rights: World August 2015 224pp
New Editions
Ian Fraser Shredded
Inside RBS, the Bank that Broke Britain PAPERBACK EDITION IAN FRASER is an award-winning journalist, commentator and broadcaster whose work has been published by, among others, The Economist, Financial Times, The Sunday Times, Independent on Sunday, Guardian, Observer, Mail on Sunday, Herald, Sunday Herald, Thomson Reuters, Huffington Post, economia and QFINANCE. He has taught at the University of Stirling, and his BBC documentary, RBS: the Bank That Ran Out of Money, was short-listed for a Bafta. He is a graduate of St Andrews University and lives in Scotland.
‘Impeccably researched and hard to put down at any point … The author pulls no punches’ Philip Augar, Financial Times
‘This book should be posted through the letterbox of every taxpayer in Britain’ David Mellor, former Chief Secretary to the Treasury
‘Magisterial…. the most detailed catalogue to date of the errors and misdemeanours leading up to RBS’s 2008 collapse and the failure – in Fraser’s view – to reform the bank in its aftermath’ Colin Donald, Herald
At its zenith, the Royal Bank of Scotland was the world’s biggest bank. It had assets of $3 trillion, employed over 200,000 people, had branches on every high street and was admired and trusted by millions of borrowers and investors. Now the mere mention of its name causes anger and resentment, and its former CEO, Fred Goodwin, is reviled as one of the architects of the worst financial crisis since 1929. In Shredded, Ian Fraser lifts the lid on the catastrophic mistakes that led the bank to the brink of collapse, scrutinizing the role played by RBS’s directors who failed to check Goodwin’s hubris, the colleagues who were overawed by his despotic leadership style, the politicians who created a regulatory free-forall in which banks went virtually unsupervised, and the investors who egged Goodwin on. As more and more toxic details emerge about the bank’s pre- and postbailout misconduct, Ian Fraser examines what the future holds for RBS and whether it can ever regain the public’s trust.
ISBN: 9781780272771 Price: £14.99 Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Rights: World October 2015 608pp 8pp colour plate section
‘Explosive’ Tom Harper, Independent on Sunday
‘The definitive text. I’m thinking of Barbarians at the Gate about Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and RJR Nabisco. An instant classic’ Max Keiser, The Keiser Report
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New Editions
Mairi Hedderwick Hebridean Calendar 2016 Hebridean Pocket Diary 2016 Hebridean Desk Diary 2016 This beautiful stationery collection features distinctive full-colour paintings by one of Scotland’s best-loved authors and artists, Mairi Hedderwick, in a wonderful celebration of the extraordinary natural beauty of the Hebrides throughout the seasons.
MAIRI HEDDERWICK was born in Gourock, Scotland. As a student she took a job as a mother’s help on the Isle of Coll in the Hebrides, beginning a life-long love affair with islands and their small communities. Her children were brought up there and now some of her grandchildren. Mairi’s island world is delightfully reflected in the imaginary island of Struay where her perennially popular Katie Morag stories are set. As well as creating children’s books Mairi writes and illustrates travel books for adults. She also illustrated the acclaimed Janet Reachfar books, which are published by Birlinn. She continues to live on Coll.
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ISBN: 9781780272726 Price: £9.99 Format: 300 x 300mm calendar Rights: World May 2015 24pp
The paintings have been collected over the past forty years and show the changing faces of the landscapes. Mairi’s sketches range across many of the isles from Arran to Tiree, expertly capturing the essence of these beautiful and diverse islands, from wind-swept machair and dramatic cliffs to rolling hills and secluded woods. Following the huge success of the previous diaries and calendars, this new 2016 collection is set to enjoy continued success.
ISBN 9781780272740 Price: £7.99 Format: 156 x 110mm hbk Rights: World May 2015 128pp
ISBN 9781780272733 Price: £12.99 Format: 230 x 170mm hbk Rights: World May 2015 128pp
New Editions
Andrew Crummy ANDREW CRUMMY has worked for New Musical Express, the Observer magazine, Design Week, Creative Review and Time Out magazine. He has developed multiple large-scale, collaborative artworks in public and community settings across the world, and has been involved in a huge range of book publications, multimedia events, festivals and educational programmes.
‘The most ambitious attempt to capture the past in needle and thread since the Bayeux Tapestry . . . The result is not just visually stunning but intensely moving and occasionally very funny’ The Times
The Great Tapestry of Scotland Calendar 2016 The brainchild of bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith, historian Alistair Moffat and artist Andrew Crummy, the Great Tapestry of Scotland is an outstanding celebration of 420 million years of Scottish history and achievement. Involving a thousand stitchers who worked on 165 separate panels, the tapestry is one of the biggest community arts projects ever to have been conceived in Scotland. This stunning calendar features 12 entire panels from the completed Tapestry which show to optimum effect the magnificent colouring and detail of the original. During 2015, the Great Tapestry of Scotland will be exhibited in Stirling, Fife and Ayrshire, with other locations yet to be announced. Format: 300 x 300mm calendar Price: £9.99 24pp
ISBN: 9781780272757 Rights: World January 2015
David Hawson The Puffer Calendar 2016 DAVID HAWSON is a retired GP from Monymusk in rural Aberdeenshire, an accomplished photographer and a painter who has exhibited with the Royal Scottish Watercolour Society. He has sailed extensively throughout the west coast waters of Scotland and sketches and paints wherever he goes. His Puffer Cookbook, co-authored with Mandy Hamilton, was first published in 2013.
This beautiful calendar celebrates Vic 32, the last surviving Clyde Puffer, which was found derelict in Whitby harbour and lovingly restored by Nick and Rachel Walker. It is now a familiar sight along the west coast of Scotland as it steams up the Clyde estuary and round the islands of the Hebrides. The wonderful photographs in this calendar show it under its plume of smoke as it sails through some of the loveliest scenery on earth, and David Hawson’s vibrant paintings and line drawings adorn each month. Sales of the calendar support the Puffer Preservation Trust, the registered charity set up to maintain the Puffer and save this iconic vessel for future generations to enjoy. Format: 300 x 300mm calendar Price: £9.99 24pp
ISBN: 9781780272764 Rights: World May 2015
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Sport
John Deering Lost
The Frank Vandenbrouke Story
JOHN DEERING’s first book was a study of his time with the chaotic but charismatic Linda McCartney Cycling Team and went on to be voted 5th-best cycling book of all time. He has supplied many features to publications such as Procycling, The Official Tour de France guide and Ride Cycling Review, and contributed regularly to Eurosport’s cycling coverage. He is the author of Bradley Wiggins: Tour de Force, published by Arena Sport.
Praise for Bradley Wiggins: Tour de Force:
‘Deering’s blow-byblow of the Tour is both evocative and perfect for those looking to learn more about the machinations of team tactics and minutiae of life on the road’ Cyclo
Frank Vandenbroucke is the great lost talent of world road cycling. Born in Mouscron in Belgium in 1974, he went on to race for three of the biggest professional teams on the world circuit – Lotto, Mapei and Cofidis, and became the darling of the cycling press for his daring approach to winning races. Between 1993 and 1999 he won a slew of races, including the Liege–Bastogne– Liege (known amongst the cycling fraternity as the hardest race in the world), Het Volk, Paris–Nice, Paris–Brussels and stages of the Tour of Spain. The Tour de France was in his sights. But his personal life was another story; he became addicted to cocaine and succumbed to pressures within his teams to take EPO and other performanceenhancing drugs. The notorious Cofidis team – where he was joint team leader with Scotland’s David Millar – eventually broke him. On leaving Cofidis he moved to the Italian team Lampre and then a number of other teams until he effectively ended his career in 2004, aged only 30. Five years later, he was dead.
ISBN: 9781909715219 Price: £16.99 Format: 234 x 156mm hbk Rights: World May 2015
In this extraordinary biography, John Deering forensically pieces together the chaos of VDB’s story, painting a captivating portrait of the outrageous highs and the tragic lows of one of cycling’s greatest lost talents. 9781909715158 £12.99 hbk
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9781780271293 £7.99 pbk
Sport
Edmond Hood No Straight Lines
The Authorised Biography of Maurice Burton EDMOND HOOD is a former racing cyclist who competed at the highest levels in Scotland during the 1970s and 80s. He has worked as a photo journalist on all of Europe’s great races including the Tours of Spain, Italy and France as well as all of the five ‘monument’ races which form the bedrock of professional cycle sport. He writes about all aspects of cycle sport for the websites pezcyclingnews. com and veloveritas. co.uk and his work has been published in Cycling Weekly, Cycling Plus and Peloton magazines.
Forty years ago, British Junior Sprint Champion Maurice Burton, barely out of his teens, journeyed from his home in London to Ghent in Belgium, to ride the ‘winter boards’. In the years that followed, Burton made the historic city his base for the European circuit of gruelling six-day cycling races on indoor tracks. As well as the handicaps of language barriers and acceptance as a young rider on the circuit, there was another hurdle for Burton to overcome – the colour of his skin. With a Jamaican father and English mother, he stood out in races where often all the other competitors were white, and throughout his career he regularly encountered racism and intolerance. Despite these obstacles, Burton competed in the 1974 Commonwealth Games and went on to ride 56 ‘races to nowhere’, drawn by the money, the buzz and the sheer joy of being fit and fast. But more than that, he thrilled in the satisfaction of being one of the best in the world, competing against the likes of the legendary Eddy Merckx to become a great of the six day circuit himself.
ISBN: 9781909715172 Price: £12.99 Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Rights: World May 2015 256pp 16pp colour & b/w plate section
In No Straight Lines, Edmond Hood documents the tumultuous, searing and vibrant life of man who was a true pioneer in British cycling.
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Sport
Tom English Behind the Shamrock Playing Rugby for Ireland TOM ENGLISH is an award-winning BBC journalist and radio pundit. The former chief sports writer for Scotland on Sunday, he was voted Scottish Sport Feature Writer of the Year five times. He is a former Irish rugby correspondent for The Sunday Times. He won Rugby Book of the Year at the 2010 British Sports Book Awards for The Grudge, his study of the 1990 Grand Slam decider between Scotland and England, and is a coauthor of the best-selling Behind the Lions: Playing Rugby for the British & Irish Lions.
Praise for Behind the Lions:
‘Utterly compelling’ Planet Rugby
‘Comfortably the most interesting and entertaining history of the Lions’ Irish Times
From Jack Kyle’s immortals to Brian O’Driscoll’s golden generation, this is the story of Irish rugby, told in the players’ words. Celebrated rugby writer Tom English embarks on a pilgrimage through the four provinces to reveal the fascinating and illuminating story of playing test rugby in the emerald green of Ireland – all the glory of victory, all the pain of defeat, and all the craic behind the scenes. But this is more than just a nostalgic look back through the years, it is a searing portrait of the effects of politics and religion on Irish sport, a story of great schisms and volatile divisions, but also a story of the profound unity, passionate friendships and the bonds of a brotherhood.
ISBN: 9781909715189 Price: £19.99 Format: 234 x 156mm hbk Rights: World September 2015 432pp
With exclusive new interview material with a host of Ireland rugby greats, Behind the Shamrock unveils the compelling truth of what it means to play for Ireland at Lansdowne Road, Croke Park and around the world. This is the ultimate history of Irish rugby – told, definitively, by the men who have been there and done it.
‘A fascinating collection of insights’ Sunday Times
9781909715196 £25 hbk
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9781909715127 £19.99 hbk
9781841586533 £20 hbk
Sport
Tris Dixon Money
The Life and Fast Times of Floyd Mayweather Jr TRIS DIXON is the editor of Boxing News and has covered the sport for nearly two decades. He was the ghostwriter for Ricky Hatton’s recent bestselling autobiography, War and Peace, and is a regular pundit on Sky Sports’ boxing shows Big-Fight Special and Ringside. He is also often a guest on CNN, TalkSport, Sky News and other mainstream outlets and he has been ringside at major fights on both sides of the Atlantic since 2000, covering the sport on four continents and in more than a dozen countries.
Born on February 24, 1976, Floyd Mayweather Jr’s father was a boxer, as were his two uncles. His dad also dealt drugs and one day brought his ‘work’ home with him, when he used his son as a human shield to stop a rival dealer from shooting him. The gunman instead shot his father in the leg, curtailing his own ring career. Floyd Mayweather Jr has never married, has four children by two women, and is a habitual gambler, known to win and lose millions on a single half of US football or basketball. He is obsessed with money, almost as obsessed as he is about protecting his unbeaten record and his staggering aim to go 50 professional bouts without defeat, a goal that he intends to achieve in late 2015, just shy of his 40th birthday.
ISBN: 9781909715271 Price: £16.99 Format: 234 x 156mm hbk Rights: World English Language November 2015 320pp
Mayweather Jr was made famous by his profession, shaped his character through reality TV shows and transcended boxing and sport, into rap culture, social media and business. Tris Dixon explores his extraordinary life story in this searing, insightful and often brutal expose of one of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen.
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John Donald
Robert G. W. Anderson (editor) The Cradle of Chemistry ROBERT G. W. ANDERSON FRSE FSA graduated from St John’s College, University of Oxford, and has held posts at the Royal Scottish Museum, the Science Museum, London, and the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh. He later became Director of the British Museum, London. He has held visiting academic posts at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, and at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at the University of Cambridge. He is an Official Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. In 2012 he published The Correspondence of Joseph Black.
The First Century of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh From the mid eighteenth century, many medical students from across the world made their way to Edinburgh, drawn by the reputation of the faculty and the quality and nature of its teaching. Chemistry, in particular, had star performers, notably William Cullen and Joseph Black, whose innovative teaching styles excited and inspired their audiences. This book, which is based on conference papers given at the Crawford tercentenary meeting held at the Royal Society of Edinburgh in October 2013, describes the progress of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh from the appointment of the first professor, James Crawford, in 1713 to the career of Thomas Charles Hope, a century or so later. It includes the radical attempt by William Cullen to introduce ‘philosophical chemistry’ as a counterpart to Newton’s natural philosophy, and Joseph Black’s eventual acceptance of Lavoisier’s oxygen theory. This is a fascinating study of the period when Edinburgh’s chemistry literacy was higher than at any other time. Format: 234 x 156mm hbk Price: £25 224pp 16pp b/w plates
ISBN: 9781906566869 Rights: World June 2015
Eric Graham A Maritime History of Scotland 1650 – 1790 ERIC GRAHAM is a historical researcher and writer. He is a founding member of the Early Scottish Maritime History Exchange (ESME) and is an Honorary Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the Scottish Centre for the Diaspora, University of Edinburgh. He has published widely on Scottish maritime history and lives in Edinburgh.
The period 1650 to 1790 was such a turbulent one for Scottish seafarers that much of this fast-flowing narrative reads like Treasure Island. Colourful characters abound in a story teeming with incident and excitement. Eric Graham traces the development of the Scottish marine and its institutions during a formative period, when state intervention and warfare at sea in the pursuit of merchantilist goals largely determined the course of events. He charts Scotland’s frustrated attempts to join England in the Atlantic economy and so secure her prosperity – an often bitter relationship that culminated in the Darien Disaster. In the years that followed, maritime affairs were central to the move to embrace the full incorporating Act of 1707. After 1707, Scottish maritime aspirations flourished under the protection of the British Navigation Acts and the windfalls of the endemic warfare at sea. Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Price: £20 384pp Illustrations: b/w throughout
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ISBN: 9781906566845 Rights: World March 2015
John Donald
Mairi Stewart Voices of the Forest
A Social History of Scottish Forestry in the Twentieth Century MAIRI STEWART graduated in Geography from Glasgow University. After spending ten years working in conservation and land management, her interest in woodland history led her to undertake an MPhil at the University of St Andrews. She subsequently worked as a project officer at the Centre for Environmental History at the University of Stirling and as a research fellow at UHI Centre for History. She is currently a freelance historical researcher specialising in environmental history. She is co-author of The Firth of Forth: An Environmental History.
The creation of large new tracts of forest, together with the development of a modern wood processing sector, was the single biggest transformation to occur in the Scottish countryside during the twentieth century. While the environmental and landscape impacts of this change have been much commented upon, its impact on Scottish culture and society has attracted comparatively little attention. This book tells the fascinating story of the human side of forestry, drawing heavily on the thoughts, experiences and reflections of a wide range of individuals from all levels and all sectors of the industry as it has developed in Scotland over the last 100 years. The book also analyses the evolution of forestry policy and the changing roles of both the state-run Forestry Commission and the private sector. However, at its core are the stories of the men, women and children who have lived and worked in the many communities where old and new forests have loomed large – communities where, especially in the middle decades of the twentieth century, forestry was often the largest source of employment and income, and without which many of these places would have struggled to survive. Format: 245 x 240mm pbk Price: £20 304pp Illustrations: 120 b/w, 80 col. throughout
ISBN: 9781906566647 Rights: World June 2015
Alan Macniven The Vikings in Islay
The Place of Names in Hebridean Settlement History ALAN MACNIVEN is a lecturer in the department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He is responsible for honours and postgraduate courses in Viking Studies, Old Norse Studies, and the Material Culture of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic Scotland, and has organised a number of conferences and seminars on similar themes. His research to date has focused on Scandinavian place-names in Scotland and their value as indicators of cultural change.
The Hebridean island of Islay is well-known for its whisky, its wildlife and its association with the MacDonald Lords of the Isles. There would seem to be little reason to dwell on its fate at the hands of marauding Northmen during the Viking Age. Despite a pivotal location on the ‘sea road’ from Norway to Ireland, there are no convincing records of the Vikings ever having been there. In recent years, historians have been keen to marginalise the island’s Viking experience, choosing instead to focus on the enduring stability of native Celtic culture, and tracing the island’s modern Gaelic traditions back in an unbroken chain to the dawn of the Christian era. However, the foundations of this presumption are flawed. With no written accounts to go by, the real story of Islay’s Viking Age has to be read from another type of source material – the silent witness of the names of local places. The Vikings in Islay presents a systematic review of around 240 of the island’s farm and nature names. The conclusions drawn turn traditional assumptions on their head. The romance of Islay’s names, it seems, masks a harrowing tale of invasion, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Price: £25 400pp Illustrations: b/w maps/ diagrams throughout
ISBN: 9781906566623 Rights: World May 2015
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John Donald
Stephen Boardman
The Wolf of Badenoch
STEPHEN BOARDMAN completed an MA in History and a PhD on Feud in late Medieval Scotland at the University of St Andrews. He worked as a Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of Aberdeen then as a senior lecturer in the Scottish History Department at the University of Edinburgh, where he is now a reader in Scottish History.
This is the story of one of the most intriguing figures of late medieval Scotland, Alexander Stewart, earl of Buchan, the son of King Robert II (1371–1390), better known to history as the ‘Wolf of Badenoch’. The book explores the life of the ‘historical’ Alexander, a man who built, and then disastrously lost, a great territorial and political lordship in Highland Scotland. It was his ferocious response to the political setbacks he suffered, most notably his burning of Elgin cathedral in 1390, that earned him the name ‘Wolf’. The book outlines the development of his posthumous reputation, and the way he began to be portrayed as a black-hearted sociopath, a savage spirit associated with malign otherworldly powers. Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Price: £20 224pp 8pp b/w plates
ISBN: 9781906566289 Rights: World July 2015
David Breeze The Antonine Wall DAVID BREEZE prepared the bid for World Heritage Site status for the Antonine Wall and now leads the team implementing the management plan for the frontier. He was formerly Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Scotland. He has written books on Roman Scotland and Hadrian’s Wall, as well as the Roman army. He holds honorary professorships at the universities of Durham, Edinburgh and Newcastle, and is Chairman of the International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies.
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As the most advanced frontier construction of its time, and as definitive evidence of the Romans’ time in Scotland, the Antonine Wall is an invaluable and fascinating part of this country’s varied and violent history. For a generation, from about AD 140 to 160, the Antonine Wall was the north-west frontier of the Roman empire. Constructed by the Roman army, it ran from modern Bo’ness on the Forth to Old Kilpatrick on the Clyde and consisted of a turf rampart fronted by a wide and deep ditch. At regular intervals were forts connected by a road, while outside the fort gates clustered civil settlements. Antoninus Pius, whom the wall was named after, reigned longer than any other emperor with the exception of its founder Augustus. Yet relatively little is known about him. In this meticulously researched book, David Breeze examines this enigmatic life and the reasons for the construction and abandonment of his Wall.
ISBN: 9780859766555 Price: £12.99 Format: 216 x 138mm pbk Rights: World May 2015 224pp Illustrations: colour throughout
John Donald
Ronald Black
The Campbells of the Ark Men of Argyll in 1745
RONALD BLACK (Raghnall MacilleDhuibh) is a retired Senior Lecturer in Celtic Studies at the University of Edinburgh and Gaelic Editor of the Scotsman. He is a regular broadcaster and contributes to a wide variety of newspapers and journals. He lives in Peebles, Scotland.
In the course of his long poem An Airce, ‘The Ark’, the Jacobite poet Alexander MacDonald shows the Campbells being subjected to trial by water for the part they played in defeating Prince Charles’s army in 1745–6. Some will be drowned outright, he says, some just given a good ducking – and some will be honourably treated. He names forty individuals; Ronald Black puts their lives and deeds under the microscope to see how far they deserved their allotted fate. The result is a well-balanced portrait of the leading men of Argyll in the eighteenth century and a refreshingly new perspective on one of the most colourful episodes in Scottish history: the rising of the ’45 as seen through the eyes of Highlanders who helped to crush it. The Campbells of the Ark includes a detailed study of the sixty-three locally based companies of the Argyllshire Militia of 1745–6, covering every corner of this fascinating county, from Kintyre to Ardnamurchan, from Islay to Genorchy. Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Price: £30 16pp b/w plate section; maps
ISBN: 9781906566890 Rights: World June 2015
Douglas J. Davies, Hilary J. Grainger, Peter C. Jupp, Stephen R. G. White and Gordon Raeburn Our Ashes Glow with Social Fires Cremation in Modern Scotland
Changes in funeral practice provide a lens through which to inspect changes in wider social identity, values and religious beliefs. This book reveals how, in Scotland, as in other societies, our death ways and funeral arrangements are closely related to other aspects of life, from Christian beliefs to political convictions, from family relationships to class structure, from poverty to prosperity. The European context in which these changes and connections are considered illustrates how intriguingly Scottish history can be illuminated through its cult of death. The Scottish Reformation is the key to Scotland’s unique funeral history. When John Knox banned his clergy from liturgical participation at Protestant gravesides, he initiated a process that made the funeral, like birth and marriage rites, a civil rather than a religious occasion. The book interprets the crises in burial practice in nineteenth-century urban Scotland and constructs the very first account of how Scottish cremationists pioneered a radical alternative to burial. In exchanging burial for cremation, Scots cast off a thousand years of tradition within just three generations. Format: 234 x 156mm hbk Price: £30 16pp b/w plate section
ISBN: 9781906566791 Rights: World November 2015 16pp colour plate section
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John Donald Annie Tindley & Ewen Cameron (editors) Dr Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish, 1871 –1945 Dr Lachlan Grant (1871–1945) was a star pupil of Edinburgh medical school, who went on to general practice in the Highlands and Islands, while continuing medical research in his own private laboratory to work on problems such as tuberculosis (which reached epidemic proportions in the interwar Highlands), anaemia and eye health. Grant was an important figure in the public life of the Highlands, deeply involved in industrial disputes in the early twentieth century at the Ballachulish slate quarries, where he was employed as a doctor for the workers. He was also active politically, both in the Liberal party and the early years of the Scottish National Party, and was a prolific journalist, writing on medical and wider political, social and economic issues in the Highlands, particularly mental health care in the region. An active campaigner in the promotion of economic and social development of the Highlands, he placed special emphasis on improved health administration in the region. He was a key a contributor to the Dewar Report (1912), which led to the establishment of the Highlands and Islands Medical Board in 1913, considered by many to be a ‘proto-NHS’. Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Price: £25 16pp b/w plates
ISBN: 9781906566746 Rights: World August 2015
Lawrence Keppie The Legacy of Rome
Scotland’s Roman Remains
LAWRENCE KEPPIE was Professor of Roman History and Archaeology and Senior Curator of Archaeology, History and Ethnography at the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow. Now retired, he is Emeritus Professor of Roman History and Archaeology at the University of Glasgow.
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As an outpost of empire, Scotland played a significant, if unusual, role in the Roman world. The south and east were occupied intermittently from AD 79 to the early third century, while the north and west remained outside Roman control, though certainly not beyond its influence. The conquest was therefore incomplete in Scotland, and military occupation was not followed up by a period of peaceful development; no towns were built, and surviving remains are of camps and forts for the most part. Despite this, the Romans left an important imprint on Scotland. Much documentary evidence sheds light on the native population and archaeological research has led to detailed understanding of the range and distribution of the forts and other sites, and aerial photography has made possible a number of discoveries, filled gaps in our knowledge and opened up new avenues of enquiry. In this revised edition of his highly praised book, originally published as Scotland’s Roman Remains, Lawrence Keppie sets out the various stages of Roman occupation in their historical context and shows how literary and archaeological evidence can be used to build up a picture of the Roman period. It incorporates a large amount of new material based on recent discoveries and research, making it one of the best guides to Roman Scotland available. Format: 216 x 138mm pbk Price: £9.99 232pp b/w throughout
ISBN: 9780859765992 Rights: World May 2015
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