The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History Alistair Moffat
(Birlinn, £25)
In a book with no illustrations, Mr Moffat makes effective use of such descriptive imagery to guide us through the political, religious and social complexities that have shaped generations of Highlanders.
Geography is key to the region’s history. Its ‘press and power… is everywhere to be seen, shaping routeways, forcing communities to the edges, turning the seaways into highways, slowing down time, moulding a language to describe its features and intricacies’. Geography also made the weather and the opening chapters explore the effect of ice and thaw on the climate and life of the prehistoric landscape.
Following the dramatic ice melt that created such features as the extraordinary Parallel Roads (elevated shorelines) of Glen Roy, a primeval wildwood spread across the Highlands, its canopy of Scots pine (1% survives) augmented by birch, aspen, willow, rowan and oak as temperatures rose. The contrast of this Eden, teeming with aurochs, elk, lynx, brown bears and wolves, with the cold, wet landscape that replaced it is evocatively described. The Little Ice Age had a profound effect on the Highlands; as late as 1850, snow from the Cairngorm Plateau reached down to Braemar in August.
The book’s subtitle is justified by its vast array of information within an impressive timespan rather than any radical retelling. All the usual themes are here, arranged as a loosely chronological journey punctuated by diversions—to Para Handy, the battleship Tirpitz, oatmeal and St Duthac, to name but four. Leaping from the Battle of Inverlochy (1431) to the Normandy landings (1944) to a discourse on the Highland bagpipe in two pages may feel a little disorientating, but it makes for an absorbing read that draws out the connections between the people who ‘[have made] this story what it is’ over millennia.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
