The Unheard Voices

Ahead of her appearance at Fringe By The Sea, Sally Magnusson tells why her new book explores the brutal lost stories of the Clearances

- NICK DRAINEY

SALLY MAGNUSSON is sitting in her home just north of Glasgow looking back on the Clearance and particularly the role women played - something which affected her own family in the 19th century.

"Women were at the centre of resisting Clearances and the delivery of eviction notices - there were some appalling injuries. Many of the stories just haven't been told, frankly because they were women."

The broadcaster and journalist will be discussing her latest novel Music In The Dark at the Fringe By The Sea festival in North Berwick this summer.

The novel, her third, covers the lives of two people cleared from the Ross-shire townships of Glencalvie and Greenyards, near Tain. It explores the brutal clearance itself as well as how it affected them three decades later when they lived in Rutherglen, outside Glasgow.

The narrative is based on real events and although the characters are fictitious, Sally has based their story on contemporary accounts of how real people's lives were overturned.

"The dramatic heart of the book is the clearance... a group of women standing by the boundary of the township, trying to delay the delivery of the eviction notices, as women often did. They were set upon by a horde of policemen. Some of them suffered catastrophic injuries and the township was cleared, as so many were.

"This one at Strathcarron was the last of the great confrontations between the people and the authorities. People trying to resist being put out of their homes and lands and the authorities getting more and more fed up at being thwarted."

Sally's great-grandmother, Annie McKechnie, was evicted from land on Mull and ended up living in Glasgow. The way people like Annie had to start again and find a life away from the Highlands and islands is something explored in the novel.