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It's been a hectic few days away in the borders celebrating (belatedly) my father's 70th birthday (and also his twin brothers) and my youngest sisters actual 23rd birthday (the poor girl got her birthday comprehensively hijacked). There has been a lot of eating and drinking, an assortment of family and friends from all over the place, and a trip to the races. Because of all of that it wasn't a very bookish trip, there really wasn't much time for reading and The Main Street Trading Company) but didn't buy anything due to having spent all available funds on china in Jedburgh the day before. The Main street bookshop has always been inspiring and there's always something new going on, this time they've created book burrows for children... In what had been under stair cupboards there are now cosy alcoves (Mrs Rabbit's kitchen and Fantastic Mr Fox's Kitchen) where children can sit and listen to audio books. My sister and I both really wanted to try them out.

although I visited one of my favourite bookshops anywhere (

The purpose of this post though is mainly to share my china buys with you. Jedburgh is a historic and picturesque border town, Mary Queen of Scots was kept there for a bit and it has a ruined abbey, it also has a vintage shop in the old post office so whilst my father went off to find a tailor and be measured for a suit (we all went tweed crazy this summer) I had a good rummage. A while ago I saw an image of a coronation mug that Dame Laura Knight designed for the coronation of George VI and Queen Elizabeth, it was one of those things that you fall a little in love with and wonder why you never find or can never afford if you do find. Thursday was my lucky day because I got one for a reasonable price and in fairly good condition. I love it, now all I have to do is find it a suitable home. 

Jedburgh turns out to be a great place for finding stuff because a shop across the road had Quail Ceramics. I don't find these nearly often enough so am delighted to have finally become the proud possessor of a pheasant salt and pepper pot (I have plenty of salts and peppers and these have to be the most impractical shape imaginable for cleaning out, but still they were irresistible). The Scottish borders are brilliant. 

Of Scotland and Distilleries

There's a whole world out there with plenty of bits in it I'd like to see one day but still my preferred holiday destination is Scotland - it's full of things I like, including variety. Glasgow for example is a great city with all sorts going on and last week I managed to leave my phone charger in it. I didn't discover that I'd done that until I was in deepest Argyll.

Initially not much of a problem because deepest Argyll isn't big on signal but when not admiring mountains it's nice to be able to talk to people so the search for a new charger began. The nearest town was Loch Gilphead. Whatever it's many amenities include they don't include selling phones, the response when I asked  was a pitying look and the assurance I would have to go to Oban. Oban was 50 miles in the wrong direction. Round here it's hard to go anywhere without tripping over a phone shop, they're as ubiquitous as Starbucks but Argyll eschews such fripperies - which is one reason to love it. Oban was out the question but finally after a bit of searching I found a shop run by a little old man (quite deaf, very shaky, and not the clearest vision either). His till was operated by a lever and was probably as old as he was but bless him he had the technology, wouldn't let me pay for it until it had been properly tested, or until he'd given me a lecture about how he didn't hold with credit cards (or phones).

Campeltown doesn't do phones either, but it does have 3 distilleries (another reason to love it) which might sound like a lot for a small town but when you consider it used to have 34 sounds quite sober. I do like whisky and distillery visits have become a bit of a hobby for the Scottish one and I. We've been to about 20 so far and although we don't always take the tour we quite often do. I would once have thought after half a dozen or so there wasn't much left to see or learn, but I'd have been wrong.

We went to Auchentoshen (just outside of Glasgow and probably the most accessible distillery to visit anywhere) I saw what foreshots look like for the first time (which will be of interest to pretty much nobody but whisky geeks like myself) and to Springbank where they do everything on sight including their own malting (so exciting) and bottling (best smelling factory I've ever been in) and let us try all sorts of things that you normally don't get near (worts and all as it were) including the new make spirit which was potent. All the while the normal day to day business of the place was going on which gives an insight into the process it's generally very hard to see - honestly if you ever do want to see the workings of a distillery there isn't a better one to go to than Springbank (even if it is a bit out of the way).

Whisky is an amazing thing, when I first got interested in it I fell for the marketing romance of a drink that absolutely reflects the specific place it comes from, now I know it better it's even more interesting. The water  which is the really local element has only the smallest effect on the finished product. The still shape matters, but not as much as how smoky, or otherwise, you make the malted barley - they do a whole range at Springbank from non peated to just by a bonfire (there is a small by-product in the way of smoked flour which I'd love to get hold of to bake bread out of). There are a whole range of things the distiller can do with his spirit (the excitement just continues) but the real alchemy happens when that spirit goes into the barrel - they all age differently and are as individual as fingerprints and then all those elements are married together to make the drink you buy. It can take decades for the contents of a bottle to be ready for sale - I really do love it.

Back from Scotland

Well I'm back from a pretty much idyllic week north of the border. Scotland seems to have been enjoying marginally better weather than we've had in the Midlands, only bank holiday Monday and the trip back down were wet and one of those was inevitable... As predicted there wasn't much time for reading and I only bought one book (Christina Stead's 'The Puzzelheaded Girl' which makes a nice addition to my Virago collection) which I found in the Oxfam bookshop on Byres road during the hour and a half we had in Glasgow. 

I've visited Glasgow a few times over the years but somehow have never seen it in the rain which must make me almost unique because that's hardly it's reputation, the sunny afternoon we arrived on was earmarked for McGruer yachts regatta (the Scottish ones choice) so despite a hotel room that overlooked Glasgow's botanic gardens - which were hosting a book fair - and seemed to be within easy walking distance of everything I could  possibly want to do in a city, we set off again for Helensburgh. Sitting in the sun admiring classic yachts wasn't the worst way to spend an afternoon and the fish and chip were amazing so I don't really regret the book fair...

Taking one book turned into two - I was halfway through Nicholas Blake's 'A Question of Proof' which is now finished and will be written about soon, 'Can You Forgive Her' was the chosen tome from the big pile of big books and I have at least made a good start on it, if I keep up the momentum over the weekend I'll be doing okay.

There were distillery visits which I'll probably write about at length later, but meantime will say were most enjoyable and informative. There was also a great deal of very Scottish scenery and variations on the fish and chip theme but if there's one thing that will really stick in my memory it's the bluebells. May is my favourite month of the year, spring is in full flow with all the promise of summer ahead, everything grows on a daily basis, it's rarely too hot or too cold, and the light is really stretching out the days. It's all good. Bluebells aren't unknown in England but they were everywhere in Argyll and came in a much deeper blue than I see here. None of the pictures I took really captured their colour but the trip would have been worth it for that alone, never mind the acrobatic seals we saw, or all the newly returned swallows who were even more acrobatic than the seals.   

Fresh Woods Pastures New - Ian Niall

Little Toller Books continue to be the find of the year, nature writing can be a tricky thing - I have a stack of books I've failed to get very far with, books without humour but heavy on philosophy and written in an overly lyrical style (books that shall remain nameless here because they deserve no sort of encouragement), but when it's good you can find a book that changes the way you look at the world.

'Fresh Woods Pastures New' is just such a book (or books, originally it was two very short books). Ian Niall was the pen name of John McNeillie who wrote over forty books and contributed 'a countryman's notes' to Country life for many years, so predictably I'd never heard of him but 'Fresh Woods Pastures New' is mostly a look back at growing up in Galloway in south-west Scotland. I don't know Galloway particularly but I love the Scottish borders and that's what attracted me to this one. (I should say - in case it sounds like I have far to much of a fetish for Scottish books going on that whilst I happily pictured the landscape that I know and love whilst reading this, part of it's appeal is that it could have been written about any farm.)

What Niall writes about is his personal Eden - North Clutag farm, as it was when tenanted by his grandfather. Sent there as a boy in the 1920's to escape an outbreak of meningitis in Glasgow it becomes the place where he spends every holiday as he grows up learning the landscape intimately as he does so. The young Niall was a keen poacher so his days are filled with illicit trips into the woods and over the moors in search of every sort of game from eels in the burn to pheasants for the pot. Nobody can know a patch of land like a man whose spent hours hours observing a gorse bush to see where exactly under it a bird has her nest. He knows the rat runs in the farm, where the stoats live in the dry stone wall, and where to find a plovers nest. This is a boy who kept pet hedgehogs and disgraces himself by shooting an owl, one who'll find himself half way across a field before he's really woken up - and only then by the crack of his shotgun after an early rabbit. He's also a man who understands the importance of a whole ecosystem (though that's not the word he uses) and the need to maintain  balance within it.

'Fresh Woods Pastures New' is in part an elegy for a way of life already over by the time it was written - by the 1950's tractors would surely have been the norm, rather than horses, to do the heavy work; a way of farming that had to an extent accommodated wildlife fast being replaced by mechanised efficiency and pesticides. Niall doesn't often explicitly condemn modern methods - for the most part he ignores them choosing instead to recall the past, but he does mourn the loss of woodlands, though even when he does this he manages to avoid being sentimental. This is a book bathed in nostalgia but always grounded by the presence of a shotgun and an awareness of the food chain.

Niall writes beautifully, and according to his son with very little editing or revision - this I can well believe the book reads like a man reminiscing in conversation. It's attractive but calls for sustained concentration - this wasn't a book that I could read for hours, without a narrative my attention wanders and when I'm reading about nature it generally wanders straight out the window to look at a tree or similar - which is part of the pleasure. After reading 'Island Years Island Farm' I ended up buying three copies as presents, by the end of the year it will probably be more, 'Fresh Woods Pastures New' has the same quality - it makes me long to share it with other people.          

Harpoon At A Venture - Gavin Maxwell

On Thursday I was in London for the  Penguin bloggers evening. This is a rare treat for me, train fares are prohibitive, and work hours have to be negotiated but this particular evening was to tempting to miss. One of the unexpected highlights was a conversation with Robert Macfarlane*, I liked 'The Wild Places' which I read long enough ago to not remember much about, and am quietly excited about his new book 'The Old Ways' (and only partly because I managed to grab a proof copy). What was really exciting though was finding that we were both very enthusiastic about Maxwell's 'Harpoon At A Venture', I've never met anyone else who's ever read it, much less loved it before and yet this is a book that deserves classic status quite as much as (if not more than) 'Ring of Bright Water'.

I've been talking about 'Harpoon At A Venture' a bit recently which made me realise it's years since I last read it and a re-visit was long overdue. When I first found this book I was in my early teens and read it as a straight adventure story, one that was particularly attractive because it was set on the west coast. Reading it this time I was surprised by how big a role the war and it's aftermath play. It all starts in an air raid in 1940, the battle of Britain is at it's height and Maxwell is stationed with 2 other officers and 200 men near the Blackwall tunnel and East India Docks. They think their moment has come one night but the bomb fails to explode, out in the crisp autumn dawn after the all clear he finds the bomb in a churchyard where he realises the crypt is being used as a shelter, opening the doors he's "hit by a stifling wave of air so noisome that I retched even at its first impact. The temperature was that of a Kew hothouse, the stench indescribable...One hundred and twelve people had been in that airless crypt for seven hours." The people in the crypt, which has become a cesspit during its occupation, are in no hurry to be disturbed, nothing has ever made the blitz seem more horrible or real to me than that description (much of which I've left out). 

Later on, after a disconcerting (for the reader) encounter with a naked guardsman in the showers, Maxwell and a friend daydream about buying Hebridean islands after the war as suitably clean and fresh alternatives to the rubble and filth of London. It's an idea that stays with him and as the war ends he negotiates to buy Soay. This is where the problems begin, for Maxwell realises from the beginning that a life of quiet retirement won't do - peacetime is dull - Soay needs a project. A chance encounter with a basking shark seems to give the answer, and it's a mark of how good a story teller Maxwell is that when you find his reaction to the shark is to shoot 300 rounds into it you're still with him. This is the start of a mission to kill a shark (the 300 rounds don't do it) and the birth of the shark fishery plan.

What follows is a chase that the sharks win again and again, until finally they succeed and catch one. For Maxwell and his crew it seems to be as much about the thrill of the chase as the catch which is perhaps why in planning terms they mess up again and again. By the time 'Harpoon At A Venture' was written he can admit that failure was almost guaranteed from the beginning of an under capitalised scheme where nobody had a clue what they were doing. It took 5 years for that to really become clear during which time Maxwell lost everything (though almost miraculously it seems he managed to protect the investment of others.)

There are echo's of that first dockland scene - a beach on Scalpay is transformed into a charnel house of dismembered sharks, the sea red with blood but this is as nothing to the contamination of Soay. The factory fails to work efficiently, the harbour fills with scum and carrion - none of the clean escapism planned in 1940, and worst of all a brine tank is tainted. Unfortunately it contained 16 tonnes of shark flesh.

 "For a wave of air so noisome, so active, and evil, it is difficult to find comparison...Ammonia, dense, suffocating, and almost visible...the smell of the Blackwall crypt seven years before was no more than a pale presage of what my illusory Island of Avalon had to offer me now... It was alive, heaving, seething, an obscene sea such as Brueghel might have conceived, alive as the sanctuary of Beelzebub himself, with a million million grubs, twisting, turning, writhing, as though beneath that surface layer of putrescence were the struggling bodies of all the wounded but resurrected dragons that we had attacked and that had escaped us." 

Despite the business failure though there is success of a sort here, it comes in the form of high adventure, life and death struggles with both the sharks and the elements, and escape from austerity Britain. There is a heartbreaking letter from a boy of 22 who finds himself trapped in a marriage to a woman he neither loves or is loved by - he's willing to throw his life savings into the shark venture in return for a job and escape.

As a piece of nature writing it's worth remembering that almost nothing was known about Basking Sharks before the Soay project - scientifically something important came out of this mess. the Hebrides in all there stark, stripped back beauty, and especially its seas are alive on the page. There are continual observations of birds and beasts of every sort, meticulous and poetic at the same time. There is also the conundrum of how to live in and off a landscape without destroying it - a question we still have no satisfactory answer for. It's a tremendous book whichever way you look at it and badly needs to be bought back into print - not least because my copy has now started to fall apart and wants replacing.

*I wish I'd taken notes when I talked to him although that would probably have been a bit off putting... A lot of books were mentioned some of which I remember, some of which I can't quite bring to mind, all sounded interesting and would have born further investigation. Still, the list I have is quite long enough to be going on with and will inevitably lead to yet more books so all is not lost. 

Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson

'Kidnapped' was a childhood favourite - or more specifically a favourite from the years that seem to be classed as young adult now; a term I'm a little bit suspicious of but I assume covers the stage when one grows out of The Famous Five but doesn't yet feel compelled to walk around with a conspicuous copy of something Russian. (I wonder if there's a polite term for that phase?) I probably had a battered Puffin Classics copy back in the day but it's long gone, so a few years ago I felt impelled to purchase a rather more grown up looking Canongate version (it looked exceptionally scholarly) which has kicked around the shelves ever since waiting to be picked up until finally I was in the mood for something Scottish and Victorian.

A few pages in and I wondered what I'd signed up for - it was clear that 'Kidnapped' wasn't entirely the book I remembered (it was also clear that I didn't really remember much about it). Re-reading it, it's a much more complex novel than I would have imagined a week ago. Having started this post the Scottish one and I have spent the last 2 hours discussing Jacobite's, the suppression of the clans, and Scottish independence. I grew up with a romantic notion that the Jacobite cause was a noble one and that Bonnie Prince Charlie was a hero (in Shetland where traditionally there is little love for the mainland Scot) He grew up being told that Bonnie Prince Charlie was a nasty little man, foreign at that, who was the ruin of the Clans (in the Highlands where you might imagine a different attitude would prevail).

I assumed that a good portion of my pro Jacobite sympathies were culled from 'Kidnapped' but reading now I see no evidence of enthusiasm from Stevenson. His Alan Breck Stewart is in most ways a ridiculous little (literally - his lack of hight is frequently referred to) man with a distinctly skewed idea of honour and morality. Resourceful and brave certainly, but also overly proud, vain, quick to take offence, manipulative, and unscrupulous. He certainly has no qualms about taking a second rent from his clansmen who can ill afford it so that his chief can live in some comfort and safety in France. David Balfour - the Lowlander happy to swear his allegiance to King George is on the other hand a model of youthful integrity whose only discernible fault is his inability to tell when he's on a tidal Island.  

As a children's book it's a ripping yarn which manages to mix the fairy tale elements of a young man destined to find he's the long lost rightful heir of an estate and fortune, with adventure on the high sea's, a life and death journey across a wild landscape, and just a little humour. As a grown up book there is far more humour, more tension, more horror and plenty of the duality that the introduction in my edition insists upon. David leaves behind a world of certainty for one where nothing is assured and where the weather is as much his enemy as the red coats are. 

As for 'Kidnapped'  itself - well the chances are anybody reading this will already have know it reasonably well, but should you be on the look out for a copy I absolutely recommend this edition. The notes, glossary, introduction, and maps are excellent (I learned stuff) and as a book to provoke conversation it has a lot going for it - not least as it feels remarkably relevant in a time when Scottish independence is very much on the news agenda.  

Irresolutions

Well I'm back from my break albeit reluctantly and still have a few days off to sort myself out before it's back to work. It's odd to be home, my flat is taking a while to warm up and everywhere I look there are jobs to be done. The biggest and most intimidating of these is to sort out an incipient damp problem, my upstairs neighbour had a leaky pipe which has left my bathroom ceiling in a state - this is no worse now than when I went away so it looks like that problem is under control, unfortunately there seems to be another leak in the airing cupboard. It's going mouldy. I'm not happy.

Upstairs seem nice and will doubtless be helpful but I still foresee weeks if not months of chasing plumbers, house agents, insurance companies and all the other crap that goes along with these things. It's not the start to the New Year I would have chosen but is probably indicative of things to come - the best laid plans and all that. It's also another reason why I'm not making any resolutions this year, I tried last year and felt vaguely frustrated that all the good intentions, small as they were, kept being pushed aside by more insistent issues - this year I'm taking it as it comes, my resolutions will be made and carried out on a daily basis rather than grand ones where I will constantly let myself down by failing to be consistently better organised and such like.

Meanwhile the borders were as lovely as ever, my favourite bookshop (Main street books trading) came up trumps, I read some cracking good books, got disappointed at Glenkinchie distillery (closed due to wind damage) but happily missed the worst of the Scottish gales - although we still saw trees down everywhere - it really blew, froze looking at Melrose Abbey, ate my chocolate reindeer, and generally wish I’d never left.

Stormy Petrel – Mary Stewart

My second Mary Stewart and I remain intrigued. This one was first published in 1991. I’m a bit obsessive about when books are published and when they’re set. According to Wikipedia Mary Stewart was born in 1916 which would have made her about 74 when she was writing this so although on the surface the action is early nineties mood wise it feels a decade or two earlier. This is probably only important to me but it plays on my mind and I felt a lot happier when I’d worked out to my own satisfaction ‘when’ I was.

My frame of reference for Mary Stewart is ‘Wildfire at Midnight’ (although on the strength of these two books I’ve bought more) ‘Stormy Petrel’ is quite a different proposition. Rose Fenemore is looking for a bolt hole at the end of term (she’s a Cambridge don, science fiction writer, and minor poet so deserves a holiday albeit a working one), her brother Crispin is looking for some bird watching so they both settle happily on a cottage in the western isles. Rose arrives safely and settles in but Crispin is delayed but the natives seem friendly and she has plenty of writing to do so even a rising storm doesn’t seem like a problem – until that is Rose wakes up to find a strange man in her kitchen closely followed by a second strange man who definitely isn’t who he says he is... (This has actually happened to me – in a student flat, we were woken up at 2am by the sound of hoovering, we knew something was wrong because we rarely hoovered, 3 drunken men from somewhere had managed to open our door and thought a bit of housework was in order. It was disconcerting.)

I digress. Rose isn’t best pleased especially as it becomes clear that things don’t add up and it all becomes a bit menacing. What I particularly liked about ‘Stormy Petrel’ is that instead of a murder and a hero suspected of the crime there’s a bit of suspected smuggling and fraud which feels very believable and makes the romance a bit less worrying. There is also an excellent sub plot about the eventual fate of the island and the question of Rose’s future as a single lady. The other thing I liked about this later book was that instead of a whirlwind entanglement with a swarthy dangerous charmer there’s a slow getting to know a nice geologist.

I can think of no better way of putting it than to say this was a thoroughly nice, thoroughly enjoyable book. It hasn’t changed my life but I’m pretty sure I’ll read it again and the Scottish one is eyeing it up too. The descriptions of the islands scenery and wildlife are really wonderful, the plot maintains an agreeable tension throughout and it’s an excellent comfort read which is just what I’ve been in the mood for, the only question remaining is this – will I have the self control to save some of those unread Stewart’s for my holiday next month?

The Bride of Lammermoor – Sir Walter Scott

The Borders is Walter Scott country and although on a previous visit I made it over to Abbotsford it’s many years since I attempted to read any of Scott’s books; my last try was ‘The Pirate’ which I spent time on getting because it’s set in Shetland and failed to finish because it’s unbelievably turgid stuff (deservedly all but out of print I’m sorry to say). Still it’s been on my mind to have another try for a while and New Year what with being in the heartland seemed like a good time, Oxford University Press were kind enough to let me have a copy of ‘The Bride of Lammermoor’ and that was me set (fortunately I didn’t forget to pack this one).

I’m glad I’ve given Scott another go because I thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Bride of Lammermoor’ (there will be more Scott in my near future) it’s a rattling good read. I was expecting something a little drier than the heady mix of adventure, romance, and mysticism dished up here, Scott is a lot more fun than I thought he’d be. ‘The Bride of Lammermoor’ is set around 1707 – Queen Anne is on the throne and I think the act of union between Scotland and England is just taking place Jacobite Tories are getting the thin end of the wedge and Edgar, Master of Ravenswood, is burying his father with all due ceremony and what remains of his fortune. Robbed of his patrimony by the machinations of Lord Ashton he swears vengeance for himself and his father and sets off back to his ancestral home to challenge Ashton before a planned flight to the continent and the cause of the king over the water.

Things don’t go quite according to plan, instead of bloody revenge Edgar rescues Sir William and his inconveniently beautiful daughter from certain death in the form of a rampaging wild bull (which makes me wonder – did Trollope borrow the bull incident in ‘The Small House at Allington’ from Scott? He certainly alludes to Jeanie Deans from ‘The Heart of Midlothian’). Out of pure chivalry Edger carries Lucy to a woodland grotto reputed to be fatally unlucky to the Ravenswood’s and unsurprisingly she falls in love with the handsome stranger who saves her life. Sir William is grateful too and determines to do something for the young master especially when it seems the political tide is about to turn and Edgar’s chances of reclaiming the family property are beginning to look good.

With this in mind Sir William encourages an intimacy between the young couple to grow up which ends in a secret engagement and the return of Lady Ashton. Lady Ashton could give Lady Macbeth (and Mrs Proudie) a run for her money and isn’t precisely pleased with the way things are going. Edgar is banished and Lucy effectively imprisoned whilst her mother sets to work on breaking her spirit – to such good effect that when Edger finally returns it’s to witness her signing the settlements to marry another man. It’s not destined to be a happy marriage though – the bride loses her mind and stabs the bridegroom on their wedding night (this is actually based quite closely on a true story).

I know that’s all quite spoiler heavy but the contents of classics are generally reasonably well known, and the fascination (as well as the pleasure and humour) is in the detail. There are ghost stories and fairy tales, a trio of old hags who form a gruesome chorus, a comic turn in the form of a faithful family retainer determined to keep up appearances (he will go to any lengths to do this), and Lady Ashton whose villainy I’ve only hinted at. There’s also some really good stuff on the state of Scotland at the time of union, and on the nature of the relationships between master and man as the country emerges from the feudal clan system (who could want more?)

I found Lucy a fascinating heroine – at the outset she’s still a girl more than half immersed in the idea of romance. Loving, kind, and the darling of all but her mother she is described as having “the softness of a mind, amounting almost to a feebleness” there is part approbation and part warning in this statement. Lucy’s softness allows her to accommodate the needs of all, especially the men (in the form of father and brothers) around her; there are no rough edges to exacerbate them, or to make anyone fear her. She needs the masculine strength of a Ravenswood to cling to for support, and he in his turn is the more deeply ensnared because he feels she needs his protection so despite both parties feeling some trepidation regarding the personality of the other they become increasingly interdependent.

Lady Ashton knowing her daughters weakness no doubt feels that bending her will should be an easy matter. It isn’t, once Lucy’s passions are awakened she is set on a course of silent resistance the breaking down of which utterly destroys her – but all of this is discussed far more expertly in the introduction so I should probably stop now before my word count runs wildly out of control.

The Monarch of The Glen – Compton Mackenzie

‘The Monarch of the Glen’ and Compton Mackenzie have both hovered on the edge of my reading conscious for a very long time now. ‘Whisky Galore’ is one of my favourite films but although I’ve had the book well over a decade I’ve only made one half hearted attempt to open it (about to change). ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ came to my attention through the TV series, and was rejected for the same reason, but over the last six months I kept picking it up and finally gave in to temptation on a stealthy amazon visit. All credit to Vintage – I love their current cover designs and after such success with John Cheever and John O’Hara I feel very inclined to give anything on their classics list a go, that and I’m genetically inclined to have a soft spot for eccentric Lairds.

There’s a moment that comes in a book where I know I’m going to love it, treasure it, and hopefully persuade someone else to read it (doesn’t always happen). In Monarch that moment came respectably early on with this line:

“Kilwhillie’s faded eyes were lighted up with that strange light which was never on sea or land, but is only to be seen in the eyes of a landed proprietor in the Highlands who hopes he has found a buyer for an overtaxed forest...and a shooting-lodge that looks like a bunch of tarnished pepper-pots.”

I have seen that light or at least something very close to it and clearly so had Mackenzie. It’s the combination of generally affectionate humour and sharp observation that made this such a beguiling read for me.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of Nancy Mitford’s ‘Wigs on the Green’ (I’m assuming Mackenzie would have known it) and although Monarch is by far the better book I did wonder if there was a nod in the direction of Mitford and her type of fiction. For those who know the TV version – forget it and approach the book with fresh eyes. This is the story of Donald MacDonald, Laird of Glenbogle (also known as Ben Nevis) and his attempts to snag a rich wife for one of his sons. A distant Macdonald connection from Canada (Carrie) has had the good sense to marry a fortune and as Mrs Chester Royde she, her husband, and most importantly her unmarried sister in law are invited to enjoy some Scottish hospitality. The Laird’s hopes for a happy outcome are high, the sun is most unaccountably shining and it’s the glorious 12th – the scene is set for a grouse massacre of legendry proportion when disaster in the form of hikers strikes. The MacDonald wrath knows no bounds and before long all out war is declared between castle and the national union of hikers. Meanwhile Carrie has fallen in with some Scottish Nationalists (almost worse than hikers) including a distractingly handsome poet.

The hikers lead by the fanatical Percy Buckham, with their passionate devotion to their corduroy shorts and healthy outdoor life call to mind both Mosley’s blackshirts and the Hitler youth movement. It’s not an allusion that’s hammered home to hard – Percy Buckham of Primrose Hill is not an evil or even particularly sinister figure, but he’s an excellent example of how far a charismatic character filled with self belief and a desire for direct action can carry a crowd. It’s just this comparative lightness of touch which makes this book seem so fresh despite being almost seventy years old. Issues over Scottish Nationalism, what heritage is, who owns it, and who owns the land around us have never really gone away. Rambling is still a topic (in rural areas anyway – I’ve yet to talk to a farmer who’s keen on the breed) and people still travel from across the globe to find their roots in the old country.

Which brings me back to Chester Royde, who is by far and away my favourite character; his assessment of stag stalking is a joy, as are his clothes. They start off as simply colourful and then progress far beyond (I thought) cliché and into something for more sublime and wonderful. In short I cannot help but love a book where everyone is laughed at but which contains no discernable malice; is the perfect comfort read and has a bit of substance to it as well!