You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Margaret Fay Shaw's life spans a century of change. Orphaned at 11 she left home and school in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia aged 16, crossing to Scotland to spend a year at school near Glasgow. It was there that her love for Scotland was born. After studying music in New York and Paris, she returned to live for six years with two sisters in South Uist. Life on the island had changed little from previous centuries, and material comforts were few. But the island was rich in music and tradition, and Margaret Fay Shaw's collection of Gaelic lore and song are amongst the most important made this century, whilst her photography evocatively captures the aura of a vanished world. Her autobiography is the remarkable testament of a remarkable woman as well as a powerful plea in defence of a Gaelic culture and world under threat. It is written with a sharpness of observation, directness of humour and zest for life which make it a marvellous record of the twentieth century.
A unique selection of photographs from the world-famous archive at Canna House, many of which are published for the first time in book form.
This is a compendium of photographs, stories, traditions and songs, it is an introduction to the world of the Gael and a memorial to a world now largely disappeared. It presents the rich tapestry of Gaelic life and culture in the words of the people who lived in and through that culture.
With an account of the Hebridean emigration 1790-1835.
When the internationally renowned photographer Paul Strand visited South Uist in 1954 to create a series of powerful portraits and landscape views, he was not alone in singling out the Western Isles for photographic attention. This book discusses why and how various photographers have been drawn to these fascinating islands and the ways in which photographic images have been created and viewed within Hebridean communities from the late 19th century onward. From Captain F. W. L. Thomas’s first images of St. Kilda in 1860 to George Washington Wilson’s topographical images of the Highlands, this beautiful compilation celebrates the distinctive way of life in the isles and the legacy of the talented photographers who were inspired by them.
Witch Wood is a 1927 novel by the Scots author John Buchan, set in the Scottish Borders during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Critics have called it Buchan's masterpiece
Tir a'Mhurain is a collection of photographs that reflects the impressions gathered by Paul Strand and his wife Hazel during their 3-month visit to the Hebrides in 1945. Juxtaposing people and landscape, Strand's beautifully sequenced photographs depict the perfect complicity he saw between nature and habitation in their wild terrain. Whether it is a view of the rocks and the sea or a grinning shepherd boy; scuddling clouds hanging over seaside house or the wrinkled face of an old lady framed by a knitted shawl, Strand's images transcend the ephemeral. This extended portrait captures the essence and complexity of a singular place. This is a true masterpiece of photography.
Scottish traditional music has been through a successful revival in the mid-twentieth century and has now entered a professionalised and public space. Devolution in the UK and the surge of political debate surrounding the independence referendum in Scotland in 2014 led to a greater scrutiny of regional and national identities within the UK, set within the wider context of cultural globalisation. This volume brings together a range of authors that sets out to explore the increasingly plural and complex notions of Scotland, as performed in and through traditional music. Traditional music has played an increasingly prominent role in the public life of Scotland, mirrored in other Anglo-American traditions. This collection principally explores this movement from historically text-bound musical authenticity towards more transient sonic identities that are blurring established musical genres and the meaning of what constitutes ‘traditional’ music today. The volume therefore provides a cohesive set of perspectives on how traditional music performs Scottishness at this crucial moment in the public life of an increasingly (dis)United Kingdom.
A darkly humorous, macabre novel of a wronged wife winning her amazing revenge