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Whisky and Scotland
This witty, erudite and often lyrical toast to uisgebeatha, the Celts' 'water of life', takes us back into the mists of time when some happy man chanced upon the technique of producing a distillation from barley that rivalled the mead of the gods. But it is also a lament for the days when every self-respecting Highlander had his own pot still as of right.Good malt whisky, brewed and distilled in the time-honoured way, excites the same appreciation as fine wine, and there could be no more discerning guide than Neil M. Gunn, a native of Caithness and one of Scotland's leading twentieth-century novelists.Whisky and Scotland describes in loving detail the traditional techniques, still used today...
Neil M. Gunn
Neil Gunn has long been recognized in Scotland as one of the well-springs of the literary renaissance of the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties and is now generally accepted as the most significant novelist the Highlands of Scotland has produced. Yet his work has divided the critics: one view sees him as essentially a regional writer recreating the history of the Highlands and exploring the values of a traditional society. Another sees his greatest contribution in the later novels which deal with the deepest issues of the day in more exploratory and experimental fashion. This study demonstrates that in fact Gunn accepts no limitations in psychological and philosophical penetration, and deals always with the whole universe of man and the other landscape of the mind. The varied criticism of Gunn and the reasons for his neglect outside Scotland are sharply examined, and his status as a novelist of European stature is assessed.
The Silver Darlings
The Silver Darlings is a tale of lives hard won from a cruel sea and crueller landlords. It tells of strong young men and stronger women whose loves, fears and sorrows are set deep in a landscape of raw beauty and bleak reward. The dawning of the Herring Fisheries brought with it the hope of escape from the brutality of the Highland Clearances, and Neil Gunn's story paints a vivid picture of a community fighting against nature and history and refusing to be crushed.
Highland River
Kenn returns to the Highlands of his youth, back to the river which has haunted his dreams since boyhood. Determined to walk all the way back to its source, Kenn embarks on a journey that will lead him deep into the wilderness of his own heart. Profound and moving, Highland River is a stirring tale of what is lost and what endures, and the unexpected ways we can be renewed.
Morning Tide
Twelve-year-old Hugh MacBeth lives in a small fishing village near Caithness at the end of the nineteenth century. He is becoming aware of his mother's worries that he and his brother will follow their father to sea, and is becoming to realise that the fishing industry is doomed to decline, a decline that will result in the death of his village. A lyrical and poignant novel, Morning Tide, describes how a young boy learns to become a man. It is a poetic testimony to the intensity of feeling in physical experience, the touch of the earth and the coldness of the sea, and in the need to be free. Sensitivity and wildness are pitted against the restrictions of family and social life, and it is more than a complete picture of childhood; unfolding into a set of values that speaks powerfully to the present.
Sun Circle
First published in 1933, Sun Circle belongs to Gunn's most creative period. A story of love and awakening set in a time of critical upheaval during the dawn of Scottish history, Breeta's people are the ancient, newly Christianized Pictish tribes living in remote Northern Scotland in the 9th century. Assailed by the pagan Vikings from across the sea, the clash of Christianity and paganism, of old and new, of Viking and Pict, is a conflict from which the Scottish nation is forged.
Off in a Boat
His ability scrupulously to evoke the landscapes and the peoples of the Highlands, his blending together of myth and reality and his wide-ranging imagination make Neil Gunn the most important Scottish novelist of the 20th century. --Trevor Royle, The Macmillan Companion to Scottish Literature
The Silver Bough
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Neil M. Gunn
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Blood Hunt
After a lifetime at sea, old Sandy returns to the land of his fathers to live out his remaining years in the peaceful isolation of a Highland croft. His companions are his dog Queenie, a temperamental cow Nancy, a few hens and his precious books. He befriends the local village boys who come to trust him. When one of these boys, Allan, seeks his helps after killing the man who has seduced his girlfriend, Sandy takes his side, warding off suspicious enquiries from the village policeman, the dead man's brother. Allan's girlfriend also comes to seek refuge with Sandy and eventually gives birth to her baby there. A moving and satisfying blend of tragedy and comedy, Blood Hunt has a powerful message - the triumph of love over anger and of the unending renewal of nature. It is a masterly novel by a writer in full maturity. It was Gunn's second last novel and one of his most masterly.
