Scotland and the Scottish Diaspora
"It's part of me, Scotland. I'm still immersed in it even though I am not there." -- Irvine Welsh (1958 - ), Scots novelist, short story writer, playwright, author of Trainspotting among many other works).
All my life I have been interested in the history of Scotland and the profound consequences of the Scottish diaspora throughout the world. Scotland and the Scots are appealing in so many ways -- the beauty of the land- and seascapes, the food and drink, the extraordinarily resourceful and creative people, the dramatic history from antiquity to the present, the great literature and history and philosophy and religion. The subjects are themselves enough to inspire writing, but there is great satisfaction in the fact that the Scots have lived up to the subjects on their own writ.
Over many years I have researched the history of Cumberland Valley, and I have often talked about the Scots, the Scots-Irish, and the settlement of this part of the New World by these willing and not-so-willing exiles. In recognition of the history and significance of the Scots to our area, I fly the Saltire and carry these books and cds. I am always on the lookout for more.
P.S. Due to listing limitations, I have moved Ian Rankin and Denise Mina, two fine writers of the Scots Noir movement, over to our International Mystery page.
Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides
Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides
"Nicolson's chronicle is a fine book . . . Readers will be duly awed by his delicately layered story." -The New York Times Book Review
In 1937, Adam Nicolson's father answered a newspaper ad for a small cluster of three islands-The Shiants (Gaelic meaning "holy" or "enchanted")-which lie east of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Sheer black cliffs drop five hundred feet into the cold, dark, rip currents of the Minch, lounging seals crowd at their feet and thousands upon thousands of sea birds swarm overhead in the sky. Nicolson inherited the islands when he was twenty-one and in this spellbinding and luminous book, he recalls his keenly deep connection to the wild, windswept, and yet enchantingly beautiful property. Not merely a haven of solitude, the islands, with a centuries-old past haunted by restless ghosts and tales of ancient treasure, came to be for Nicolson his heartland and a "sea room"-a sailing term he uses to mean "the sense of enlargement that island life can give you."
In passionate, prismatic prose, Sea Room celebrates this extraordinary landscape, exploring Nicolson's complicated relationship to the paradoxes of island life and the wonder of revelatory engagement with our natural world.