This book is a day and a night in the life of a Scottish city, seen through the imaging eye of a dreaming worker, who conjures to life the novel’s three motor characters — Ray, age nineteen; Helen, twenty-four, and Douglas, twenty-nine. Their connection is brief, yet inevitable in the fact that they are all parts of the single psyche, that of the dreamer/conjuror.  A Day at the Office is the story of Edinburgh in the year of the fall of the Berlin wall. A snapshot of time in its long history, of which the year 1990 is a short footnote. It is story about the effect death has on the living, a love story, a story about the pull of drugs. It is a story about margins, how difficult it is to escape them, and a rare convincing portrait of the Scottish working class. It is about the distance between what’s on the TV and the drudgery of daily existence for ordinary people. Daring, truly experimental, formally inventive, quietly lyrical, it is a book unlike anything else you’ve ever read.

A Day at the Office (Fiction)

Literature & Fiction

Jamieson, R. A.

Contemporary

Birlinn Limited

<p>James IV was one of Scotland's greatest Kings. His reign saw the full flowering of the Renaissance in Scotland - in architecture, in literature, and in art. For a brief period Scotland ranked among the great powers of Europe. This book details both James' reign and the richness and vibrancy of Scottish life and culture at that time. It fully acknowledges the importance of the Highlands in Scottish life (James was the last Gaelic-speaking monarch of Scotland).</p>

James IV

Ruth Blackie

History

The Mediaeval Castles of Skye and Lochalsh

Arts & Photography

Miket, Roger

Roberts, David L.

Architecture

Skye: A Postcard Tour

Travel

Charnley, Bob.

Europe

This diary chronicles in detail the experiences of an anonymous traveller to St Kilda in 1913.

A Voyage to St Kilda

Charnley, Bob (Author)

In 1605, James VI was muched vexed by the inhabitants of Lewis, who apparently delighted in "blood, theft, reiffe and oppression". His councillors recognized that one of the principal causes of rebellion was the number of boats on the islands, which gave the rebels the facility for "both eschewing of apprehension when they are pursued as for mutual concurring and assisting one another against his Highness and his authority". From the resonant prose of the Privy Council Registers it is clear that Highland galleys were a thorn in the flesh of the Lowland government. For nearly a millennium, the west Highland galley was the vehicle for island life. A Gaelic adaption of a Norse design, the ships guaranteed the independence of the islands. Birlinns are known through poetry and metaphor, and can be seen in carvings and seals. This text assesses this craft, bringing out the importance of the galley in the economy of the Highlands as a means of transporting mercenaries to Ireland. With the Union of the Crowns, this source of employment and money dried up and the collapse of the Highland economy followed. The author shows how this surplus of manpower became a factor in the collapse of Scotland into civil war and the anarchy of the 1630s on. But they were also much more than that.

The West Highland Galley

Denis Rixson

SDEMore than a chronicle of a life spent farming in the Scottish Highlands and a family portrait of the clan Fraser of Lovat, with whom the author enjoys a close connection, this work is also a collection of stories which reflect the changes of both attitude and affluence which have revolutionized Highland life and dramatically affected its natural environment over the centuries. Using the background to the Fraser clan chiefs as a central theme, from the cunning Red Fox, and infamous Fraser chieftain, through to the sudden death of the Master of Lovat which set in train the sale of the Fraser empire around Beaufort Castle, Iain Thomson weaves a narrative that shows how the effects of history have such a profound effect on what happens today.

The Long Horizon

Iain R. Thomson

This is an account of Rum, one of the Hebrides and the people who contributed to its story. The site of some of the earliest settlements in Scotland, Rum's history extends back to the Mesolithic period. It was also an isolated haven for the early Celtic Church in the figure of Beccan the Solitary, and later formed part of the territories of the Vikings and Clanranalds, and ultimately the Macleans of Coll. Its population were driven out to North America between 1826 and 1828 and the Bulloughs, a family of Lancashire industrialists, bought the island towards the end of the nineteenth century and left a bizarre legacy of Edwardiana in the form of Kinloch castle and its grand contents. This work paints a picture of the island as a rich cultural and natural heritage that eminently justifies its status as one of Scotland's finest nature reserves.

Rum: a Landscape Without Figures

John A. Love

Raasay

Norma MacLeod

Vibrating with endeavours for Britain's effort against the might of Nazi Germany, Clydebank was - in hindsight - an obvious target for the attentions of the Luftwaffe. When, on the evening of 13 March 1941, the authorities first detected that Clydebank was 'on beam' - targeted by the primitive radio-guidance system of the German bombers - no effort was made to raise the alarm or to direct the residents to shelter or flight. Within the hour, a vast timber-yard, three oil-stores, and two distilleries were ablaze, one pouring flaming whisky into a burn that ran blazing into the Clyde itself in vivid ribbons of fire. And still the Germans came; and Clydebank, now an inferno, lay illuminated and defenceless as heavy bombs of high-explosive, as land-mines and parachute blasters began to fall ...With reference to written sources and the memories of those who survived the experience, John MacLeod tells the story of the Clydebank Blitz and the terrible scale of death and devastation, speculating on why its incineration has been so widely forgotten and its ordeal denied any place in national honour.

River of Fire: The Clydebank Blitz

john-macleod

Americas

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