Delighted to announce that my next non-fiction book is One Week in April: The Scottish Radical Rising of 1820. This will be published on 9th April 2020, marking the 200th anniversary of the events of one turbulent week in Scotland’s history and their historical context. To read more about the book or to pre-order...
Skye August 2019
Really looking forward to giving a talk on the magical Isle of Skye on Saturday 17th August in a stunning venue. I’ll be speaking about the interesting times of 1745-6 and the men and women involved in those. The wonderful and talented Barbara Henderson and I are presenting separate events and then coming together...
The Easternmost House by Juliet Blaxland
This is a beautiful book, eloquent and evocative. Reading it felt like a meditation. Julie Blaxland lives with her husband Giles and Chuffy the brindle greyhound in the house of the title on a rapidly eroding part of the Suffolk coastline. Here is how she puts it: ‘I live in a house on...
Jane Haining – ‘The Scot who died in Auschwitz’
Jane Haining was born in the village of Dunscore in Dumfriesshire in 1897 and died in Auschwitz in 1944, at the age of 47. In 1932, as a Church of Scotland missionary, she had felt called to work as matron to Jewish girls at the Church of Scotland mission and school in Budapest....
World Book Day 2019
Here’s me dressed up as the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, photo taken by Kim Ayres for the Wigtown Book Festival a few years back. My favourite book of all time is The Flight of the Heron by DK Broster, the romantic adventure par excellence of the Jacobite Rising of 1745. I’m currently reading The...
The Battle of George Square – Bloody Friday 1919 in Glasgow
31st January 2019 marks the centenary of what became known as the Battle of George Square, also known as Bloody Friday. At least 60,000 people on strike from their work crammed into George Square in central Glasgow, in front of the City Chambers. The huge gathering was the culmination of a campaign to reduce...
Currently Hibernating
Over the winter there aren’t very many writing events going on. After a busy autumn giving talks, I’m staying close to home and getting on with the writing....
Book Week Scotland 2018
Along with many of my fellow wordsmiths, I was criss-crossing Scotland last week (19th to 25th November) to celebrate Book Week Scotland 2018, run by the Scottish Book Trust. The theme this year was ‘Rebel’. My first event was at the Brander Library in Huntly in Aberdeenshire, a lovely wood-panelled Victorian building, where the librarians had...
Remembering One of the Many
George McCurrach was the dominie or schoolmaster at a small village school in Aberdeenshire. He had risen from humble beginnings to eventually study at Aberdeen University. Enlisting in the Gordon Highlanders, he was then commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry. His wife Elizabeth, also a school teacher, took over...
The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women
I’m very proud to be one of many contributors to The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women, just published by Edinburgh University Press. It’s a book every Scottish library should hold and make available. Over 1,000 women find their place in this book and, as the cover copy says, the Dictionary “provides a striking...