Heritage and Scottish

100 Scotsman Walks
From hill to glen and river
by Robin Howie

Hillwalking is a way of life for Robin Howie, whose name is very well-known in Scottish hillwalking circles and whose knowledge of the Scottish high tops is second to none. For over ten years his popular weekly hillwalking column has appeared in The Scotsman where his pleasure of walking in the hill... more...

349 Views of Scotland
by David Squires

Anyone who has walked or climbed in Scotland will sooner or later come across a view indicator – one of the discs or plates which identify surrounding features in the landscape. This is the first full-length work devoted to these devices. Since the first indicator appeared in 1890 at Ladies&rs... more...

A Last Wild Place
by Mike  Tomkies

Mike Tomkies gives a remarkable picture of the whole cycle of nature around him, in a harsh and testing environment of unrivalled beauty. Vivid colours and sounds fill these pages – exotic wild orchids, the roar of rutting stags, a pair of dragonflies mating, the flight of the redwing, the ter... more...

A Natural History of Sea Serpents
by Adrian Shine

A Natural History of Sea Serpents, re-examines the cold-case enigma of sea serpents and monsters described by impeccable witnesses over three centuries. These reports have sometimes intrigued and puzzled the most eminent scientists of their times, yet often became the butt of popular derision. Na... more...

A Quiet Life
by Martha Robertson

From their inception and through the early years of this century, long before automation, lighthouses were manned by keepers, often with their families in residence. In the case of the Petrie family, in 1922, their number included a new arrival, Martha. Over the years Martha, or Mattie as she was ni... more...

A Scotsman Returns
Travels with Thomas Telford in the Highlands and Islands
by Paul A.  Lynn

This is a fascinating combination of biographical material about the great Scottish engineer Thomas Telford (1757–1834), and a modern travelogue that revisits the places in the Highlands and Islands where he worked over a period of 20 years. Scotland was provided with desperately-needed civil ... more...

Archie's Lights
The life and Times of a Scottish Lightkeeper
by Anne MacEachern, Archie MacEachern

Born at a clifftop lighthouse in 1910, Archie’s life was spent in the world of Scottish lighthouses – he was one of the third generation of his family in the service of the Northern Lighthouse Board. Archie’s stories have gripped listeners of all ages and have now been compiled ... more...

Art & Nature in the Outer Hebrides
by Bruce Kendrick

The Outer Hebrides is an island archipelago on the remotest north-western periphery of a bigger island archipelago, itself part of Europe’s Atlantic coastline. And what is Atlantic Europe if not the north-western tip of the vast land mass of Eurasia? Here is an unrivalled sense of place, on th... more...

Belief in Ourselves
by Neil M.  Gunn

Neil M Gunn (1891 – 1973), one of Scotland’s most distinguished and highly regarded novelists of the 20th century, was a prolific writer. While he is best known for his fictional work Gunn was also a perceptive and meditative essayist who wrote extensively throughout his life on a w... more...

Black Rood
The Lost Crown Jewel of Scotland
by David Willem

Black Rood tells the fascinating story of one of Scotland’s oldest and most significant crown jewels. Once as famous as the Stone of Scone, the Black Rood was a gold and jewel-studded reliquary for a piece of the True Cross. This profound and holy treasure was smuggled into Scotland after the ... more...

Bones
The Life and Adventures of Dr Archibald Menzies (1754–1842)
by Graeme Menzies

Archibald Menzies (1754–1842) is recognized as an accomplished botanist but, as author Graeme Menzies has discovered, that is only a part of his story. In this compelling new biography, the author reveals that Archibald Menzies was a remarkable product of the Scottish Enlightenment: a boy rais... more...

Bubbleheads, SEALs and Wizards
America’s Scottish Bastion in the Cold War
by David Mackay

The American military presence in Scotland during the Cold War was greater than in either of the World Wars, bringing with it the largest peace-time number of foreign military personnel in Scotland’s history. This military power was delivered by individuals – the forgotten heroes. They w... more...

Caithness to Patagonia
Distant Lands and Close Relatives
by Ian Leith

This is an extraordinary and little-known story of emigration from Scotland. Caithness and Patagonia are literally a world apart, yet in the late 19th and early 20th centuries a number of Caithness men and women took on the challenge of this wild, open and windswept land. The book provides the origi... more...

Camp 165 Watten
2nd edition
by Valerie Campbell

This is a new and expanded second edition of the best-selling first edition. The author has provided an in-depth historical account with new information on a number of prisoners including the eminent Professor Klaus Eggers; Karl Haensel, a former rear gunner who remained in Caithness after his relea... more...

Camp 21 Comrie
POWs and post-war stories from Cultybraggan
by Valerie Campbell

Camp 21 Comrie, also known as Cultybraggan Camp, is the UK’s best preserved prisoner of war camp. Lying in the heart of rural Perthshire in Scotland, the camp’s history is a fascinating one. Built two miles south of the village of Comrie as a camp for detainees, its first prisoner was a ... more...

Canals Across Scotland
Walking, Cycling, Boating, Visiting
by Hamish Brown

This entertaining and informative book will be of practical benefit to all who discover the historic Union Canal and the Forth & Clyde Canal, whether walking, cycling, boating or visiting the Falkirk Wheel or the Kelpies. The canals are for fun, whether on the water, on the towpath, walking or c... more...

Crucible of Conflict
Three Centuries of Border War
by John Sadler

The borderers – people forged and hardened by endemic warfare over generations, whether by raids and skirmishes or set piece battles – are marked even today as a distinct group. For three savage centuries England and Scotland, both dynamic races, slogged it out upon this arena of nations... more...

Daughters of the North
Jean Gordon and Mary, Queen of Scots
by Jennifer Morag Henderson

This is the first biography of Jean Gordon, who is best known as the first wife of the notorious Earl of Bothwell. Bothwell divorced Jean in order to marry Mary, Queen of Scots, and Jean and her family were closely involved in all of the major events of Mary’s short and turbulent reign in Scot... more...

Days with the Golden Eagle
by Seton Gordon

Writer and photographer, Seton Gordon, wrote 27 books over a period of several decades and most of these focused on the landscape and wildlife of the Highlands. Of all these books, one of the most acclaimed was Days with the Golden Eagle. Seton Gordon was among the first to observe in some detail - ... more...

Dive Scapa Flow
by Rod Macdonald

Dive Scapa Flow has been THE definitive guide to diving the fabled wrecks of Scapa Flow, one of the world’s greatest wreck diving locations.  This completely re-written and updated centenary edition is produced to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the scuttle of the 74 warships of th... more...

Donald Watson Bird Artist and Writer
by Roger Crofts

Donald Watson was a seminal figure in the wildlife art and ornithological world from the late 1950s onwards. Since his death in 2005, his work has lived on through active public demand for his outstanding paintings of birds and the continued reading of his books.  Until now, there has been no b... more...

Flight from the Croft
by Bill Innes

As a barefoot lad in the Outer Hebrides, Bill Innes dreamed the impossible dream of becoming a pilot and this book tells how that dream came to pass. The author’s career of over forty years spanned a period of incredible advances in the air – now regarded as a golden era in aviation. ... more...

Footsteps in the Snow
by John Dudeney

Footsteps in the Snow recounts a life shaped and dominated by Antarctica, a multi-facetted account of a life dedicated to Antarctic science, policy and governance. It is also the story of growth from callow youth to Antarctic professional in the most challenging of environments. Joining the Briti... more...

Halcyon in the Hebrides
by Bob Orrell

To celebrate 60 years of sailing Scottish waters, the author single-handedly sailed Halcyon, a 32ft wooden yawl, from Fairlie on the Clyde, round the Mull of Kintyre by way of numerous inner islands to Barra in the Outer Hebrides and to the Atlantic side of the islands, not often visited by cruising... more...

Half-Light
and other short stories
by Neil M.  Gunn

Neil M. Gunn is celebrated as one of Scotland’s foremost novelists of the 20th century. Less well known is that he was also a perceptive and meditative essayist and accomplished writer of short stories. Most of his short stories were written in the 1920s and 1930s in parallel with his early no... more...

Inventors and Engineers of Caithness
by Robert P. Gunn

The fax, electric clock, automatic telephone and more – all inventions that have had a massive impact on our lives. And all invented by Scots. There is much more to be told and in this book the author recounts the lives and achievements of some unsung heroes, blending social, scientific and Sc... more...

Kayaking the Sea Roads
Exploring the Scottish Highlands
by Ed Ley-Wilson

Kayaking the Sea Roads is a personal journey by sea kayak into the heart of the sea roads that make up our Scottish Highlands and islands. Blending the intensity of the journey with a careful observation of the natural world and first-hand knowledge of the challenges of living and working in this pl... more...

Landscape Change in the Scottish Highlands
Imagination and Reality
by James Fenton

The Scottish Highlands have a strong appeal to the public imagination. Indeed, as a result of the writings of Sir Walter Scott, they are now symbolic of Scotland as a whole: a land of mountains, glens and lochs, of golden eagles and red deer; a land with a rich cultural history of clans and clanship... more...

Landscape to Light
by Neil M.  Gunn

Although Neil M. Gunn is well-known as one of Scotland's foremost writers of the 20th century, he is less well-known as a perceptive and meditative essayist who wrote on a variety of subjects - from landscape, nature and the sea to literature, politics and matters of the spirit. Written in paral... more...

Leaving Lethinnis
by Rory Putman

In this sequel, Rory offers a further collection of pen-portraits from those early years in the place he has called Lochuisge. In the tradition of Lillian Beckwith’s The Hills is Lonely, or Sybil Armstrong’s A Croft in Clachan, the anecdotes inevitably revolve around the strong character... more...

Leith Shipyards 1918-1939
Leith Built Ships, Vol. II
by R. O. Neish

This volume includes some very famous ships with tales of adventure and new trade routes, also sadness, the launch and then the loss of the largest sailing ship ever built in a British shipyard – the five-masted auxiliary sailing barque, Kobenhavn. It recounts the days when shipbuilding should... more...

Life and Death on Little Ross
The Story of an Island, a Lighthouse and its Keepers
by David R.  Collin

Little Ross is an attractive and unspoiled island and its lighthouse, beautifully designed by the famous Stevenson family, is officially a 'lesser' light, far away from busy sea lanes, at the summit of this remote island. The island was unknown to most people until 1960 when a murder in t... more...

Life at the Edge
The Natural History of the Caithness Coast
by Ken Crossan

This book is a wonderful selection of inspiring photographs reflecting life along 147 miles of fretted Caithness coastline in the far north of Scotland. Divided into five broad habitats: harbours; seas; beaches, dunes and links; sea cliffs and stacks; and rocky shorelines, each photograph is accompa... more...

Life in Lethinnis
A croft in the Highlands
by Rory Putman

After 20 years working as a professional biologist, the author decided to ‘retire’ to the Highlands, moving with his wife to a croft at the edge of a small and somewhat inaccessible village on the west coast. This was no romantic and idealistic aspiration for the Good Life, nor really an... more...

Literature of the Gaelic Landscape
Litreacheas na Tìre
by John Murray

From the comfort of an armchair and with the aid of this new book, the reader can travel to the Breadalbane and Argyll of Duncan Bàn Macintyre; the Skye and Raasay of Sorley Maclean; and the Caithness and Sutherland of Neil M. Gunn. Photographs, maps and place-names linked to key passages in ... more...

Losing Sight of the Shore
Scotland’s Medical Explorers 1815–1915
by Wendell  McConnaha

For one hundred years Scottish medical explorers were at the forefront of exploration within the British Empire, as exemplified by these five individuals. This dominant role was facilitated by the convergence of four events: the unification of Scotland and England, the Scottish Enlightenment, Scotla... more...

Luftwaffe over Scotland
A history of German air attacks on Scotland, 1939-45
by Les Taylor

Luftwaffe over Scotland is the first complete history of the air attacks mounted against Scotland by Nazi Germany during World War Two and undertakes a detailed examination of the strategy, tactics and politics involved on both sides, together with a technical critique of the weaponry employed by bo... more...

Never to Return
Convoys to Russia in the Second World War
by Roderick G Maclean

Never to Return tells the story of the Russian convoys and the heroes who sailed in them with particular focus on HMS Achates. Roderick G Maclean has gathered primary and secondary source material to give a detailed and illuminating analysis of the Russian Convoys. He tells of the commodores who ... more...

Patrick Neill
Doyen of Scottish Horticulture
by Forbes W. Robertson

Descended from a Haddington family of printers and booksellers, Patrick Neill became head of the most prestigious printing firm in Edinburgh. Leaving his manager to run the business, he devoted his life to writing, natural history, horticulture and civic duties. His early tour of Orkney and Shetland... more...

Reading the Gaelic Landscape 2nd edition
Leughadh Aghaidh na Tìre
by John Murray

Following the success of the first edition, this new edition has been expanded and improved with additional images and enhanced drawings. The subject matter has been expanded with the chapter on grammar and pronunciation extended. There are examples of how Gaelic personal names and the human body ar... more...

Robb Caledon (Leith Division) 1965–1984
Leith-Built Ships, Vol. 4
by R. O. Neish

Volume 4 of the acclaimed Leith-built Ships series follows Ship Nos 495 to 535 built from 1965 until the eventual closure of the shipyard in 1984 by a government that was hell-bent on destroying British industry and breaking the powerful unions. Great ships such as Lloydsman Ship no 509 and SA Wo... more...

Scotland's Global Empire
A Chronicle of Great Scots
by Jock Gallagher

Scotland's Global Empire is one journalist's tribute to some of the lesser-known great Scots and their contribution to the world.  Jock Gallagher was encouraged in his epic enterprise by a quote from Voltaire: We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation. ‘Voltaire m... more...

Scotland's Heritage
A photographic journey
by John Hannavy

Scotland’s Heritage is a unique book. It combines John Hannavy’s stunning and original photography of Scotland with an engaging narrative on the country’s evolution from 4000 BC to the present day, using both the author’s own account of his travels with those of the great tra... more...

Scottish Lighthouse Pioneers
Travels with the Stevensons in Orkney and Shetland
by Paul A.  Lynn

In the 19th century, the Stevenson engineers pioneered marvellous lighthouses around the coasts of Scotland – lighthouses which inspire with their architectural elegance, and speak of compassion for sailors and fishermen risking their lives in these notoriously dangerous waters. But what wa... more...

Scottish Monuments and Memorials
by Roger Smith

This is an extraordinary book, with its origin in the author’s long-standing interest in monuments and memorials, arising from many years of wandering Scotland’s hills and glens. The Covid-19 lockdown provided an opportunity to look into this more seriously, and the idea of a book was bo... more...

Second Sight
by Neil M.  Gunn

A novel set in a Highland shooting lodge, where the focus is a hunt in a remote deer forest; but this is no ordinary thriller. A shooting lodge party of wealthy English people, a team of Highland stalkers, a legendary stag to be hunted and a background of glen and corrie, shrouded from time to time ... more...

Seton Gordon's Cairngorms
An Anthology
by Hamish Brown

Seton Gordon really created himself as naturalist, photographer and writer, the first such in the country, his first book appearing when he was eighteen. In all he wrote 27 books, two specifically about the Cairngorms where he grew up and first explored and returned to many times throughout his long... more...

Seton Gordon's Scotland
An Anthology
by Hamish Brown

Seton Gordon was only a boy when he began exploring the Cairngorms, fascinated by its wildlife and seeking to photograph all he saw - he later became a pioneer naturalist, photographer and folklorist. He wrote about the land that is Scotland, her flora and fauna, her people, her spirits, her often v... more...

Tales from Braemore & Swein Asleifson - a Northern Pirate
by Robert P. Gunn

During the long winter nights and before the advent of television, people in Caithness used to hold informal gatherings in each other's houses, and spend the night in general conversation around the firesides. These gatherings were known as ceilidhs. The news of the day was always discussed alon... more...

The A to Z of Whisky Place-Names
Landscape, Language & Invention
by Jacob King

Have you ever wondered about the place-names that appear on Scotch whisky bottles? What language the names come from, what they mean or if they are even real places?  If you feel baffled about where to start looking for such information, then this reliable and informative book is for you. Withi... more...

The Atomics
the story of Dounreay's people
by James B Gunn, Iain  Grant

The UK Government’s 1954 decision, made without any community consultation or public inquiry, to centre the country’s fast reactor R&D nuclear programme at Dounreay’s disused military airfield in Caithness, eight miles west of the town of Thurso, changed the fishing and farming... more...

The Caithness Influence
Diverse lives of distinction
by Valerie Campbell

With a small population, it is remarkable that so many people from the county of Caithness have had such a huge impact, not only in Scotland but worldwide. The sheer hard work and determination of people from the county, both past and present, has guaranteed their place in history. From scientists, ... more...

The Dummy Drome
Stories from a WW2 Decoy Aerodrome in the North of Scotland
by Rob More

The Dummy Drome is a well-researched story about an aerodrome that wasn’t really there – this was RAF Wick’s decoy airfield near Sarclet, by Thrumster in Caithness.   The featureless landscape was grazed by sheep finding what sustenance they could and there were no people o... more...

The Fabulous Flotilla
Scotland’s Adventure on the Rivers of Burma
by Paul Strachan

The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, known in colonial Burma as the ‘Fabulous Flotilla’, was the largest privately-owned fleet of ships in the world. It was an entirely Scottish enterprise with nearly all its investors, management and ship’s officers drawn from Scotland.  Over 1,20... more...

The Grey Wolves of Eriboll
2nd edition
by David M. Hird

The surrender of the German U-boat fleet at the end of World War II was perhaps the principal event in the war’s endgame which signified to the British people that peace really had arrived. This revised, updated and expanded new edition gives career details of not only the 33 commanders who... more...

The Immeasurable Wilds
Travellers to the Far North of Scotland, 1600-1900
by Alastair  Mitchell

Towards the end of the 18th century the attention of mapmakers, explorers and travellers turned to the north of Scotland. The mountains that rise north of Stirling formed a formidable barrier for anyone wanting to visit the Highlands, and travellers to the Far North were even rarer: there were no ro... more...

The King of Lokoja
William Balfour Baikie the Forgotten Man of Africa
by Wendell  McConnaha

William Balfour Baikie was a surgeon, naturalist, linguist, writer, explorer, and government consul who played a key role in opening Africa to the Europeans. As an explorer he mapped and charted large sections of the Niger River system as well as the overland routes from Lagos and Lokoja to the majo... more...

The Life and Works of Glasgow Architects James Miller and John James Burnet
by John  Stewart

This is the first full biography of two of Scotland’s most eminent Architects, James Miller and John James Burnet. While born just three years apart into very different circumstances – Burnet was the son of a wealthy Glasgow architect and Miller a farmer’s son – their careers... more...

The Lighthouse on Skerryvore
by Paul A.  Lynn

Perched on an isolated rock in the Scottish Hebrides, this is a fascinating account of Skerryvore, ‘the most graceful lighthouse in the world’, and the great Victorian engineer who designed and built it. At a height of 48m (156 feet), it is the tallest lighthouse in Scotland. The stor... more...

The Lost Chart
by Neil M.  Gunn

Unlike most of Gunn’s novels, The Lost Chart is set in a city – the city of Glasgow and its sea approaches. The untypical choice of background for the story is not the only departure from Gunn’s usual approach to his novels. The book is also a thriller. The story unfolds in a socia... more...

The Nearly Man
by Mark Bridgeman

The Nearly Man is the true, yet almost unbelievable, story of one man’s incredible life, beginning in rural Scotland in the reign of Queen Victoria, and ending on the west coast of Canada in the 1970s. In one of the 20th century’s great untold stories we travel with Francis Metcalfe on a... more...

The Other Landscape
by Neil M.  Gunn

Neil M Gunn, one of Scotland’s most distinguished 20th century authors, wrote over a period of 30 years, starting in 1926 and ending in 1956 with his so-called spiritual autobiography The Atom of Delight. Two years before this he wrote his last novel, The Other Landscape, the setting being the... more...

The Shadow
by Neil M.  Gunn

Horrific experiences of the blitz in wartime London and the spiritual bankruptcy of her lover and his Marxist acquaintances are seen through the eyes of Nan, a young Scotswoman, who has returned to her native Highlands to recover from a nervous breakdown. Her letters to her lover from the warm an... more...

The Silver Bough
by Neil M.  Gunn

At the heart of The Silver Bough is a cairn on a knoll surrounded by standing stones. This is of professional interest to an archaeologist, around whom the story revolves. The life-enhancing qualities of the crofting family with whom he lodges and the quiet tenor of Highland life bear a curious simi... more...

Walking Edinburgh's Lost Railways
City & Suburban Explorations
by Robin Howie, John McGregor

Within the City of Edinburgh, there are many miles of “dismantled railway” that have been transformed into smooth, gently-graded, tarmac routes, ideal for pedestrians of all ages (especially young families), for cyclists and for joggers. The railway engineers, who balanced excavation and... more...

Walking Scotland's Lost Railways
Track Beds Rediscovered
by Robin Howie, John McGregor

Scotland still has hundreds of miles of ‘dismantled railways’, the term used by Ordnance Survey, and the track beds give scope for many walks. Some track beds have been ‘saved’ as Tarmacadam walkway/cycleway routes while others have become well-trodden local walks. The remain... more...

Water and Life
by Alistair McCleery

Water and Life pursues the goal of the previous volume, Nation and Nationalism, to bridge the often ivory-tower concerns of academic critics and the interest of a wider public in the works and thought of Neil Gunn, considered the foremost Scottish novelist of the twentieth century. The ‘circle... more...

Wild Galloway
From the hilltops to the Solway, a portrait of a glen
by Ian Carter

Ian Carter has always loved wildness and living in places where wildlife takes centre stage. His new home is tucked away between the high, heather-clad hills of Bengairn and the shining, silver Solway with its merse, mudflats and spectacular cliffs. Guarding the bay is whale-backed Hestan Island wit... more...

Wild Geese Overhead
by Neil M.  Gunn

From this evocative title comes a powerful novel set in the city of Glasgow in 1939. This is indeed a bleak stage, and yet how does this title, with its implication of freedom and flight, meld with a depressed city at the outbreak of war? The main character, a journalist, finds that a glimpse of wil... more...

Wild Places, Wild Encounters
Exploring Edinburgh’s Living Landscape
by Glen Cousquer

This is a book about reconnecting to nature wherever we find ourselves living and the personal benefits that can ensue. It explores how we can appreciate the natural world on our doorstep in line with the latest research from a range of disciplines, including ecology, outdoor and environmental educa... more...

Wildcat Haven
by Mike  Tomkies

Some seven years after abandoning the life of an international journalist for a life in the wilds, Mike Tomkies began a remarkable experiment, rearing the most ferocious animal to roam wild in Britain - the Scottish wildcat. The true wildcat is now an endangered species and only to be found in in... more...