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Strathnaver Novels
Butcher's Broom
Butcher's Broom is one of Gunn's epic recreations of a key period in Scottish history, the Highland clearances of the nineteenth century. Gunn captures the spirit of Highland culture, the sense of community and tradition, in a manner that speaks to our own time.
At the centre of the novel is Dark Mairi who embodies what is most vital and lasting in mankind, whose values encapsulate what was lost in Scotland to make way for progress while her land was cleared to make way for wintering sheep.
The weaving of traditional ballads with the lives of Gunn's characters evokes the community that must be destroyed. Elie lost among strangers with her fatherless child while Seonaid defies the invaders, fighting them from the roof of her croft. This is among the most moving of Gunn's works and establishes the belief in a transcendent spirituality that would be so dominant in his later work.
At the centre of the novel is Dark Mairi who embodies what is most vital and lasting in mankind, whose values encapsulate what was lost in Scotland to make way for progress while her land was cleared to make way for wintering sheep.
The weaving of traditional ballads with the lives of Gunn's characters evokes the community that must be destroyed. Elie lost among strangers with her fatherless child while Seonaid defies the invaders, fighting them from the roof of her croft. This is among the most moving of Gunn's works and establishes the belief in a transcendent spirituality that would be so dominant in his later work.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1934
16 people are currently reading
176 people want to read
About the author
Neil M. Gunn
63 books49 followersNeil Gunn, one of Scotland's most prolific and distinguished novelists, wrote over a period that spanned the Recession, the political crises of the 1920's and 1930's, and the Second World War and its aftermath. Although nearly all his 20 novels are set in the Highlands of Scotland, he is not a regional author in the narrow sense of that description; his novels reflect a search for meaning in troubled times, both past and present, a search that leads him into the realms of philosophy, archaeology, folk tradition and metaphysical speculation.
Born in the coastal village of Dunbeath, Caithness, the son of a successful fishing boat skipper, Gunn was educated at the local village primary school and privately in Galloway. In 1911 he entered the Civil Service and spent some time in both London and Edinburgh before returning to the North as a customs and excise officer based (after a short spell in Caithness) in Inverness. Before voluntary retirement from Government service in 1937 to become a full-time writer, he had embarked on a literary career with considerable success.
His first novel, The Grey Coast (1926), a novel in the realist tradition and set in Caithness in the 1920's, occupied an important position in the literary movement known as the Scottish Renaissance. His second novel, Morning Tide (1931), an idyll of a Highland childhood, won a Book Society award and the praise of the well known literary and public figure, John Buchan. The turning point in Gunn's career, however, came in 1937, when he won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial prize for his deeply thought-provoking Highland River, a quasi autobiographical novel written in the third person, in which the main protagonist's life is made analogous to a Highland river and the search for its source.
In 1941 Gunn's epic novel about the fishing boom of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, The Silver Darlings, was widely acclaimed as a modern classic and considered the finest balance between concrete action and metaphysical speculation achieved by any British writer in the 20th century. It was also the final novel of a trilogy of the history of the Northlands, the other novels being Sun Circle (1933) on the Viking invasions of the 9th century and Butcher's Broom (1934) on the Clearances. In 1944 Gunn wrote his anti-Utopian novel, The Green Isle of the Great Deep, a book that preceded George Orwell's novel on the same theme, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by five years. The novel, using an old man and a young boy from a rural background as characters in a struggle against the pressures of totalitarian state, evoked an enthusiastic response from the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.
Some of Gunn's later books, whilst not ignoring the uglier aspects of the modern world, touch more on metaphysical speculation in a vein that is not without humour. The Well at the Worlds End (1951), in particular, lays emphasis on the more positive aspects of living and the value of that approach in finding meaning and purpose in life. Gunn's spiritual autobiography, The Atom of Delight (1956), which, although similar in many ways to Highland River, incorporates a vein of thought derived from Gunn's interest in Zen Buddhism. The autobiography was Gunn's last major work.
In 1948 Gunn's contribution to literature was recognised by Edinburgh University with an honorary doctorate to the author; in 1972 the Scottish Arts Council created the Neil Gunn Fellowship in his honour, a fellowship that was to include such famous writers as Henrich Boll, Saul Bellow, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Nadine Gordimer and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Born in the coastal village of Dunbeath, Caithness, the son of a successful fishing boat skipper, Gunn was educated at the local village primary school and privately in Galloway. In 1911 he entered the Civil Service and spent some time in both London and Edinburgh before returning to the North as a customs and excise officer based (after a short spell in Caithness) in Inverness. Before voluntary retirement from Government service in 1937 to become a full-time writer, he had embarked on a literary career with considerable success.
His first novel, The Grey Coast (1926), a novel in the realist tradition and set in Caithness in the 1920's, occupied an important position in the literary movement known as the Scottish Renaissance. His second novel, Morning Tide (1931), an idyll of a Highland childhood, won a Book Society award and the praise of the well known literary and public figure, John Buchan. The turning point in Gunn's career, however, came in 1937, when he won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial prize for his deeply thought-provoking Highland River, a quasi autobiographical novel written in the third person, in which the main protagonist's life is made analogous to a Highland river and the search for its source.
In 1941 Gunn's epic novel about the fishing boom of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, The Silver Darlings, was widely acclaimed as a modern classic and considered the finest balance between concrete action and metaphysical speculation achieved by any British writer in the 20th century. It was also the final novel of a trilogy of the history of the Northlands, the other novels being Sun Circle (1933) on the Viking invasions of the 9th century and Butcher's Broom (1934) on the Clearances. In 1944 Gunn wrote his anti-Utopian novel, The Green Isle of the Great Deep, a book that preceded George Orwell's novel on the same theme, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by five years. The novel, using an old man and a young boy from a rural background as characters in a struggle against the pressures of totalitarian state, evoked an enthusiastic response from the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.
Some of Gunn's later books, whilst not ignoring the uglier aspects of the modern world, touch more on metaphysical speculation in a vein that is not without humour. The Well at the Worlds End (1951), in particular, lays emphasis on the more positive aspects of living and the value of that approach in finding meaning and purpose in life. Gunn's spiritual autobiography, The Atom of Delight (1956), which, although similar in many ways to Highland River, incorporates a vein of thought derived from Gunn's interest in Zen Buddhism. The autobiography was Gunn's last major work.
In 1948 Gunn's contribution to literature was recognised by Edinburgh University with an honorary doctorate to the author; in 1972 the Scottish Arts Council created the Neil Gunn Fellowship in his honour, a fellowship that was to include such famous writers as Henrich Boll, Saul Bellow, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Nadine Gordimer and Mario Vargas Llosa.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 21, 2024
Fuck, that was bleak. Not 'bleak' boo-hoo - 'bleak' GRRRR.
Ugh. Humans suck.
Ugh. Humans suck.
February 20, 2024
I am ashamed to admit that this is the first novel I have read by Neil M Gunn, even more embarassing that I live not far from where he was born and brought up. The Sutherland Clearances will never be
regarded as anything but a disgraceful chapter in our history and this novel does not ignore any who participated. Gunn beautifully describes a land that is torn from those who loved it most. We meet the selfish land owners and their employees interested only in their investments and the legal system that failed to gain any reparations for the innocent. Neither does the author forget the wider European politics which provided the platform for change. A change of course that proved disastrous for the people of the glens.
regarded as anything but a disgraceful chapter in our history and this novel does not ignore any who participated. Gunn beautifully describes a land that is torn from those who loved it most. We meet the selfish land owners and their employees interested only in their investments and the legal system that failed to gain any reparations for the innocent. Neither does the author forget the wider European politics which provided the platform for change. A change of course that proved disastrous for the people of the glens.
September 3, 2016
This is a long, poetic and truly heartbreaking book about the Scottish Highland Clearances. There's no doubt about where the author's sympathies lie; the villains are really, really bad, and the good guys are, well, quite human.
I learned a lot by reading this book, both about the Clearances and about how novels have changed since the 1930's, which this was written. It is very long. The descriptive passages are beautiful, but wordy. You feel like you are suffering along with the Scots as things drag on and on, and go from bad to much, much worse. (Given the topic, one wouldn't exactly expect a rosy ending.)
The book provides an easy way to learn history. Although the text is admittedly slanted, you almost enjoy the righteous indignation that inevitably rises up while reading.
I learned a lot by reading this book, both about the Clearances and about how novels have changed since the 1930's, which this was written. It is very long. The descriptive passages are beautiful, but wordy. You feel like you are suffering along with the Scots as things drag on and on, and go from bad to much, much worse. (Given the topic, one wouldn't exactly expect a rosy ending.)
The book provides an easy way to learn history. Although the text is admittedly slanted, you almost enjoy the righteous indignation that inevitably rises up while reading.
May 13, 2015
Evocative would be the word, I think. Gunn treats the story of evicted crofters here with a very emotional and gut-wrenching, close lens. I think it was excellently done, weaving together drastically different viewpoints to highlight the tragedy and the inevitability of the change in society that resulted in many of the Clearances. Some beautiful prose in here, and some that I just let wash over me, like Lewis Grassic Gibbons', meaning it was a little too far from my experience to understand the dialect, but I just kept going... and was rewarded with a satisfying, if not happy, conclusion.
January 5, 2014
A people and their history swept away in four parts and fifty years. Horo, Mhairi Dubh., 5 Jan 2014
This review is from: Butcher's Broom (Modern Scottish classics) (Kindle Edition)
"Ruscus aculeatus (butcher's broom) is a member
of the Liliaceae family. It has tough, green, erect, striated
stems that send out numerous short branches and
very rigid leaves that are actually extensions of the stem
and terminate in a single sharp spine." http://www.thorne.com
Butcher's Broom, as an herb, appears in Gunn's magnificent novel but also serves as a metaphor for the treatment of the Highlanders after the Battle of Culloden in 1746 through the early 1800s by their English factors and landlords (sometimes Clan chiefs).
Neil M. Gunn was born in the Highlands county of Caithness, and so had a personal interest in the brutal interruption of the Clan way of life, an abrupt end to agriculture and a forced reliance on fish and seaweed collection along the coast.
In fact, a factor, Mr. Elder discusses some of Gunn's ancestors, the MacHamish family: "There's only one bad nest of them and they're up on the Heights--MacHamishes, a sept of the Gunns, thoroughly godless dangerous ruffians. There are some Gunns, too, but they'll be evicted first of all, because they know enough to organise the Strath--and they would. All that lot live by breaking the law."
These are the Gaelic speakers of Scotland, so not only a way of life was desecrated but also a language was largely obliterated. Their story is much like that of the Native Americans in the United States. They were literally burned out of their homes, the sick and elderly left to die of smoke inhalation in their thatched cottages. The people who were not initially butchered later suffered from previously unknown diseases introduced by the large-scale sheep farmers, replacing humans with sheep.
Gunn writes in some of the most beautiful and lyrical prose you are ever likely to find in a book about these incidents but makes them personal in the characters of Dark Mairi, Elidh, Davie, Colin, Colin's son, Kirsteen and their neighbors.
Of Dark Mairi of the shore, he writes: "The fire danced in tiny spots on her black irises. Yet she did not seem to see the sky so much as listen to it; or listen to nothing, so still did she become for a time. Then a small sighing wind came down the hillside and from her mouth, and vague concern for her cow touched her. She got up, put her basket over by the meal chest, and went out." Her name comes from an old Highland song:
The stars are shining cheerily, cheerily
Horo, Mhairi dhu, turn ye to me.
The sea mew's moaning drearily, drearily
Horo, Mhairi dhu, turn ye to me.
Cold is the stormwind that ruffles the breast
But warm are the downy plumes lining its nest
Cold blows the storm there
Soft falls the snow there
Horo, Mhairi dhu, turn ye to me.
(Dark Mary, turn ye to me.)
Dark Mairi and Murach had "the second sight." "Usually persons with second sight are normal enough in every other way. But Seumas was a strange being, and when the others forgot him, Davie and Kirsteen remained sensitive to his alien presence." Dark Mairi is a healer who knows the plants, lichens, mosses of the glens as well as she knows the back of her hand. "Indeed, in her steady unthinking darkness, she might have walked out of a mountain and might walk into it again, leaving no sign. The sick man had looked at her with expectation. She asked him questions quietly. She smiled her small weak smile. She put her hand on his forehead. Her hand was very cold. Her smile did not touch her eyes at all. She was not concerned. She would soon put him all right."
She could not, however, heal the great dislocation about to befall her people. I did not want to reach the sea again, at the end of this novel, not only because I knew what would happen, but also because the language was so wonderful.
Lady Elizabeth Gordon, her factor Mr. Sellar, and the organized church are the villains in this novel, although their names have been changed to protect the guilty, all while the young able men of the Highlands had gone off to fight on behalf of this corrupt aristocracy. Patrick Sellar was tried for his role in the atrocities and found not guilty in 1816.
From a people thus described: "peat on limbs and faces, the bodies leaping and spinning in the circles of music, under a sky with stars paling to the east where a waning moon was thinking of rising upon her kingdom; here was more than the joy of the dance, something added to the mystery of the rhythm, a beat in the blood; freedom from walls, freedom from rules; escape caught in its own delirious toils between fire and music. The music put its frenzy in the boys so that they could not leave the fire alone. Out of the dark they came running with peats from the nearest stacks with the guitt of half-theft stinging their mirth. They would make a fire as big as the world and blind the moon and stars !"
To a defeated people thus described: "But Mr. Heller glanced at Mr James and smiled also. `What a handful of half-starved savages in the lost glens of the north may say is nowhere. Yet that is our business, and when talking to us he will make it his.'"
This is a story which will take your imagination captive, and especially if you have roots in the Gaelic North of Scotland or in Ireland, you owe it to yourself to read this novel. Neil M. Gunn is one of the few authors I have read to note the irony of the Gaelic Highlanders sent to Ireland to quash dissent and the Gaelic Irish sent to Scotland to quash dissent - all among their ethnic cousins. "It proved an interesting reflection that the soldiers from these glens who some dozen years before had marched away to the wars had seen their first service in Ireland, where a rebellion against His Majesty's kingdom was being ruthlessly stamped out. And now here was a regiment of Irish being marched into the Northern Highlands to even the balance of immortal justice. So naturally these Irish were more eager for the fray than Mr. Heller or any of his prompters, for they came muttering of their own defeats and wrongs, of Tarrahill and Ballynamuck. The bloody Highlanders! The bloody Irish!"
This review is from: Butcher's Broom (Modern Scottish classics) (Kindle Edition)
"Ruscus aculeatus (butcher's broom) is a member
of the Liliaceae family. It has tough, green, erect, striated
stems that send out numerous short branches and
very rigid leaves that are actually extensions of the stem
and terminate in a single sharp spine." http://www.thorne.com
Butcher's Broom, as an herb, appears in Gunn's magnificent novel but also serves as a metaphor for the treatment of the Highlanders after the Battle of Culloden in 1746 through the early 1800s by their English factors and landlords (sometimes Clan chiefs).
Neil M. Gunn was born in the Highlands county of Caithness, and so had a personal interest in the brutal interruption of the Clan way of life, an abrupt end to agriculture and a forced reliance on fish and seaweed collection along the coast.
In fact, a factor, Mr. Elder discusses some of Gunn's ancestors, the MacHamish family: "There's only one bad nest of them and they're up on the Heights--MacHamishes, a sept of the Gunns, thoroughly godless dangerous ruffians. There are some Gunns, too, but they'll be evicted first of all, because they know enough to organise the Strath--and they would. All that lot live by breaking the law."
These are the Gaelic speakers of Scotland, so not only a way of life was desecrated but also a language was largely obliterated. Their story is much like that of the Native Americans in the United States. They were literally burned out of their homes, the sick and elderly left to die of smoke inhalation in their thatched cottages. The people who were not initially butchered later suffered from previously unknown diseases introduced by the large-scale sheep farmers, replacing humans with sheep.
Gunn writes in some of the most beautiful and lyrical prose you are ever likely to find in a book about these incidents but makes them personal in the characters of Dark Mairi, Elidh, Davie, Colin, Colin's son, Kirsteen and their neighbors.
Of Dark Mairi of the shore, he writes: "The fire danced in tiny spots on her black irises. Yet she did not seem to see the sky so much as listen to it; or listen to nothing, so still did she become for a time. Then a small sighing wind came down the hillside and from her mouth, and vague concern for her cow touched her. She got up, put her basket over by the meal chest, and went out." Her name comes from an old Highland song:
The stars are shining cheerily, cheerily
Horo, Mhairi dhu, turn ye to me.
The sea mew's moaning drearily, drearily
Horo, Mhairi dhu, turn ye to me.
Cold is the stormwind that ruffles the breast
But warm are the downy plumes lining its nest
Cold blows the storm there
Soft falls the snow there
Horo, Mhairi dhu, turn ye to me.
(Dark Mary, turn ye to me.)
Dark Mairi and Murach had "the second sight." "Usually persons with second sight are normal enough in every other way. But Seumas was a strange being, and when the others forgot him, Davie and Kirsteen remained sensitive to his alien presence." Dark Mairi is a healer who knows the plants, lichens, mosses of the glens as well as she knows the back of her hand. "Indeed, in her steady unthinking darkness, she might have walked out of a mountain and might walk into it again, leaving no sign. The sick man had looked at her with expectation. She asked him questions quietly. She smiled her small weak smile. She put her hand on his forehead. Her hand was very cold. Her smile did not touch her eyes at all. She was not concerned. She would soon put him all right."
She could not, however, heal the great dislocation about to befall her people. I did not want to reach the sea again, at the end of this novel, not only because I knew what would happen, but also because the language was so wonderful.
Lady Elizabeth Gordon, her factor Mr. Sellar, and the organized church are the villains in this novel, although their names have been changed to protect the guilty, all while the young able men of the Highlands had gone off to fight on behalf of this corrupt aristocracy. Patrick Sellar was tried for his role in the atrocities and found not guilty in 1816.
From a people thus described: "peat on limbs and faces, the bodies leaping and spinning in the circles of music, under a sky with stars paling to the east where a waning moon was thinking of rising upon her kingdom; here was more than the joy of the dance, something added to the mystery of the rhythm, a beat in the blood; freedom from walls, freedom from rules; escape caught in its own delirious toils between fire and music. The music put its frenzy in the boys so that they could not leave the fire alone. Out of the dark they came running with peats from the nearest stacks with the guitt of half-theft stinging their mirth. They would make a fire as big as the world and blind the moon and stars !"
To a defeated people thus described: "But Mr. Heller glanced at Mr James and smiled also. `What a handful of half-starved savages in the lost glens of the north may say is nowhere. Yet that is our business, and when talking to us he will make it his.'"
This is a story which will take your imagination captive, and especially if you have roots in the Gaelic North of Scotland or in Ireland, you owe it to yourself to read this novel. Neil M. Gunn is one of the few authors I have read to note the irony of the Gaelic Highlanders sent to Ireland to quash dissent and the Gaelic Irish sent to Scotland to quash dissent - all among their ethnic cousins. "It proved an interesting reflection that the soldiers from these glens who some dozen years before had marched away to the wars had seen their first service in Ireland, where a rebellion against His Majesty's kingdom was being ruthlessly stamped out. And now here was a regiment of Irish being marched into the Northern Highlands to even the balance of immortal justice. So naturally these Irish were more eager for the fray than Mr. Heller or any of his prompters, for they came muttering of their own defeats and wrongs, of Tarrahill and Ballynamuck. The bloody Highlanders! The bloody Irish!"
February 1, 2016
A love letter to the Highlands and lost times-haunting
November 30, 2024
Das friedliche Leben im Dorf Riasgan in den schottischen Highlands wird jäh gestört, als eine Gruppe junger Männer zur Armee einberufen werden und in den Krieg gegen Napoleon ziehen müssen. Doch das ist nur die erste von vielen Veränderungen, die auf Riasgan und seine Bewohner zukommen. Weil das Land seine Bewohner nicht mehr ernähren kann und der Grundbesitzer Pacht erhöht geht auch eine Gruppe junger Frauen in die Stadt um dort Arbeit zu finden und die Familien zu Hause zu unterstützen. Doch ihre Bemühungen sind umsonst denn die Menschen von Riasgan müssen Platz für die Schafe machen und werden aus ihrem Dorf vertrieben. Dann kommt die Nachricht, dass die jungen Männer im Krieg gefallen sind...
Der Autor erzählt mehr als nur die Geschichte einer weiteren Vertreibung. Sie dient nur als Rahmen in dem sich die eigentliche Geschichte, nämlich die der Menschen in Riasgan abspielt. Da ist Elie, die ein uneheliches Kind erwartet und ihrem Dorf den Rücken kehrt. Auch als sie wieder zurückkehrt und durch eine Heirat eine ehrbare Frau wird verfolgt sie diese Schande wie ein Schatten. Auch die Heilerin Mairie, Elies Ziehmutter lebt eher am Rand der Gesellschaft und beobachtet die Leute in ihrer Umgebung eher als aktiv am Dorfleben teilzunehmen. Erst die Vertreibung schweißt die Leute wieder zusammen.
Der Autor erzählt mehr als nur die Geschichte einer weiteren Vertreibung. Sie dient nur als Rahmen in dem sich die eigentliche Geschichte, nämlich die der Menschen in Riasgan abspielt. Da ist Elie, die ein uneheliches Kind erwartet und ihrem Dorf den Rücken kehrt. Auch als sie wieder zurückkehrt und durch eine Heirat eine ehrbare Frau wird verfolgt sie diese Schande wie ein Schatten. Auch die Heilerin Mairie, Elies Ziehmutter lebt eher am Rand der Gesellschaft und beobachtet die Leute in ihrer Umgebung eher als aktiv am Dorfleben teilzunehmen. Erst die Vertreibung schweißt die Leute wieder zusammen.
October 10, 2019
I heard about this book from a course I took on the Scottish Highlands. The story is of the Highland clearances where the culture of the Highland laird taking care of his people turned to economics and personal riches. People were literally swept off land their families had held for generations to make way for sheep. Gunn writes of one community rich cast of characters that was impacted. It is a sad chapter of history.
December 20, 2023
Picked up after visiting the Scottish Highlands brings a fictionalized version of true events in the Clearances. It supports its strong politics with a narration style that wonderfully jumps perspectives between not just characters, (both Highlander and capitalists,) but also to that of a broader historical spirit of land and people.
July 28, 2025
Almost gave up after the first part, with its sentiment and overly flowery depictions of stout-hearted Highland peasants, but I got into the swing of it in the second half when the moustache-twirling land owners turned up and scoured the Shire. At least it made me want to read a proper history of the Highland Clearances.
January 11, 2026
Although set around the clearances, this novel is so much more widely ranging, inviting exploration of highland culture, history and more generally human society relationships - personal, environmental and class based.
Some very powerfully drawn female characters stand out, and the use of the natural landscape is classic Gunn. Highly recommended.
Some very powerfully drawn female characters stand out, and the use of the natural landscape is classic Gunn. Highly recommended.
January 5, 2023
4.5*
Again a great epic story by Gunn that's still very human.
If you don't know about the Highland Clearances, this is an excellent way to find out.
Again a great epic story by Gunn that's still very human.
If you don't know about the Highland Clearances, this is an excellent way to find out.
November 13, 2021
Well I read this for an adult education course that never happened. Pity! Neil Gunn is a wonderful and lyrical writer who uses language with real skill. His telling of the way of life of the inhabitants of the glen is brilliant and heart breaking. The rich culture and connection with the earth and seasons is wonderful, although maybe a touch romantic. The underlying story of the exploitation of the people, the horrible power of capital and the cruelty of the "haves "towards the "have nots" a timeless one and makes for a searing political tract.
The story continues today unabated!!! For me the book fell down when Gunn describes scenes of action and where many folk interacted. It was muddled and fragmented in such moments. Otherwise I enjoyed this imagining of a terrible and shameful part of Scottish history. Was it inevitable? Probably but if those who wanted change had been compassionate or had any empathy for others maybe the clearances could have been different. As it was it is a stain on the country! Isnt remarkable how much of Scotland is still owned by big landowners who do as they please. Time for more change!!
The story continues today unabated!!! For me the book fell down when Gunn describes scenes of action and where many folk interacted. It was muddled and fragmented in such moments. Otherwise I enjoyed this imagining of a terrible and shameful part of Scottish history. Was it inevitable? Probably but if those who wanted change had been compassionate or had any empathy for others maybe the clearances could have been different. As it was it is a stain on the country! Isnt remarkable how much of Scotland is still owned by big landowners who do as they please. Time for more change!!
July 8, 2008
A book about the clash between a dying culture and the one that is replacing it.
February 20, 2016
Set during the Highland Clearances when people were forced to leave their crofts and move out to the coast, replacing them with sheep to feed and clothe the populace. Sad and shameful times.
April 5, 2013
I found this hard going, but a gripping account of the trials and tribulations of the clearances.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews