Dion Alexander0.0 The Potter’s Tale is a story of one man’s journey of discovery and self discovery on one of the most beautiful islands on the Hebrides – Colonsay. Dion Alexander was ‘the Colonsay Potter’ through the 1970s and his own story is interwoven with that of some of the legendary characters of the islands in that period, one of the last in which Gaelic came naturally to the community. It is also the story of beginning to think about how to keep a small remote community dominated by a landed estate alive and viable in the face of modern pressures.
The Colonsay of the 1970s had no electricity or affordable housing and an erratic ferry service. The book is an autobiography, a reflection of a world still close in time but in some ways very distant interwoven with much of history, tradition and folklore, and a moving account of the trials, triumphs and tribulations of a small community. Above all it is woven with a deep love of the magical place that is Colonsay.
Капка Кассабова4.5 In this extraordinary work of narrative reportage, Kapka Kassabova returns to Bulgaria, from where she emigrated as a girl twenty-five years previously, to explore the border it shares with Turkey and Greece. When she was a child, the border zone was rumored to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, and it swarmed with soldiers and spies. On holidays in the “Red Riviera” on the Black Sea, she remembers playing on the beach only miles from a bristling electrified fence whose barbs pointed inward toward the enemy: the citizens of the totalitarian regime.
Kassabova discovers a place that has been shaped by successive forces of history: the Soviet and Ottoman empires, and, older still, myth and legend. Her exquisite portraits of fire walkers, smugglers, treasure hunters, botanists, and border guards populate the book. There are also the ragged men and women who have walked across Turkey from Syria and Iraq. But there seem to be nonhuman forces at work here too: This densely forested landscape is rich with curative springs and Thracian tombs, and the tug of the ancient world, of circular time and animism, is never far off.
Border is a scintillating, immersive travel narrative that is also a shadow history of the Cold War, a sideways look at the migration crisis troubling Europe, and a deep, witchy descent into interior and exterior geographies.
R.L. McKinney0.0 Having returned to his childhood home in the West Highlands, Calum leads a quiet life. More than two decades after his brother Finn fell to his death, he still relives the event and struggles to find peace of mind. It isn’t so easy, however: his mother, Mary, has Alzheimer’s Disease and his estranged daughter Catriona has arrived out of the blue. Unexpectedly, Calum has his mother and daughter living with him and the house becomes a crucible of old resentments, disappointments, unspoken revelations and fragile but enduring love. Together and separately, Calum, Mary and Catriona retrace the events that have brought them to this point and made them who they are.
James Miller0.0 Trains and stagecoaches stuck in the snow, wild storms driving sailing ships off course, traffic pile-ups on so-called 'killer' highways - stories abound about the horrors of travel in the Highlands and Islands, and have done for as far as the records go back.
James Miller tells the dramatic and sometimes surprisingly humorous story of travel and transport in the Highlands. Some of the figures in the story are familiar - General George Wade, Thomas Telford and Joseph Mitchell among them - but there are a host of others too, including the intrepid Lady Sarah Murray, who offered sound advice for travellers ('Provide yourself with a strong roomy carriage, and have the springs well corded').
This thought-provoking book will appeal to all who like stories of travel and transport, and are interested in how changing modes of transport have affected the ways of life in the Highlands and remain crucial to the modern life and the future of the region.
