Maggie Craig's Blog: Maggie Craig Scottish Writer, page 10
November 7, 2014
Book Week Scotland 2014 – Rebels & Romance
I’ll be speaking at two libraries in Aberdeenshire during this year’s Book Week Scotland. At these events I’ll be concentrating on my non-fiction and novels on the Jacobites of 1745 and talking about my research, inspiration and passion for the subject.
Monday 24th November, New Pitsligo Library, 2.30-4.00 pm.
Thursday 27th November, Balmedie Library, time to be confirmed.
More information on these free, ticketed events here:
Book Week Scotland 2014 – Rebels & Romance
A Passion for Jacobites
A Passion for Jacobites
I was 10 or 11 when my father first took me to Culloden. Just east of Inverness, this is the site of the last battle fought on British soil, where Redcoats under the command of the Duke of Cumberland defeated the Jacobite army of Bonnie Prince Charlie. On Wednesday 16th April 1746, the Stuart dream of wresting the British crown and throne back from the House of Hanover died here.
I was around the same age when my Uncle Alex put DK Broster’s The Flight of the Heron into my eager hands – and that was it. My fate was sealed. The Jacobites of 1745 became my lifelong passion. I’ve read this story of the unlikely friendship between a Redcoat officer and a Highland chieftain more times than I can remember. It’s my Fahrenheit 451 book, the one I would save from the flames.
Back in the 1960s, the road to Inverness still ran through the battlefield. It’s since been covered over. Later, I was to discover from my researches that battles were often fought near roads. It made it easier to run the canons into position. We stopped in a layby near the cairn which commemorates the battle, got out and read the inscription.
The Battle of Culloden was fought on this moor 16th April 1746. The graves of the gallant Highlanders who fought for Scotland and Prince Charlie are marked by the names of their clans.
My father pointed out the grave markers, modest little stones carved with those names: Mackintosh, MacGillivray, Cameron, Stewart, Fraser and the rest. He told me about the merciless massacre of defeated and wounded Highlanders by the Redcoats and how this earned the Hanoverian king’s son the nickname of Butcher Cumberland. He told me of the terrible harrying of the glens in the aftermath of Culloden, how men, women and children suffered at the hands of the Redcoats thoughout the bloody summer of 1746.
I’ve learnt a lot more since of the complexities that swirl around the Jacobite Rising of 1745. History is never simple. Take the cairn at Culloden. It was raised by a descendant of Duncan Forbes of Culloden, a man who was an implacable opponent of Bonnie Prince Charlie but who pleaded for humane treatment of the Jacobites after the battle. I’ve written more about him here:
March 21, 2014
When Research Discoveries Turn your Blood to Ice
Like many writers, in this centenary year of the outbreak of the war which so tragically failed to end all wars, I’m currently researching and writing a First World War book. My subject is a Scotswoman who might have lived a safe and comfortable life far from the battlefields. Instead, like thousands of women from around the world, she became a volunteer nurse in Flanders and elsewhere, terrifyingly close to some of the bloodiest of those battlefields, in her case serving with the Red Cross.
When war broke out, she was at home in north-east Scotland and immediately busied herself with Red Cross work parties. Their members began sewing and knitting up a storm: socks, scarves and gloves, comforts for the vast numbers of troops who were being mobilized. Red Cross and other groups around Britain also started raising money for the support of Belgian refugees, whose country had been overrun by the advancing German army.
Britain alone offered temporary refuge to 250,000 Belgians, a mass movement of people almost forgotten now, although not by this online group of researchers at www.belgianrefugees.blogspot.co.uk. You catch glimpses, for example in a beautiful plaque in Manchester Town Hall remembering the Belgian refugees and, of course, Agatha Christie immortalized them in one man, Hercule Poirot.
In search of background, I spent yesterday going through the files of my Red Cross nurse’s local newspaper, now held on microfilm at the town’s library. On Tuesday 4th August 1914, the day Britain declared war on Germany, the local paper wrote this, under the heading of ARMAGEDDON:
“A week of anxious suspense has ended in a note of deepest tragedy. Europe is aflame. The long dreaded war has broken out. Millions of men are in movement and soon will come a clash of arms such as human history has never seen, and at the mere thought of which mankind stands appalled.”
So not everyone thought it would all be over by Christmas. Maybe nobody did, that well-remembered cheerful reassurance to the folks left behind no more than heart-breaking bravado.
I read on, smiling at adverts for Miss Milly Brodie, dentist: “Ladies and children a speciality. Painless treatment throughout.” One 98 year old local lady was knitting socks for the local boys serving at the Front. She’d done the same during the Boer War and the Crimean War. An enterprising local car dealer suggested that if your horse had been commandeered by the army, surely now was the time to upgrade to a Ford car. A Landaulette style cost £180.
Then I remembered how terribly the horses suffered, taken from work on the farm or pulling the family in their gig to church on Sunday to the horrors of war. It did not take long for those to manifest themselves.
At the end of September 1914 the local paper reported: “The Cathedral of Rheims has been shattered, mutilated – all but utterly destroyed.” The tone of the article which follows is one of utter disbelief. Why is Europe destroying itself, slaughtering its people and laying waste to some of its greatest treasures?
There’s a phrase we 21st century people toss around ironically: the end of civilization as we know it. Facing Armageddon, our forebears in 1914 really were facing the end of civilization as they knew it. I sat there in the safe and comfortable library, listening to the low hum of the high-tech machine in front of me, and felt my blood run cold in my veins.
When war broke out, she was at home in north-east Scotland and immediately busied herself with Red Cross work parties. Their members began sewing and knitting up a storm: socks, scarves and gloves, comforts for the vast numbers of troops who were being mobilized. Red Cross and other groups around Britain also started raising money for the support of Belgian refugees, whose country had been overrun by the advancing German army.
Britain alone offered temporary refuge to 250,000 Belgians, a mass movement of people almost forgotten now, although not by this online group of researchers at www.belgianrefugees.blogspot.co.uk. You catch glimpses, for example in a beautiful plaque in Manchester Town Hall remembering the Belgian refugees and, of course, Agatha Christie immortalized them in one man, Hercule Poirot.
In search of background, I spent yesterday going through the files of my Red Cross nurse’s local newspaper, now held on microfilm at the town’s library. On Tuesday 4th August 1914, the day Britain declared war on Germany, the local paper wrote this, under the heading of ARMAGEDDON:
“A week of anxious suspense has ended in a note of deepest tragedy. Europe is aflame. The long dreaded war has broken out. Millions of men are in movement and soon will come a clash of arms such as human history has never seen, and at the mere thought of which mankind stands appalled.”
So not everyone thought it would all be over by Christmas. Maybe nobody did, that well-remembered cheerful reassurance to the folks left behind no more than heart-breaking bravado.
I read on, smiling at adverts for Miss Milly Brodie, dentist: “Ladies and children a speciality. Painless treatment throughout.” One 98 year old local lady was knitting socks for the local boys serving at the Front. She’d done the same during the Boer War and the Crimean War. An enterprising local car dealer suggested that if your horse had been commandeered by the army, surely now was the time to upgrade to a Ford car. A Landaulette style cost £180.
Then I remembered how terribly the horses suffered, taken from work on the farm or pulling the family in their gig to church on Sunday to the horrors of war. It did not take long for those to manifest themselves.
At the end of September 1914 the local paper reported: “The Cathedral of Rheims has been shattered, mutilated – all but utterly destroyed.” The tone of the article which follows is one of utter disbelief. Why is Europe destroying itself, slaughtering its people and laying waste to some of its greatest treasures?
There’s a phrase we 21st century people toss around ironically: the end of civilization as we know it. Facing Armageddon, our forebears in 1914 really were facing the end of civilization as they knew it. I sat there in the safe and comfortable library, listening to the low hum of the high-tech machine in front of me, and felt my blood run cold in my veins.
December 31, 2013
My Books of the Year
As 2013 draws to a close, I thought I would list my personal five best reads of the year.
Socialism is Great! by Lijia Zhang is a very honest memoir of what it was like for a girl to grow up in Communist China. Despite the huge differences between living in the West and living in a country where the state controls so much of your life, it illustrates quite beautifully that people are people, no matter where and how they live.
In the extremely well-written The Search for Richard III: The King's Grave by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones, both authors do a wonderful job of bringing this long-dead yet eternally charismatic English king back to life. Philippa Langley's account of her struggle to convince people that Richard was indeed buried under that car park in Leicester is a tale of faith and determination. Michael Jones' account from historical documents and archaeology of Richard's last moments on Bosworth Field brings a tear to the eye even 500 years after the event.
Ian Rankin is at the top of his game in The Saints of the Shadow Bible, giving us an exciting adventure and, as ever, holding a mirror up to modern Scotland. It's interesting to see Rebus and Fox interacting, initially with hostility but eventually coming to a grudging mutual respect. Siobahn Clarke continues to convince as she matures as a character.
An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer took me by surprise in its unflinching account of the Battle of Waterloo and the suffering of men and horses. You would think the author had been there. The most vivid and moving account of a battle I've ever read.
In Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller, Jennifer Kloester does her subject full justice. She gives us a fascinating insight into the life of this author dedicated to her writing and offers illuminating stores of how each of Georgette Heyer's much-loved books sprang from her imagination to the page. Meticulously researched, touching, as readable as a novel and highly entertaining.
Looking forward to new reading discoveries in 2014.
"Socialism Is Great!": A Worker's Memoir of the New China
The King's Grave: The Search for Richard III
Saints of the Shadow Bible
An Infamous ArmyGeorgette Heyer
Socialism is Great! by Lijia Zhang is a very honest memoir of what it was like for a girl to grow up in Communist China. Despite the huge differences between living in the West and living in a country where the state controls so much of your life, it illustrates quite beautifully that people are people, no matter where and how they live.
In the extremely well-written The Search for Richard III: The King's Grave by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones, both authors do a wonderful job of bringing this long-dead yet eternally charismatic English king back to life. Philippa Langley's account of her struggle to convince people that Richard was indeed buried under that car park in Leicester is a tale of faith and determination. Michael Jones' account from historical documents and archaeology of Richard's last moments on Bosworth Field brings a tear to the eye even 500 years after the event.
Ian Rankin is at the top of his game in The Saints of the Shadow Bible, giving us an exciting adventure and, as ever, holding a mirror up to modern Scotland. It's interesting to see Rebus and Fox interacting, initially with hostility but eventually coming to a grudging mutual respect. Siobahn Clarke continues to convince as she matures as a character.
An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer took me by surprise in its unflinching account of the Battle of Waterloo and the suffering of men and horses. You would think the author had been there. The most vivid and moving account of a battle I've ever read.
In Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller, Jennifer Kloester does her subject full justice. She gives us a fascinating insight into the life of this author dedicated to her writing and offers illuminating stores of how each of Georgette Heyer's much-loved books sprang from her imagination to the page. Meticulously researched, touching, as readable as a novel and highly entertaining.
Looking forward to new reading discoveries in 2014.
"Socialism Is Great!": A Worker's Memoir of the New China
The King's Grave: The Search for Richard III
Saints of the Shadow Bible
An Infamous ArmyGeorgette Heyer
November 13, 2013
Robert Louis Stevenson
Today, 13th November, was the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson. This year it's being marked by an initiative of Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature as
Robert Louis Stevenson Day.
To mark this I've written a review of the delightful RLS in Love by Stuart Campbell, a collection of and context for the romantic poetry of RLS.
The people of Colinton, one of the villages of Edinburgh, recently put up a statue of RLS as a boy. The statue was unveiled by author Ian Rankin.
RLS often visited Colinton where his maternal grandfather was minister of the parish church. I have my own fond family memories of Colinton. Sadly, I haven't ever seen the ghost of RLS as a man. He's said to stand under the shade of the trees, wearing his trademark black velvet jacket.
It's wonderful that the remarkable man who was Robert Louis Stevenson continues to be held in such affection and that he and his writing continue to inspire readers and writers around the world.
Robert Louis Stevenson Day.
To mark this I've written a review of the delightful RLS in Love by Stuart Campbell, a collection of and context for the romantic poetry of RLS.
The people of Colinton, one of the villages of Edinburgh, recently put up a statue of RLS as a boy. The statue was unveiled by author Ian Rankin.
RLS often visited Colinton where his maternal grandfather was minister of the parish church. I have my own fond family memories of Colinton. Sadly, I haven't ever seen the ghost of RLS as a man. He's said to stand under the shade of the trees, wearing his trademark black velvet jacket.
It's wonderful that the remarkable man who was Robert Louis Stevenson continues to be held in such affection and that he and his writing continue to inspire readers and writers around the world.
November 1, 2013
The Harrogate History Festival - A Breath of Fresh Air
Last weekend my daughter-in-law and I travelled to the first Harrogate History Festival, held at the historic Old Swan hotel in the beautiful Yorkshire city of Harrogate. A popular spa in the 18th century, it boasts some wonderful Georgian architecture. Yorkshire people are very open and friendly, albeit known for speaking their minds.
They certainly did when it came to the mortal remains of King Richard III. Every local we spoke to wants him to come home to be reinterred in York Minster. Leicester understandably wants to hold on to him and, as Philippa Langley told us, the controversial decision as to his final resting place after 500 years there will be made at the end of November by three judges sitting in a court of law.
The hunt for Richard III was one of the opening events of the history festival and you could have heard a pin drop in the packed hotel ballroom as Philippa described how she drove into that now famous car park and just knew that she was standing above his grave. She and writer and historian Michael Jones spoke about their co-authored The Search for Richard III: The King’s Grave.
Every event over the weekend attracted a large and enthusiastic audience. Full details of all the authors and their books can be seen here. They all spoke with great passion about their research and their books featuring the Romans, both in Roman Britain and Ancient Rome, the Vikings, the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Tudors, the Regency, Victorian times, the First World War, Nazi Germany and more. Robert Ryan spoke about his new book Dead Man’s Land, where he has moved Dr Watson of Sherlock Holmes fame forward to the trenches of the First World War. One strong theme was that of women in history, either as players in their own right or as the wives of kings, tyrants and powerful men and how they coped with that role.
A few of the authors are also enthusiastic historical re-enactors, so we were treated to the sight of a Roman helmet, shield and chain mail tunic: very heavy when walking along Hadrian’s Wall, apparently, but a big help in knowing what it felt like to be a Roman soldier on the outer edges of the empire.
Scottish author and Viking re-enactor Robert Low had us all laughing with his one liners, including his comment on how many castles and great houses in Scotland claim that Mary, Queen of Scots slept there. “That woman was never awake.”
Lindsey Davis, author of the Falco books, also had the audience laughing all the way through her talk.
Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth and The Winter Ghosts, held the audience spellbound when she spoke of how her books start from a place and how she builds the stage set and begins to feel her characters lining up behind her. Then they step forward, walk past her, turn around and say: “Follow me.”
Some book festivals can be a tad stuffy and elitist, largely ignoring what they call popular fiction. That’s seldom the compliment it should be. It’s their loss. They also ignore the passion, meticulous research, scholarship, crafting of an exciting story and enthralling characters you meet in great popular fiction, particularly historical novels, where you’re also learning as you read.
The inaugural Harrogate History Festival was a breath of fresh air, all about the pleasures of reading and writing and the passion which goes into a good book both from the writer and the reader. It was a magical weekend.
They certainly did when it came to the mortal remains of King Richard III. Every local we spoke to wants him to come home to be reinterred in York Minster. Leicester understandably wants to hold on to him and, as Philippa Langley told us, the controversial decision as to his final resting place after 500 years there will be made at the end of November by three judges sitting in a court of law.
The hunt for Richard III was one of the opening events of the history festival and you could have heard a pin drop in the packed hotel ballroom as Philippa described how she drove into that now famous car park and just knew that she was standing above his grave. She and writer and historian Michael Jones spoke about their co-authored The Search for Richard III: The King’s Grave.
Every event over the weekend attracted a large and enthusiastic audience. Full details of all the authors and their books can be seen here. They all spoke with great passion about their research and their books featuring the Romans, both in Roman Britain and Ancient Rome, the Vikings, the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Tudors, the Regency, Victorian times, the First World War, Nazi Germany and more. Robert Ryan spoke about his new book Dead Man’s Land, where he has moved Dr Watson of Sherlock Holmes fame forward to the trenches of the First World War. One strong theme was that of women in history, either as players in their own right or as the wives of kings, tyrants and powerful men and how they coped with that role.
A few of the authors are also enthusiastic historical re-enactors, so we were treated to the sight of a Roman helmet, shield and chain mail tunic: very heavy when walking along Hadrian’s Wall, apparently, but a big help in knowing what it felt like to be a Roman soldier on the outer edges of the empire.
Scottish author and Viking re-enactor Robert Low had us all laughing with his one liners, including his comment on how many castles and great houses in Scotland claim that Mary, Queen of Scots slept there. “That woman was never awake.”
Lindsey Davis, author of the Falco books, also had the audience laughing all the way through her talk.
Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth and The Winter Ghosts, held the audience spellbound when she spoke of how her books start from a place and how she builds the stage set and begins to feel her characters lining up behind her. Then they step forward, walk past her, turn around and say: “Follow me.”
Some book festivals can be a tad stuffy and elitist, largely ignoring what they call popular fiction. That’s seldom the compliment it should be. It’s their loss. They also ignore the passion, meticulous research, scholarship, crafting of an exciting story and enthralling characters you meet in great popular fiction, particularly historical novels, where you’re also learning as you read.
The inaugural Harrogate History Festival was a breath of fresh air, all about the pleasures of reading and writing and the passion which goes into a good book both from the writer and the reader. It was a magical weekend.
October 22, 2013
That Old Woman who Spoke to me of Humanity
Last Saturday I led a workshop on the writing of history, Staying True to the Past, at a writers’ day organized by the Scottish Association of Writers in Inverness Town House. It’s a Victorian building, fancifully turreted on the outside. Inside it has a magnificent main staircase, mellow old wood panelling, stained glass windows and portraits of significant people in the history of the Highland capital.
I was in the main hall gazing at these paintings when I spotted Duncan Forbes of Culloden, one of my personal heroes and mentor to my hero Robert Catto in my new Jacobite novel Gathering Storm. There stands Forbes, or Culloden as he was often known, painted by Allan Ramsay in his legal robes and long grey curly wig.
Culloden and I would never have agreed on politics, then or now, or tea, which he considered to be a 'vile drug and a contemptible beverage' but I admire him for his strength of purpose and his humanity towards friend and foe alike. He was Lord President of the Court of Session of Scotland in the 1740s and a formidable enemy to Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Jacobite Rising of 1745.
So when the Prince and his Jacobite army retreated north in early 1746, Charles’ choice of Culloden House as his headquarters was, in part, a thumbing of his nose at Duncan Forbes. Yet in the horrific aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, fought on the moor above Culloden House on Wednesday 16th April 1746, Duncan Forbes pleaded with the victorious Duke of Cumberland to show mercy to the wounded and captive Jacobite prisoners crammed into every lockable space in Inverness.
The cruelty of some Redcoat officers was awful. When I researched and wrote Bare-Arsed Banditti: The Men of the ’45, I found the origin of the story that Jacobite surgeons even had their medical instruments taken away from them so they could not help their comrades. Jem Bradshaw of the Manchester Regiment, one of the few Englishmen fighting for Bonnie Prince Charlie, recorded it, having been one of those Jacobite prisoners and an eye witness to what had happened.
Many women in Inverness fought for better treatment for the Jacobite prisoners. So did Duncan Forbes of Culloden, believing not only that harsh treatment would win more friends for the Jacobites but out of mercy towards the vanquished. Butcher Cumberland dismissed him as ‘that old woman who spoke to me of humanity.’
Culloden died in 1747, eighteen months after the battle, people said of a broken heart at the bloodshed and suffering caused to his beloved Scotland. It’s an irony of history that his name now brings to mind not him but that mythic and bloody last battle and its brutal aftermath. He deserves to be remembered for more than that. He was also a loving father, a good friend to many, a golfer and heroic claret drinker with a great sense of humour. I hope I’ve done him justice in my novel.
Bare-Arsed Banditti: The Men of the '45
Damn' Rebel Bitches: The Women of the '45
Gathering Storm
I was in the main hall gazing at these paintings when I spotted Duncan Forbes of Culloden, one of my personal heroes and mentor to my hero Robert Catto in my new Jacobite novel Gathering Storm. There stands Forbes, or Culloden as he was often known, painted by Allan Ramsay in his legal robes and long grey curly wig.
Culloden and I would never have agreed on politics, then or now, or tea, which he considered to be a 'vile drug and a contemptible beverage' but I admire him for his strength of purpose and his humanity towards friend and foe alike. He was Lord President of the Court of Session of Scotland in the 1740s and a formidable enemy to Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Jacobite Rising of 1745.
So when the Prince and his Jacobite army retreated north in early 1746, Charles’ choice of Culloden House as his headquarters was, in part, a thumbing of his nose at Duncan Forbes. Yet in the horrific aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, fought on the moor above Culloden House on Wednesday 16th April 1746, Duncan Forbes pleaded with the victorious Duke of Cumberland to show mercy to the wounded and captive Jacobite prisoners crammed into every lockable space in Inverness.
The cruelty of some Redcoat officers was awful. When I researched and wrote Bare-Arsed Banditti: The Men of the ’45, I found the origin of the story that Jacobite surgeons even had their medical instruments taken away from them so they could not help their comrades. Jem Bradshaw of the Manchester Regiment, one of the few Englishmen fighting for Bonnie Prince Charlie, recorded it, having been one of those Jacobite prisoners and an eye witness to what had happened.
Many women in Inverness fought for better treatment for the Jacobite prisoners. So did Duncan Forbes of Culloden, believing not only that harsh treatment would win more friends for the Jacobites but out of mercy towards the vanquished. Butcher Cumberland dismissed him as ‘that old woman who spoke to me of humanity.’
Culloden died in 1747, eighteen months after the battle, people said of a broken heart at the bloodshed and suffering caused to his beloved Scotland. It’s an irony of history that his name now brings to mind not him but that mythic and bloody last battle and its brutal aftermath. He deserves to be remembered for more than that. He was also a loving father, a good friend to many, a golfer and heroic claret drinker with a great sense of humour. I hope I’ve done him justice in my novel.
Bare-Arsed Banditti: The Men of the '45
Damn' Rebel Bitches: The Women of the '45
Gathering Storm
July 15, 2012
St Swithin's Day
July 15th, St Swithin's Day. Legend has it that if it rains today it will rain for the next 40 days and 40 nights. It has rained today - but we're hoping St Swithin will take all the previous days of this rainy summer into account and show us some mercy.
Rain can be a blessing too, though. Despite the valiant efforts of the firefighters, it was rain that eventually put out the Great Fire of Edinburgh of 1824. Started by a candle left burning by a careless clerk, this raged for four days and four nights and devastated Edinburgh's Old Town. These days of high drama gave me a wonderful climax for One Sweet Moment, my love story set in old Edinburgh. Weaving my fictional characters into the real events meant that this part of the story seemed to write itself, always a huge thrill for any writer.
Rain can be a blessing too, though. Despite the valiant efforts of the firefighters, it was rain that eventually put out the Great Fire of Edinburgh of 1824. Started by a candle left burning by a careless clerk, this raged for four days and four nights and devastated Edinburgh's Old Town. These days of high drama gave me a wonderful climax for One Sweet Moment, my love story set in old Edinburgh. Weaving my fictional characters into the real events meant that this part of the story seemed to write itself, always a huge thrill for any writer.
April 27, 2012
On the Road Again
Just back home after my travels revolving around World Book Night last Monday, 23rd April. I spoke at two library parties in Dumfries & Galloway in South West Scotland. The first was in the picturesque and very historic Wigtown, Scotland's Book Town, the second in nearby Newton Stewart. Both were great fun, with lively audiences. Always a bonus for a visiting writer!
I spoke about my own books and championed three of the titles on the World Book Night list: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and the wonderfully atmospheric Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.
Then I got to drive home the following morning up the beautiful Ayrshire coast in the sunshine, enjoying the views out to sea. Ailsa Craig looked great, blue and shimmering. For anyone who doesn't know, it's a plug of rock the size of a small island off the Ayrshire coast. In the days when people used to regularly sail overnight between Scotland and Ireland, Ailsa Craig marked the halfway point of the voyage, and was therefore also known as Paddy's Milestone. Beyond Ailsa Craig lay the mountains of the island of Arran. Magical.
I Capture the Castle
A Tale of Two Cities
Rebecca
I spoke about my own books and championed three of the titles on the World Book Night list: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and the wonderfully atmospheric Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.
Then I got to drive home the following morning up the beautiful Ayrshire coast in the sunshine, enjoying the views out to sea. Ailsa Craig looked great, blue and shimmering. For anyone who doesn't know, it's a plug of rock the size of a small island off the Ayrshire coast. In the days when people used to regularly sail overnight between Scotland and Ireland, Ailsa Craig marked the halfway point of the voyage, and was therefore also known as Paddy's Milestone. Beyond Ailsa Craig lay the mountains of the island of Arran. Magical.
I Capture the Castle
A Tale of Two Cities
Rebecca
