Philip Ralli, Editorial Director of Highland Books, interviews Harry Hunter.

Harry, in Taking The High Road you’ve written a set of short stories with a common premise: when a Christian couple moves because of one new job, there is the spouse’s job plus potentially two Church vocations to renegotiate. Does your collection suggest that this dimension of Church vocation makes a move easier or more difficult?


Well, Philip, I don’t suppose that the Christian should ever expect to be presented with easy options! So, probably having a Church vocation – especially if it’s a substantial one – makes a move more difficult. You will face additional expectations and commitments. And, of course, if both partners have ‘day jobs’ and Church roles, then that’s four different elements to reconcile.

This is certainly the experience of Sam and Penny in my collection of short stories. Penny, not unjustifiably, feels that her aspirations are being sidelined by Sam. Of course, this leads to another set of immediately recognisable tensions.
But at the same time, having a Church vocation helps enormously when it comes to settling into a new area. If you have specific skills and talents to offer then you are quickly in demand. Of course, the move should be taking place with God’s blessing, as part of His plan for you. So, you are not likely to encounter insuperable difficulties.

One thing that Sam and Penny find – and I guess this common experience – is that God provides them with unexpected challenges and opportunities. Perhaps when we move to a new place, God is trying to shift us out of a rut and put us somewhere that we can make a difference.

So, ‘easy’ versus ‘difficult’ perhaps isn’t the right way of looking at it. We are tasked with facing new situations, learning to worship and work alongside new people, swallowing our pride, setting some of our personal ambitions aside, and seeing how we can help the Church face its challenges in our new ‘home’.


More than one of your stories explores the issue of being faithful in the modern workplace environment. Your plot set-up often involves inventing a new mentoring type of relationship that is seeded through Church encounters. Now, giving advice is always a delicate thing, so how did you approach the challenge of making this entertaining for readers?


Fair point! Advice is generally welcome as long as it doesn’t seem like advice; certainly it shouldn’t sound preachy. Often the Christian is involved in being alongside another person at a time of need, and the advice is more conversational, more organic, more Spirit-led.

Thinking about your question, I feel I’ve tried to make the encounters in these stories entertaining in two ways.

First, I was particularly interested in situations outside the Church, where Penny and Sam had to put their faith into practice in everyday encounters, especially the workplace. This was new territory for them. Perhaps Sam almost became an informal and accidental chaplain? Penny found her business skills provided unexpected moments to share her faith. Neither forced the gospel down people’s throats.

Second, I think they are entertaining because neither is actually particularly good at giving advice, and it’s an unplanned role that God places upon them. They are sometimes pretty clueless and stumble in where angels fear to tread. Sam is somewhat bumbling, but I think that his rather gauche affability is what endears him to others. Penny sees herself as a more cerebral type, and only slowly and reluctantly comes to accept that she is a ‘people person’.


A second premise of your collection (I guess this is the main autobiographical input) is that the move entails English people to Scotland at a time of rising nationalism. What stories in your collection deal with the feeling of being outsiders, particularly in regard to taking positions of authority in Church or society?


Actually, I tried very hard not to make the setting overtly autobiographical or to base my stories on actual people. The characters are a pastiche of folk I’ve met and heard about over the years, and the situations are ones familiar to anyone with a modicum of life and church experience.

Naturally, the point you raise about being an ‘outsider’ has some personal resonance – although I experienced this far more acutely in Yorkshire than in Scotland! You can’t take acceptance for granted and you have to feel at home in your adoptive culture. At all costs, avoid being unwittingly patronising or presumptuous. You also have to be sensitive to cultural differences, especially topics which are ‘on’ and ‘off’ territory in polite conversation.

At heart, Scotland is a very hospitable country, something which I think would have helped Sam and Penny a lot. Even if they made some early cultural gaffes they would have found most people quite forgiving. Also, if you have a leadership role in a Church, then taking a somewhat elliptical outside view can be illuminating for the listeners – provided you do so sensitively, and are prepared to make the odd joke at your own expense!

I’m not sure that any of the stories deals directly with their outsider status, though they often find themselves treading on eggshells, which doubtless reflects a degree of cultural unease. What does happen, though, is that they feel progressively at home. You can see how, by the end of the book, they are both very comfortable in the local community, and they have found a high degree of acceptance.

And this has been accompanied by a growing awareness of why God has put them in Kilfinan – they have had to change their ideas, not just about culture and belonging, but also about their ministry and talents.


One of the stories turns on the responsibility for Christians to maintain a unity that transcends the political divides. Have you witnessed examples of this in the referendum or current Parliamentary elections?

Without doubt, Scotland is going through a tumultuous time at the moment in terms of the political landscape. In many ways, I think most people would like it to settle down and return to some semblance of normality, but I suspect this isn’t a luxury we’re likely to be afforded. Who knows what the new political allegiances will be, or whether the country is on an inevitable course for independence?

The Church certainly cannot be aloof in this respect. I have no doubt that a key role of the Church is to heal divisions. And one thing that the referendum achieved was almost perfect division of the country. In terms of the way people voted, it appears that it also divided native-born Scots against incomers, and young against old. This is a potentially a dangerous situation and something against which the Church must continue to be vigilant.

One interesting aspect of the referendum for me, as an author, is that I wrote the stories whilst the independence debate was in full spate, but before the vote had been held. Many details of the stories could have been superseded if the vote had gone the other way, so I constantly had to ‘futureproof’ the text to make sure that it made sense whichever way the result went! Although this caused a unique complication, I feel it actually helped me get to know Kilfinan and its residents better, and make it a more ‘reality checked’ place.