Showing results for "peter aitchison"

The Highland Clearances are a well-documented episode in Scotland's past but they were not unique. The process began in the Scottish Lowlands nearly a century before, when tens of thousands of people – significantly more than were later exiled form the Highlands – were moved from the land by estate owners who replaced them with livestock or enclosed fields of crops.These Clearances undeniably shaped the appearance of the Scottish landscape as it is today as they swept aside a tradi...

Black Friday is the astonishing true story of a coastal community that lost 189 men in a single afternoon. Britain's worst fishing disaster decimated the coastal community of Eyemouth, yet is an almost forgotten part of the past.One hundred and twenty-five years on, this is the story of that storm, told through the accounts of fishermen at sea caught up in the maelstrom, of their families waiting anxiously for news, and of its historical context. At its heart is a gripping...

In recent years, geographies of identities, including those of ethnicity, religion, 'race' and gender, have formed an increasing focus of contemporary human geography. The events of September 11th, 2001 particularly illustrated the ways in which identities can be transformed across time and space by both global and local events of a social, cultural, political and economic nature. Such transformations have also demonstrated the temporal and spatial construction of hate and fear, and of inc...

Words have always held great power in the Gaelic traditions of the Scottish Highlands: bardic poems bought immortality for their subjects; satires threatened to ruin reputations and cause physical injury; clan sagas recounted family origins and struggles for power; incantations invoked blessings and curses. Even in the present, Gaels strive to counteract centuries of misrepresentation of the Highlands as a backwater of barbarism without a valid story of its own to tell.Warriors...

A history of English from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem, "written with real authority, enthusiasm and love for our unruly and exquisite language" ( The Washington Post).Many have written about the evolution of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, but only Seth Lerer situates these developments within the larger history of English, America, and literature. This edition of his "remarkable linguistic investigation" ( Booklist) features a...

This is a fabulous treasury of legend and wonder.Discover tales of monsters who dwell in lakes, of small people who trap humans in earthen mounds where time stands still; of dark, shape- shifting spirits whose cloak of human form is betrayed by the sand and shells which fall from their hair. In the absence of a written tradition, for generations of Skianachs, these tales, handed down orally, contained the very warp and weft of Hebridean history.These stories take us far bey...

A noted linguist examines extinct languages, from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the mysteries of as-yet undeciphered writings, in this scholarly work.While certain ancient languages were passed down continuously through the ages, many others were ignored for centuries. When scholars began to decipher these extinct languages in the early nineteenth century, they uncovered previously inaccessible riches of knowledge and history. Yet much work remains to be done on undeciphe...

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE, THE IRISH TIMES AND THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT**SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZEA provocative history of men who were worshipped as gods that illuminates the connection between power and religion and the role of divinity in a secular age.**Ever since 1492, when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the New World and was hailed as a heavenly being, the accidental god ...

Longlisted for The Highland Book Prize 2020Fourteen centuries ago, Irish saints brought the Word of God to the Hebrides and Scotland's Atlantic shore. These 'white martyrs' sought solitude, remoteness, even harshness, in places apart from the world where they could fast, pray and move closer to an understanding of God: places where they could see angels. Columba, who founded the famous monastery at Iona, was the most well-known of these courageous men who rowed the...

"Kolovou . . . rescues Anna from the talons of misogynist historians and places her where she belongs as an extraordinary, but very human, woman." —Beating TsundokuA woman of extraordinary education and intellect, Anna Komnene was the only Byzantine female historian and one of the first and foremost historians in medieval Europe. Yet few people know of her and her extraordinary story. Subsequent historians and scholars have skewed the picture of Anna as an intellect...

"Bust[s] some commonly held myths that have built up about Richard III over the centuries, most coming from Shakespeare's famous play . . . eye-opening." —Sarah Bryson, author of La Reine Blanche: Mary Tudor, a Life in LettersKing Richard III remains one of the most infamous and recognizable monarchs in English or British history, despite only sitting on the throne for two years and fifty-eight days. His hold on the popular imagination is largely due to the...

The lives of the Scottish queens, both those who ruled in their own right, and also the consorts, have largely been neglected in conventional history books.One of the earliest known Scottish queens was none other than the notorious Lady MacBeth. Was she really the wicked woman depicted in Shakespeare's famous play? Was St Margaret a demure and obedient wife? Why did Margaret Logie exercise such an influence over her husband, David II, and have we underestimated James VI's consort, ...