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...

"At the aural epicenter, Robb Moreira and Sura Siu alternate betweenprotagonists Aldo and Regan’s perspectives. The listener is immersed into their sharply distinct, mundane, yet complex worlds..."- Booklist**Narrated primarily by Robb Moreira and Sura Siu, this program features a cast of cameos, including one from the author.From Olivie Blake, the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, comes a...

In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape. Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnif...

The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question went Down Under, and this is what he hilariously found.On what he calls “the adventure of his life,” Howard Jacobson travels around Australia, never entirely sure where he is heading next or whether he has the courage to tackle the wild life of the bush, the wild men of the outback, or the even wilder women of the seaboard cities.In pursuit of the best of Australian good times, he joins re...

The hilarious bestselling travel book that journeys round areas made famous by Radio 4's Shipping Forecast'One of those simple yet brilliant ideas' Daily Mail'Engaging and often very funny' Sunday Times'A wonderfully eccentric study' ObserverThe Shipping Forecast is a curious piece of broadcasting; at once impenetrably baffling yet at the same time reassuringly f...

"Sydney may look golden, but this is the sunniness of Mozart, whose bright notes, especially at their most joyous, seem to cast themselves out across a great abyss."Sydney has always been the sexiest and most gaudy of our cities. Here, novelist Delia Falconer conjures up its sandstone, humidity, and jacarandas. But she goes beyond these to find a far more complex city: beautiful, violent, half-wild, and at times deeply spiritual. It is a slightly unreal place, haunted by a...

For more than two thousand years the people of St Kilda remained remote from the world. Their society was viable, utopian even; but in the nineteenth century the islands were discovered by missionaries, do-gooders and tourists, who brought with them money, disease and despotism. In 1930, the few remaining islanders were evacuated, no longer able to support themselves.An exploration of the life and death of the remote Hebridean society, Island on the Edge of the World is a ...

As Ellie’s fiftieth birthday approaches and her ambitions of a steady income, a successful career and an ascent of Everest seem as far away as ever, she begins to doubt she’s capable of achieving anything at all. So when her best friend Mick suggests a gruelling cycle ride from Land’s End to John o’Groats, she takes up the challenge. They opt for the scenic route which takes them along cycle paths, towpaths and the back roads and byways of Britain, unable to resist sampling local beers in ...

Tell someone you're going off to Scotland to walk the Southern Upland Way and they'll probably look at you rather blankly before starting to tell you about Great Aunt Mabel's recent hip operation. Even in walking circles, it's not exactly a well known trail.Which is why, when Andrew Bowden told anyone who would listen that he was going to Scotland to walk the Southern Upland Way, everyone looked at him blankly and started telling him about Great Aunt Mabel's recent hip operation.

Take one headstrong dog and a feisty young woman, and send them off on a walk for the equivalent distance of London to Delhi. Tess the dog flirts outrageously with good-looking farmers and charms unsuspecting toddlers into parting with their ice creams as her apologetic owner follows. From sleepy fishing villages to urban streets, spotting avocets and flamingos along the way, Spud slows life down for a year and experiences the coastline of Britain with its eccentric mix of innovation and t...

When John McPhee returned to the island of his ancestors—Colonsay, twenty-five miles west of the Scottish mainland—a hundred and thirty-eight people were living there. About eighty of these, crofters and farmers, had familial histories of unbroken residence on the island for two or three hundred years; the rest, including the English laird who owned Colonsay, were "incomers." Donald McNeill, the crofter of the title, was working out his existence in this last domain of the feudal system; t...

The 1950s were the heyday of the Clyde pleasure-steamer, when hordes of ordinary folk went 'doon the watter' to Dunoon, Largs and Millport to the strains of accordian and fiddle. Others went with suitcases to Rothesay for the Fair, while the well-to-do filled brass-bound trunks and headed for the boarding houses of Brodick and Whiting Bay. The resort piers were hives of activity and the crack was good as the steamers' arrival heralded the main talking point of the day. Duncan Graham's freq...