The Province of Strathnaver.
J.R. Baldwin.
The Scottish Society for Northern Studies. 2000.

Explores the history and every day life of these northernmost parts of the Scottish mainland. It explores underground earth houses, a Norse burial and Norse place-names, the Mackay lairds and the Sutherland earls, 'big hooses' and farmhouses. It delves into crofting life and the harvesting of seaweed, the traditional healing of the Beatons of Melness and 20th-century literary perceptions of the Strathnaver clearances.

b/w photographs. 259 pages.

£ 10.00

The New Caithness Book.
D. Omand.
North of Scotland Newspapers. 1992.

A comprehensive and authoritative publication on the most northern county of the mainland of Britain.

b/w photographs. 239 pages.

£ 8.00

Scotland before History.
Stuart Piggott.
Edinburgh University Press. 1982.

Concise and useful guide to the ancient cultures and places of Scotland, taking the reader from the world of the first hunter-gatherers in the seventh millenium BC to the artistically-advanced, tribal culture of the Celts prior to and during the Roman occupation.

Standing stones, rock markings, chambered tombs, hill forts and living spaces are given social and geographical context. More than 250 signigicant archaeological sites are described and given precise location.

b/w photographs. 195 pages.

£ 5.00

A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
and
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.

Samuel Johnson and James Boswell.

Penguin Classics. A reprint of two famous accounts. The journals, published together here, perfectly complement each other. Johnson's majestic prose and hawk eye for curious detail take in everything from the stone arrowheads found in the Hebrides, to the 'medicinal' waters of Loch Ness. Meanwhile, it is very lucky that as Johnson was observing Scotland, Boswell was observing Johnson.

£ 3.00

Gaelic Scotland.
Charles W.J. Withers.
Routledge. 1988.

A perennial theme in Scottish history has been the clash between the Highlands and the Lowlands and the attempts, which date from an early period, of the central authorities to 'civilise' and anglicise the Highlands and Islands. This book examines the Highlands and Islands of Scotland over a long period and charts their cultural transformation from a separate region into one where the processes of anglicisation have largely succeeded. 464 pages.

£ 8.00

On the Crofters' Trail.
David Craig.
London. 1992.

For several generations the people of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland were forced from their homes by landowners in the Clearances. Many fled as the thatch crackled under the evictors' torches, carrying their crops, implements and old folk on their backs, enduring disease in the Atlantic boats that took them across the water to Nova Scotia and beyond. How many of their stories survive in the memories of their descendants? 357 pages.

£ 5.00

No Great Mischief if you Fall.
John MacLeod.
Mainstream Publishing. 1993.

Where, General Wolfe was once asked, could the British army find more troops? 'The Highlands', said the hero. 'They are a hardy, intrepid race. And no great mischief if they fall.'

Words that typify the attitude of a great empire and its culture to the Gaels on its northern fringe. Words that spell a truth that lay behind the atrocities after Culloden and the woe of the Highland Clearances. 240 pages.

£ 10.00