Distinguished by irony, compassion and the author's own dry wit, these three novels paint a memorable picture of life in the streets, schools and tenements of Glasgow in the 1950s and 60s. With a unique vision of loneliness, old age, sexual longing, hot young blood and youth's casual cruelty, George Friel's books explore a dark comedy of tangled communication, human need and fading community. All these elements come together in the humorous parable of greed, religion and slum...
'When I was a little girl, the ghosts were more real to me than the people.' In this perceptive and unpretentious autobiography Christian Miller recalls her privileged but at the same time deprived upper-class childhood in a castle in Scotland. Through the eye and ears of a 1920s child who seems to have seen and heard everything within the massive granite walls of her home, she gives us a unique insight into what must surely have been one of the last relics of feudal life.
Scottish cuisine reflects both the richness of the country's resources and the frugality often imposed on its inhabitants. From the ninth century to the present, from the simplicity of porridge and oatcakes to the gourmet delights of fish and game, this is a fascinating history of Scotland, complete with Annette Hope's personal collection of authentic recipes. A Caledonian Feast is widely acknowledged to be the definitive culinary history of Scotland. Immensely readable and...
Haunted by a sense that the living and the dead are separated by no more than a narrow and disputed borderland, the tales that Margaret Oliphant liked to call her 'stories of the seen and the unseen' are now recognised as among the most remarkable explorations of the supernatural to appear in Victorian times. A prolific writer with many novels to her name, Margaret Oliphant could produce her few supernatural tales 'only when they came to me'. And they came with the...