Books
Opening the windows of the memory with photos
Old photographs can feel very remote to the modern viewer. However, in this collection of short stories based on old photographs, Alexander McCall Smith ingeniously proves that with a little imagination, photographs, no matter how old, can transcend time and place. Smith creates big stories from the tiniest of visual clues to take the reader…
Read MoreHow Glasgow survived the devastation of WW2
Glasgow At War 1939-45 is an important account which focuses on the devastating impact of the Luftwaffe’s relentless bombing of the city in WW2. The text is at times a little dry, but the sections where Armstrong retells the horror of the raid on Clydebank in March 1941 which killed over 500 and left only…
Read MoreScottish New Writers Award recipients revealed
The Scottish Book Trust has announced the 13 recipients of the New Writers Award, which is supported by Creative Scotland. Since 2009 Scottish Book Trust, the national charity transforming lives through reading and writing, has supported over 100 creative individuals through the New Writers Awards. The New Writers Awards, which celebrated its tenth anniversary last…
Read MoreThe Bad Fire takes Bob Skinner into retirement
It takes some skill to write 31 novels in a crime series and ensure that the narrative, plot and characters don’t go stale. But The Bad Fire, Quintin Jardine’s latest offering to the Bob Skinner series, takes the veteran Chief Constable in a new direction – retirement. Despite a greater focus on his daughter Alex,…
Read MoreRemembering Scotland’s Collosus of Roads
Telford began as a young apprentice to a stonemason and by the end of his years was called ‘The Collosus of Roads’. He was unquestionably one of Britain’s finest engineers. This book recounts the history of one of the Industrial Revolution’s heroes, highlighting the work and life of a man of culture who remembered his…
Read MoreThe amazing story of a Scottish piano
Mrs Findlay’s Broadwood Square Piano is the remarkable story of an 1804 Broadwood square piano, and two great Scottish families. Originally bought by a Mrs Dorothy Findlay from Glasgow in 1804, the piano appeared in an Irish auction in 1977 where the author’s mother, Hilda Hannon, nee Denny of the Dumbarton shipbuilding family, bought it…
Read MoreA masterclass on how to cook venison
Senior chef and lecturer in culinary arts at Westminster Kingsway College in London, Jose Souto is a game expert who gives master classes on game cookery to chefs worldwide. Alongside world-renowned photographer Steve Lee, Souto has created a book which not only teaches the reader how to cook venison, but celebrates it. As venison becomes…
Read MoreStars shine brightly in this Scots novel
Cameron Sparks’ life isn’t going to plan, in Bright Stars by Sophie Duffy. He and his wife have separated and he is being forced to move back in with his widowed dad, plus he’s awaiting a disciplinary at work following an incident in the underground vaults of Edinburgh where he works as a Ghost Tour…
Read MoreSpending a season with the wild geese
It is impossible not to be charmed by the poignant and lyrical way in which Wintering effortlessly sketches vivid portraits of these often underappreciated birds. The reader is invited to share in the solace which Stephen Rutt finds in nature through the book’s elegant and very readable prose, which although soothing, never loses its poetic…
Read MoreWhen Burns became the talk of the capital
Robert Burns arrived unknown in Edinburgh in 1786, but within days the ‘Ploughman Poet’ was the talk of the town. This colourful guide to Burns’ associations with the city chronicles the places he visited and people he met. With easy-to-follow routes through Edinburgh arranged by the people and places who influenced the Bard, this is…
Read More