The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell allows the reader to live vicariously a year in the life of a bookseller in Wigtown, Scotland’s famous book town.

The book is written in diary format but with all the interest and details of a novel. Bythell’s descriptions of his regular customers, his crazy assistants, and his everyday life in a small town are a rare and welcome peak into modern Scottish living.

Each day’s entry includes the number of customers, number of books ordered online, and the cash register total for the day. Bythell notes down his book buying escapades which range from visiting retirees in their middle class homes to trekking out to near-abandoned cottages with books covered in years of dust. One catches a glimpse of the hard work and stress involved in making a used bookstore actually profitable.

Several years ago I read Three Things You Need to Know about Rockets: A Real-Life Scottish Fairy Tale by Jessica Fox, a memoir about a young American woman who decides to go work in Wigtown at a used bookstore. Turns out it was Bythell’s bookstore and it further turns out Bythell and Fox fell in love. I never ended up recommending Fox’s book because I felt as though it failed to truly immerse one in Scottish life and, instead, immersed me in Fox’s crazy love life.

Bythell’s book tells a different love story — the story of an owner’s love for his books, his shop, his town, and his customers.

Travel Notes: If you are planning to travel to Wigtown, this is an excellent choice to read. Be sure to visit “The Bookshop” when you go! This is also a great choice for anyone wanting to read about modern, everyday life in Scotland.

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Call the Nurse by Mary J. MacLeod

 Call the Nurse: True Stories of a Country Nurse on a Scottish Isle by Mary J. MacLeod is a humorous and endearing memoir of daily life on a remote Hebridean island in the 1970’s.

Mary MacLeod moved from the south of England with her family to the 20-mile long remote island known as “Papavray” — a fictionalized name used to protect the true inhabitants. Life on Papavray is a world away from life in busy, modern England. Through her work as a nurse, MacLeod travels around the island and gets to know its inhabitants on an intimate level. She and her family learn to make do with a tiny house, a remote location, a quiet pace of life, and the intriguing traditions of the islanders.

In a similar vein to the popular Call the Midwife stories, MacLeod tells of the different medical predicaments she faces as she sees to her patients. There may be a premature baby to deliver in the midst of a raging storm with no doctor able to be present. She may be called to take a boat to a remote island to see to someone going mad or senile or arrive on the scene of a near drowning. Life on Papavray is never dull despite being so far removed from the “modern world.”

Several of MacLeod’s stories are both heartbreaking and astonishing as she tells about the depths of abuse that sometimes happen when few people are about, or the difficult ends of people who have lived their lives in bitterness and isolation. MacLeod doesn’t sugarcoat her life in the Hebrides, but neither does she focus only on the hardships. This book is full of funny anecdotes and endearing portraits of some of the islanders who became regular fixtures in the lives of the author and her family as well as descriptions of the island’s natural beauty and uniqueness of the Hebridean islands.

“It was a dreary December afternoon in 1970 as I struggled up the slippery path to the croft house on the hill above. My blue uniform and the silly hat that I had anchored with a very non-uniform scarf were no protection against the rain that was being hurled in from the sea by the blustery wind. I was cold and wet, but I knew that a cheery welcome and a warm fire awaited me, and after I had attended to my elderly patient her sister would bustle about to give me a ‘wee cuppie.’

“This morning, the smell that wafted from his open croft house door as I approached was redolent of unwashed clothes, old dogs, mice, and something else that I didn’t even try to identify. He was sitting by the fire in his wellies, staring at the blank screen of his bright new ‘teleeffission’ as though awaiting the first glimmer of the evening programs.”

“The ruin of the old church on the shore resembled something from a fairy tale as its walls were coldly cushioned by the falling flakes, and the few remaining snarling gargoyles began to look ridiculous, rather than frightening, as they acquired snowy wigs. The village was becoming amorphous, as croft boundaries, pathways, and gates disappeared.”

Travel Notes: this would be excellent reading for any travel to the Scottish islands. MacLeod has also written a sequel entitled Nurse, Come You Here!

Note: this book is published under the title The Island Nurse in the UK.

My Heart’s in the Lowlands by Liz Curtis Higgs

 My Heart’s in the Lowlands by Liz Curtis Higgs is a virtual tour of some of the most beautiful and beloved places in southwest Scotland.

Liz Curtis Higgs is well-known for her historical christian fiction books set in Scotland (i.e. The Lowlands of Scotland series). In this non-fiction book Liz takes us on a 10-day journey with her around the countryside of Galloway visiting idyllic country villages, remote castles and churches, and even some of the places she used as settings in her fictional series. Liz is so enamored with the Scottish countryside that one can’t help but catch a bit of her excitement as you travel the pages of her book.

The tour begins in Glasgow as Liz collects a rental car and heads south past Sanquar to the tiny hamlet of Durisdeer. The sightseeing starts at the Durisdeer parish church and continues through the afternoon as Liz’s car winds through tiny villages and lands in the vicinity of Dumfries. We tag along as Liz gives us glimpses into each of the places she stops for a meal, throwing in Scottish vocabulary here and there to help foreigners get a feel for the words used in everyday life in the region of Galloway.

Each day is planned with historic sites, a museum or used bookstore, a handful of villages to delight any tourist, new foods to discover, and descriptions of the lush, magical countryside that enchants its visitors. Liz drives us to places like the Abbey Cottage Tearoom, the Shambellie House Museum of Costume, Drumcoltran Tower, the town of Castle Douglas, and Threave Gardens. Places full of history and overflowing with beauty appear on page after page. And Liz makes sure to tell the names of the roads she’s taking and other helpful travel info so people can find these places on their own!

Liz intersperses her touring with bits and pieces of history about the places she stops. She also includes quotes here and there from her novels. Those familiar with her books will be able to picture the places she was painting into her works of fiction. Notes are included in the back of the book so you can see what resources Liz used for her own travels (she returns to Scotland yearly) as well as for this book. She also mentions Scotland’s Gardens which is a charity listing all the private gardens open each year for a small entrance fee. It is worth checking their website for gardens in the area you may be traveling to.

Travel Notes: this would be a very helpful resource for planning a trip to the area of Galloway and Dumfries or for armchair travel in general.

The Final Curtsey by Margaret Rhodes

The Final Curtsey by Margaret Rhodes is a memoir of life as cousin to Queen Elizabeth II and Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Margaret Rhodes was born in London but her heritage was Scottish on both her father’s side (the Elphinstone’s of Carberry Tower) and her mother’s side (the Strathmore’s of Glamis Castle). As most titled families of the time the Elphinstone family moved around to various dwellings. This meant that Margaret spent much of her childhood in Scotland either at the family home of Carberry Tower or at Glenmazeran in Inverness-shire.

Margaret’s mother, being sister to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, meant that Margaret and her siblings grew up in close proximity to their cousins Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. Margaret even served as a bridesmaid to Princess Elizabeth. The Elphinstones also hosted various members of the royal family in their family home  — Queen Mary and George V among many other lesser royals. Because of this intimacy, Margaret has many endearing and humorous anecdotes she shares from these family times. The book contains many color photographs of the royal family from throughout Margaret’s life.

Margaret describes meeting and marrying her husband, Denys Rhodes, and their years of raising four children together. In Margaret’s later years, at retirement age, she takes up the call to join her aunt’s household and become Woman of the Bedchamber. She functioned in this role of both companion and aide for eleven years and was there at the Queen Mother’s bedside when she passed away in 2002.

This memoir is not written by an accomplished writer but it is interesting and endearing because of the first-hand accounts Margaret gives of the royal family and their daily lives. For those who are avid followers of the royal family this book is a good way to learn a bit more about the Scottish connections to the throne via the Strathmore family.

Travel Notes: Glamis Castle is a lovely day out and as the ancestral home of the Strathmore family would be the perfect outing to accompany this book. You can visit the grounds of Margaret’s childhood home at Carberry Hill and even stay overnight at Carberry Tower.

In The Footsteps of Sheep by Debbie Zawinski

In The Footsteps of Sheep by Debbie Zawinski is just the book to read if you are interested in knitting, spinning, Scottish sheep breeds, or remote Scottish hillwalking and camping!

Zawinski began with a dream of journeying “around Scotland spinning and knitting the fleece of the Scottish sheep breeds in their native haunts.” Out of this dream came her travels, eleven pairs of knitted socks and their patterns, and this beautiful book with color photographs to chronicle the adventure. It is a truly inspiring book.

Zawinski’s travels took her first to the Shetland isles in the far north where she planned to obtain wool from the “Shetland” sheep. Joan’s method of collecting wool is to walk around fields collecting tufts of wool stuck to fences, bushes, and buildings. It is these tufts that she then spins with her drop spindle and subsequently knits into socks (often while walking to her next destination). Zawinski’s companions on her trip are her rucksack, tent, and her spinning and knitting paraphernalia. Undeterred by cold or wet weather, she camps alone in the remotest of places as she progresses on her journey to collect wool.

The pilgrimage continues in search of Scottish Blackface near Loch Sween on the west coast, Hebridean sheep in the Hebrides, the Borerays on Boreray isle, the Soays on the isle of St. Kilda, the North Country Cheviots in the northwest of Scotland, the North Ronaldsays in the Orkney isles, the Castlemilk Moorits, Bowmonts, and the Cheviots in the Borders.

All along the journey Zawinski chronicles the people she meets, the hardships she encounters, the nature she observes. It is hard not to be inspired by the courage and fortitude it takes to embark on such a journey and see it through to the end.

Travel Notes: this is definitely a must-read for any knitter or spinner planning to travel to Scotland. It is also inspiring for anyone planning to hike and camp in Scotland’s remote places. Most of this book takes place in Shetland, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, the northwest, and the Borders of Scotland.

The Guynd by Belinda Rathbone

The Guynd by Belinda Rathbone is a modern day memoir set in the Scottish countryside outside Arbroath. Rathbone, born American, meets and marries a member of the Scottish aristocracy and moves with him to his run-down ancestral home in the countryside. This book tells the story of her adjustment to Scottish country life, of her relationship to a man tied to his family home, and of her endeavors to build a life for her family in these circumstances.

It is great fun to open the pages of this book and begin to read the story of how Belinda met her future husband at a cousin’s wedding. Soon the pair are living together in Scotland and Belinda is exploring the many rooms of her husband’s ancestral house, the Guynd. Unfortunately, the house has fallen into disrepair over the years as the previous generation died and John (Belinda’s husband) finds it necessary to be living elsewhere. The couple decides to make this their permanent home and together begin renovations.

Restoring the Guynd is not going to be as easy as Belinda hoped. John becomes sidetracked over and over again by his obsession with saving things that should be thrown out, or saving money by doing without. Belinda finds herself freezing in the cold Scottish autumn because radiators are never turned on until a certain date in November no matter what. It is hard to come to a unified agreement on what the restorations should look like and how they should be accomplished.

Meanwhile Belinda works on getting to know the people living on their estate, the other landed families who live in the area, and the general Scottish way of living life. There are both delights and disappointments to be found as Belinda learns the way things are done in this part of the world. She also begins to understand the downside of having a large family home — the money required for upkeep, the problems with tenants, a garden that has been overgrown for decades.

Sadness creeps in as we realize that Belinda and John’s marriage has a shaky future and the life that Belinda is working so hard to build at the Guynd is not going to remain for the long haul. Her time there has been another chapter in the long history of this family home.

Rathbone’s memoir is unique in that it gives a modern day look at the realities of life for those living in large, ancestral homes. For those of us in love with shows like Downton Abbey and Monarch of the Glen this is an excellent way to experience vicariously this kind of life. The daily life of the average Scottish citizen would need to be found in a different memoir.

Travel Notes: The Guynd is privately owned so it is not possible to visit the house. However, you can see a few pictures and find information about the house on this site. This book is great reading if you plan to visit any country homes in Scotland or have an interest in Scottish life.