{"title":"Scotland - Neil Gunn","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781904445432_the-lost-glen","title":"The Lost Glen","description":"\"The Lost Glen\" vividly portrays a clash of cultures and personalities against a background of a landscape in visible decay. The cultural collision and its effects are explored through Ewan, a young local man recently returned from university in disgrace, and a retired English colonel staying at the village hotel. Both men in a sense are alienated from the community, the younger because of a haunting sense of failure, and the older through an unwillingness to understand the local culture. They have a mutual antipathy. The Colonel's self-imposed cultural isolation leads to aggressive bullying and an openly lascivious attitude towards local young women. His unworthiness as a representative of Anglo-Saxon culture is largely compensated for by his young niece, who behaves with sensitivity and integrity. She is clearly attracted to Ewan whose sense of failure is complex and does not only concern his enforced withdrawal from university and his involvement in an incident at sea that cost his father his life; it concerns the feeling he has of himself as a spiritual exile - a man who had intended to emigrate but who had remained as an outsider in the land that meant so much to him.\u003cbr\u003e\n\nHe is fascinated by the experience of a local piper, whose finding of a lost glen that had a strange beauty and primordial freshness had been translated into a pibroch. The haunting tune acts as a stimulant to Ewan's Hamlet-like musings on the possibility of a rejuvenation of the landscape or a final disappearance of its life and meaning. The antipathy between the two main protagonists leads to a physical struggle between them that brings to an end a novel, layered with meanings, that is more a symbolic drama than a novel of realism. One of the earliest novels to appear in the Scottish Literary Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, \"The Lost Glen\" turns its back on the form of writing that had depicted Scotland as a rural paradise in favour of describing Highland life as it really was at that time.","brand":"Neil Gunn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56733657432438,"sku":"9781904445432","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0943\/9120\/6262\/files\/9781904445432.jpg?v=1764233826"},{"product_id":"9781849950220_belief-in-ourselves","title":"Belief in Ourselves","description":"Introduction by Dairmid Gunn  Neil M Gunn (1892 - 1973), one of Scotland's most distinguished and highly regarded novelists of the 20th century, was a prolific writer. While he is best known for his fictional work Gunn was also a perceptive and meditative essayist who wrote extensively throughout his life on a wide range of subjects from landscape, nature and fishing to politics, nationalism and current affairs. Belief in Ourselves is a collection of essays that focuses on politics in the widest sense, embracing group activity in all its forms from nationalism to both communal work in a social sense and co-operation in crofting and fishing; the focus extends also to literature as a source of inspiration for a nation and a provider of national identity. That most of the essays were written between the two world wars - a period of political uncertainty and economic crisis - brings a sense of urgency to the writer in terms of the resolution of the problems and the exploration of the ideas aired by him. Many of the problems he identifies remain with us, albeit in different forms.\u003cbr\u003e\n\nIndeed, the imaginative and enlightened way in which Gunn looks at the events of his day have a strange relevance for today's world. This forms a sister volume to the earlier Landscape to Light, which concentrates on his native landscape and culture and the spiritual aspects of his life and thought.  As with Landscape to Light, much of what Gunn writes informs his fictional work","brand":"Neil Gunn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56733657366902,"sku":"9781849950220","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0943\/9120\/6262\/files\/9781849950220.jpg?v=1764233826"},{"product_id":"9781870325899_second-sight","title":"Second Sight","description":"A novel set in a Highland shooting lodge, where the focus is a hunt in a remote deer forest; but this is no ordinary thriller. A shooting lodge party of wealthy English people, a team of Highland stalkers, a legendary stag to be hunted and a background of glen and corrie, shrouded from time to time by impenetrable mist. A marvellous blend of ever-changing landscape - be it light and shadow, swift transitiions from light to half light, mist, rain, tones and flowing lines - contribute to the dramatic essence of the novel. Culture and personality clashes and mystery, which portent much deeper clashes between spiritual and material values, provide a vastly enjoyable read.","brand":"Neil M. Gunn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56733657891190,"sku":"9781870325899","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0943\/9120\/6262\/files\/9781870325899.jpg?v=1764233827"},{"product_id":"9781904445081_the-silver-bough","title":"The Silver Bough","description":"At the heart of The Silver Bough is a cairn on a knoll surrounded by standing stones. This is of professional interest to an archaeologist, around whom the story revolves. The life-enhancing qualities of the crofting family with whom he lodges and the quiet tenor of Highland life bear a curious similarity to his speculations on how 'the cairn people' lived in the distant past. His ideas spread outwards like ripples in a loch, fascinating his colleagues and giving some meaning to the life of a neighbouring landowner, who is mentally scarred from his experiences in the War. The plot of the book is imaginative and intricate, and includes the mystery of skeletons found in a cist in the cairn. As the dig proceeds, gold is discovered and then disappears. Has it been taken by the lad the archaeologist has been employing and, if so, where is it? The search is on and the standing stone claims its sacrificial victim.","brand":"Neil M. Gunn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56733658251638,"sku":"9781904445081","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0943\/9120\/6262\/files\/9781904445081.jpg?v=1764233828"},{"product_id":"9781870325943_wild-geese-overhead","title":"Wild Geese Overhead","description":"From this evocative title comes a powerful novel set in the city of Glasgow in 1939. This is indeed a bleak stage, and yet how does this title, with its implication of freedom and flight, meld with a depressed city at the outbreak of war? The main character, a journalist, finds that a glimpse of wild geese catalyses the development of his thinking on various levels - social, political and psychological. The contrast of urban and rural life, characteristically penetrating dialogue, remarkable insight, physical violence...all are included and take the reader on an absorbing and enlightening journey to the story's denouement. Another outstanding novel from the creative pen of Gunn.","brand":"Neil M. Gunn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56733658055030,"sku":"9781870325943","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0943\/9120\/6262\/files\/9781870325943.jpg?v=1764233828"},{"product_id":"9781849950459_half-light","title":"Half-Light","description":"Neil M. Gunn is celebrated as one of Scotland's foremost novelists of the 20th century. Less well known is that he was also a perceptive and meditative essayist and accomplished writer of short stories. Most of his short stories were written in the 1920s and 1930s in parallel with his early novels, which they influence and inform. This collection draws some of its short stories from two previous collections but others are published for the first time. Although most are set against a Highland background, they are not in any way parochial; they touch on universal themes, which invite the serious reader to ponder and enjoy. Topics explored are: childhood and a sense of wonder; love in its deepest and most subtle sense; death as part of the cycle of existence and the place of land and sea in the development of those in search of greater self-understanding. The stories are attractive in their own right and have a freshness and immediacy that give a clarity and accessibility to the rich subject matter. They are also a gateway to a greater understanding of Gunn's essential thinking on life and living.","brand":"Neil Gunn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56733657301366,"sku":"9781849950459","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0943\/9120\/6262\/files\/9781849950459.jpg?v=1764233826"},{"product_id":"9781904445906_landscape-to-light","title":"Landscape to Light","description":"\u003cp\u003eAlthough Neil M. Gunn is well-known as one of Scotland's foremost writers of the 20th century, he is less well-known as a perceptive and meditative essayist who wrote on a variety of subjects - from landscape, nature and the sea to literature, politics and matters of the spirit. Written in parallel with his novels, these essays contain many of the ideas and speculations that inform them. In this collection the focus is on landscape and the stimulus it provides for a journey of an enquiring mind from the observation of everyday life to a state of self-realisation. The essays mark the route. For example, in The French Fishing Smack there is a sense of freedom that only the sea can give; in The First Salmon a primal sense of adventure captivates; The Heron's Legs cannot but engender a sense of wonder and Light is a signal that the inner journey of the spirit has all but ended. Products of the uneasy and uncertain 1930s, the Second World War and the Cold War, the essays lead not only to a more imaginative and enlightened way of looking at life in troubled times but also to a greater understanding of the mind of this profoundly thoughtful writer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\r\n\u003cp\u003eThey can be understood as a miniature biography of the writer himself in terms of being a series of moments of revelation and delight experienced during walks in the countryside, fishing expeditions and chance encounters with people and books. Covering 40 years of the writer's life, the essays show that the ideas derived from them evolve rather than change; there is always a sense of movement. In the later essays it is the smallest social entity of all, the human psyche, that fascinates Gunn and becomes the essential ingredient in the search for self-enlightenment. Encounters with Zen Buddhism and other disciplines and philosophies were to reassure him that he had been moving in the right direction throughout his life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Neil Gunn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56733657563510,"sku":"9781904445906","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0943\/9120\/6262\/files\/9781904445906.jpg?v=1764233827"},{"product_id":"9781849955850_the-other-landscape","title":"The Other Landscape","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNeil M Gunn, one of Scotland’s most distinguished 20th century authors, wrote over a period of 30 years, starting in 1926 and ending in 1956 with his so-called spiritual autobiography The Atom of Delight. \u003c\/em\u003eTwo years before this he wrote his last novel, \u003cem\u003eThe Other Landscape\u003c\/em\u003e, the setting being the east coast of Scotland’s most northerly mainland county. This provides the perfect backdrop – a fishing hotel and its English residents, the local ghillies who served them, and a solitary white house near the cliffs in which the occupant, a man from the South, lives alone.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\r\n\u003cp\u003eAdd to this the Major, a retired military officer-cum-diplomat, who quickly shows himself to be an insensitive and overbearing man, disdainful of his fellows and aggressive towards those who challenge his views or show any form of disrespect towards him. His paternalistic behaviour towards the local community masks a contempt for it. Life in the hotel is lightened on a more mundane level by two incidents, both directly relating to the Major – a false alarm over a drowning incident and a fire in his bedroom, both of which end happily, but with a damaging loss of face for the Major and much amusement for the guests and staff at the hotel.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\r\n\u003cp\u003eJuxtaposed with the sporting life at the hotel, and in a subtle way connected to it, is the fate of the solitary and bereaved occupant of the white house. The shadow of death, both present and past, hangs over the house and blends with the palette of second sight and the strong phenomenon of ‘recurrence’, when patterns of events inexplicably repeat themselves. The reader is thus invited to consider the realities of life and death and the inherent tragedies that are contained within them, but in the end is presented with a glimpse of hope and renewal.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Neil M. Gunn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56742977339766,"sku":"9781849955850","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0943\/9120\/6262\/files\/9781849955850.jpg?v=1764331518"},{"product_id":"9781849955843_the-lost-chart","title":"The Lost Chart","description":"\u003cp\u003eUnlike most of Gunn’s novels, \u003cem\u003eThe Lost Chart \u003c\/em\u003eis set in a city – the city of Glasgow and its sea approaches. The untypical choice of background for the story is not the only departure from Gunn’s usual approach to his novels. The book is also a thriller. The story unfolds in a social ambience of fear and speculation within which certain sinister political forces are at work. Nuclear war is a possibility, if not a certainty. Shipping executive Dermot Cameron gets involved in a street brawl, loses the chart of the approaches to a remote Hebridean island and finds himself in a tussle between the British Secret Service and a locally-based communist fifth-column. The plot turns almost exclusively on the date of a looming crisis, and the imminence of that date pervades the thoughts and feelings of those in conflict with a locally-based sinister and elusive enemy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\r\n\u003cp\u003eThis timeless work, from one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, has a remarkable relevance to the events of today. When it was written in 1949 there was an uneasiness in the West regarding changes to the ‘old order’ of society and the decline in certain moral standards and spiritual beliefs. Today the problems facing humanity have not changed. The threatening political situations in the Far East, Middle East and Eastern Europe and the concomitant danger of nuclear warfare are all too evident. Against such a background, the way of life on the remote Hebridean island depicted by the author has an almost irresistible appeal.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Neil M. Gunn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56742977241462,"sku":"9781849955843","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0943\/9120\/6262\/files\/9781849955843.jpg?v=1767164949"}],"url":"https:\/\/portopress.com\/collections\/scotland-neil-gunn.oembed","provider":"Porto Press","version":"1.0","type":"link"}