Scottish Memoirs

The number one Sunday Times bestseller. Read by the author, Christian Lewis. 'Bursting with positivity and hope' – Ben Fogle Walking saved his life. Now it will help find him a family. In the follow-up to Finding Hildasay, with his dog by his side, former paratrooper Christian Lewis takes his...

Between the years of 1762 and 1763, James Boswell kept a journal of his time in London. During his time, he met the renowned writer, moralist, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, with whom Boswell would form a close relationship. This account, told with much detail and candor, was one of the various journals written by Boswell, but it is the journal that has undergone the least amount of censorship, leading it, and the racy material within, to be deemed a best seller upon publication.

All his life, "Johnnyboy" Steele has been running. First from an abusive father, then from the rigors of an approved school and a young offenders jail, and finally, from the harshness of adult prison. This book details how the Steele brothers staged the most daring breakout that Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison had ever seen and recounts what happened when their younger brother, Joseph, was falsely accused of the greatest mass murder in Scottish legal history.

One of the most famous queens in history, Mary Stuart lived in her homeland for just twelve years: as a dauntless child who laughed at her friends' seasickness as they sailed to safety in France and later, on her return as an eighteen-year-old widow to take control of a nation riven with factions, dissent, and religious strife. Brief though her in time Scotland was, her experience profoundly influenced who she was and what happened to her.

"Coleshanger people are pretty bad," said Uncle Edward. "They won't cross water after sunset. And they have to be in bed by midnight, otherwise they think that they'll be turned into baboons and apes. They also worship the flea." Written in 1952, Coleshanger is a humorous, whimsical, and charming recount of English village life in the early part of the last century, a tale waiting 70 years to be heard but still very much the story of us today.

Best-selling and Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie offers incisive, often humorous takes on literature, culture, and world events in this New York Times Notable Book. In these stimulating pieces, Rushdie addresses a variety of subjects, including the death of the novel, India, soccer, and the Rolling Stones.

"This story is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs. It ended, as was inevitable, in disruption. Of the two human beings here described, one was born to fly backward, the other could not help being carried forward. The affection of these two persons was assailed by forces in comparison with which the changes that health or fortune or place introduce are as nothing.

After three years of hard work, the Kerr family are selling their orange farm and saying goodbye to Mallorca. Their adventure comes to an end with a paella feast with friends, full of bonhomie yet tinged with sadness. But returning to Scotland proves to be just as big an adventure, with quite a cultural shock in store. Welcomed back by family, the Kerrs make plans to start a deer farm on a remote hillside – the beginning of a period of challenges and change, of buying and restoring houses in the lovely Scottish countryside.

William Wallace; if ever there was a champion in the annals of Scottish history, he was it. Known as a proud Scot who rose through the ranks to challenge the English king, Wallace was a mere man who became larger than life - large enough even for the likes of Mel Gibson to play him in Braveheart for movie-going audiences on the silver screen. But who was William Wallace? What separates the real man from the myth?

James Clerk Maxwell was a brilliant mathematician and scientist, but his impact on this world goes even deeper than that. Maxwell singlehandedly overturned what was believed to be fact with a whole new outlook on fundamental aspects of the universe. Maxwell is often credited as one of the first pioneers of quantum physics and rightly so....

Thomas Love Peacock is today remembered as the author of seven satirical novels which many regard merely as literary curiosities. However, he was also a man of considerable learning, a skilled poet, and an astute literary critic. This collection includes Recollections of Thomas Love Peacock, an affectionate reminiscence by Sir Edward Strachey; Some Recollections of Childhood, a window into Peacock's early youth; "Four Ages of Poetry", in which he pokes fun at his contemporaries; and "The Last Day of Windsor Forest", an old man's recollection of a memorable episode.

Dinner Is Ruined: Unruly Rants from a Scottish Kitchen is a collection of 20 comedic eruptions by our man with the Olivetti and the steak knife, Nielsen Dinwoodie. He covers the nonsenses of food and drink culture, how we shouldn’t shop, could all cook better–and why the very best arguments always happen in the kitchen.

William Wallace is one of the most famous freedom fighters in history. Over 700 years after his death he is still remembered as Scotland's beloved hero. But while the movie Braveheart helped make him a household name, and he is commemorated across Scotland as a natural leader and a loyal son of his homeland, he is also "the most mysterious of the leaders of the Scottish resistance to Edward I".

William Wallace started out as a humble knight, but he died a war hero. He gave up everything in his fight for Scottish freedom, including his life. When captured, Wallace was hung, drawn, and quartered by the English king for crimes against the crown. Though he was memorialized in the 1995 film Braveheart, this book tells how much of what we associate with Wallace is more legend than fact. Still, the spirit of the great Scotsman lives on in the hearts and minds of his compatriots today.