In this book, acclaimed journalist and Hebridean expert Roger Hutchinson tells the true story of one of the most bizarre events ever to have happened in Scottish waters: when the ship SS Politician ran aground on Eriskay, laden with more than 260,000 bottles of whisky ... The true story behind Compton Mackenzie's classic novel, Whisky Galore.
When Lord Leverhulme bought the Hebridean islands of Lewis and Harris in 1918, his intention was to revolutionise the lives and environments their people. But the men and women of Lewis and Harris fought the law, their landowner, local businesses and the entire media to preserve the settled crofting population of their islands. This is that story.
From 1918 to the modern day, Roger Hutchinson tells the story of the Stornoway Trust, and of the people who guided their pioneering estate into the relative security and prosperity of the 21st century. In doing so he paints a vivid portrait of a unique landholding experiment, of Highland land struggle and of the island of Lewis itself.
Biography of the most intriguing and celebrated of Highland priests
Fast sein gesamtes Leben hat Calum McLeod im Norden der zwölf Meilen langen und zwei Meilen breiten Insel Raasay westlich von Schottland verbracht, wo er als Kleinbauer, Postbote und Leuchtturmwärter gearbeitet hat. Aufgrund des wirtschaftlichen Niedergangs schrumpfte die Bevölkerung schließlich auf zwei Menschen: Calum und seine Frau. Eines schönen Tages lädt Calum Spitzhacke, Axt und Schaufel auf seine Schubkarre und macht sich auf den Weg nach Süden, um eine Straße zu bauen. 20 Jahre investiert Calum McLeod in sein Ein-Mann-Projekt... Die heroische (und wahre) Geschichte von 'Calum's Road' ist in ganz Schottland und Großbritannien bekannt. Sie ist ein Musterbeispiel für Eigensinn und Beharrlichkeit, aber auch für privates Engagement.
Calum MacLeod had lived on the northern point of Raasay since his birth in 1911. He tended the Rona lighthouse at the very tip of his little archipelago, until semi-automation in 1967 reduced his responsibilities. ‘So what he decided to do,’ says his last neighbour, Donald MacLeod, ‘was to build a road out of Arnish in his months off. With a road he hoped new generations of people would return to Arnish and all the north end of Raasay . . .’ And so, at the age of 56, Calum MacLeod, the last man left in northern Raasay, set about single-handedly constructing the ‘impossible’ road. It would become a romantic, quixotic venture, a kind of sculpture; an obsessive work of art so perfect in every gradient, culvert and supporting wall that its creation occupied almost twenty years of his life. In Calum’s Road, Roger Hutchinson recounts the extraordinary story of this remarkable man’s devotion to his visionary project.