by Mike Parker. I should have loved this book, and its early moments of laugh-out-loud recognition certainly boded extremely well. But the author soon began imposing his acerbic opinions – about anything from middle-England Tories to Julie Burchill, via Lewis … Continue reading
Category Archives: Geography
Moonwalker: Adventures of a Midnight Mountaineer
by Alan Rowan. I was always going to like this book – 238 pages about night-hiking in the Scottish mountains. This book chronicles the author’s round of the Munros, the 287 Scottish mountains higher than 3,000′. As such it could have … Continue reading
Mercator: the Man who Mapped the Planet
by Nicholas Crane. A fascinating and incredibly detailed biography of the man who gave us the Mercator projection – the method still used to reproduce the 3D world on a 2D world-map. The last two pages of the epilogue tell … Continue reading
At the Loch of the Green Corrie
by Andrew Greig. The most astonishingly thought-provoking narrative, which weaves together a biography of the poet Norman MacCaig, fishing, whisky, wild camping in the north west Highlands of Scotland, geology, and that link between the soul and what it means … Continue reading
18th April 2016
by Leigh Forbes
Comments Off on Off the Map: Lost Spaces, Invisible Cities, Forgotten Islands, Feral Places and What They Tell Us About the World
Off the Map: Lost Spaces, Invisible Cities, Forgotten Islands, Feral Places and What They Tell Us About the World
by Alastair Bonnett. The title and blurb are misleading: although this is a book about places, many of them truly fascinating, for the most part they are well known and well mapped (I used to drive past one of them every day). … Continue reading
3rd April 2016
by Leigh Forbes
Comments Off on Islands Beyond the Horizon: The Life of Twenty of the World’s Most Remote Places
Islands Beyond the Horizon: The Life of Twenty of the World’s Most Remote Places
by Roger Lovegrove. I found this a fascinating read. Lovegrove takes the reader to “…twenty of the world’s most remote places.” Some of these you’ll have probably heard of (Tristan da Cunha, St Kilda, South Georgia), but others you won’t … Continue reading
Attention All Shipping
Charlie Connelly A funny and charming travelogue of the shipping-forecast areas. Charlie Connelly visits those places (on land) that he feels best reflect their adjacent forecast areas. Starting of on the Norwegian island of Utsira, he travels clockwise around the … Continue reading
2nd February 2016
by Leigh Forbes
Comments Off on The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are
The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are
by Michael Pye. Brilliantly researched, but poorly written. Michael Pye’s wonderful collection of fascinating historical knowledge is marred by the higgledy-piggledy way in which it is presented. There is a wealth of information about law, plague, fashion, vikings, and trade … Continue reading
4th January 2016
by Leigh Forbes
Comments Off on The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
by Michael Booth. Written by an Englishman living in Denmark, The Almost Nearly Perfect People presents a light-hearted study of the Nordic people. Having travelled throughout the region, and interviewed many people from across the political and academic spectrum, Michael … Continue reading
Isolation Shepherd
Iain R. Thomson A true insight into a real life. From the moment Iain Thomson, together with his wife, toddler daughter, and days-old son, arrived in a boat in a storm at the far end of Strathfarrar – one of … Continue reading