dovegreyreader scribbles

Something of His Art - Walking to Lubeck with J.S.Bach ~ Horatio Clare

'Perhaps every long distance walk is a pilgrimage, whether the walker is a believer or not. The reconnection with ourselves through immersion in the world is inevitably therapeutic.'

I'm not going to make the overdone wisecrack about buses, you know, waiting for hours and then three come along together, so forget I said that. Just know that having read two books by Horatio Clare in quick succession I'd be quite pleased if a third would hove into view around the bend. 

Firstly The Light in the Dark, the winter journal and an antidote to the challenge of Seasonal Affective Disorder, and now Something of His Art - Walking to Lubeck with J.S.Bach, this latter published in an exquisite edition by Little Toller. I can't deny that the three-way combination of Horatio Clare's writing, the Ed Klutz cover and Little Toller's gold-star production standards had my undivided attention from the off, though I might have known about this sooner had I heard Horatio's Bach Walks radio series last December. As it is I missed that and am now praying it will be repeated because of course, having done the reading journey, now I'm desperate to do the listening one.

In the winter of 1705 Bach sets out to walk from Arnstadt to Lubeck to hear the music of Dieterich Buxtehude (who?) the famous organist at St Mary's church there. Interestingly my new friend Clemency Burton Hill had chosen some music by Buxtehude and mentioned the walk soon after I had started Year of Wonder (September 28th)  so my ignorance was only partial. I had at least heard the name. And three centuries on Horatio Clare, together with a team from Radio 3, sets off to complete the same journey with Bach and his music as his companion. I fell into step and walked alongside because, as Horatio Clare suggests, Bach never travelled quite alone either...

' A composer and performer such as Bach gave breath to the word of God: there was always a higher purpose, alongside, beneath and beyond his worldly concerns. No artist of any worth ever works without one, whether or not he or she is religious.'

Along the way music weaves its way into the narrative and my Bach collection was 'good enough' to contain the cello suites. I have both the Pablo Casals and the Jacqueline du Pre recordings and so could listen in..

'Though they are not explicitly religious pieces, the suites have a power and humility which takes the listener to the same places that the religious describe when they talk of the mysteries of faith, of states of grace and diving comfort...' 

And then this...

'The music seems by turns wise and melancholy, ruefully amused sometimes and philosophical, both accepting and longing...'

Along the way there is much to see, and much to compare with how Bach may have experienced it, so by the time we arrived in Lubeck, which Horatio Clare likens to 'entering a kind of holy city, I was fair desperate to see inside the church and hear the organ playing. I was anticipating the moment for days and can't quite describe how I felt when I discovered that the original building and its contents had been destroyed by allied bombing during the Second World War. I know we suffered losses too, Coventry Cathedral being one, but my sense of  loss was instant and profound, acutely so, even though the church had been completely rebuilt.

Moping around over this, and having missed the Bach Walks radio series, I suddenly realised that my new-found Spotify skills (thank you Clemency Burton-Hill) might come to the rescue. I retraced my steps and made a note of all the music that Horatio Clare had mentioned and listened to along the way, compiling my own 'Something of His Art' playlist. Then, with that playing, I stared at the cover of the book for a while and realised here was another book that I needed to immortalise for my A4 Journal Quilts.

It's a work in progress, my own journey with the book stitched into place. I had the last remnant of that hand-dyed Arashi shibori that was perfect for the sky, and I'm lining up the map for the reverse...

Lots of stitching to be done over the winter months with that playlist in the background. This is book as entire experience.

So there you have it. Another journey and one I might never have 'walked' but for this book. 

If you heard the radio series please do share the joys of it with me...

 

 

 

 

Candlestick Christmas

A little cohort of the dovegrey Candlestick Chapter have kindly emerged from winter hibernation to share their thoughts on the season's offerings from Candlestick Press. Jessica and Fran have penned this post about two of them and the rest of us will chime in via comments, which I hope you will too.

Three beautiful pamphlets to send instead of a card, Christmas Lights Ten Poems for Dark Winter Nights, Ten Poems About Robins, (both of which also include a postcard with another poem alongside the customary bookmark) and a short story The All Night Bookshop by David Belbin.

Firstly Jessica who luxuriates in the consolation and comfort of  The All Night Bookshop by David Belbin...

 

     There is something about this time of year that makes me long for olden days, for candlelight and fir scented Christmas trees glowing inside and lacy curtains of snow falling outside. Being a Jewish girl, born and still living in California, I can’t realistically call this angst nostalgia but that is what it feels like. Tucked inside the overseas packet from Candlestick Press is a story (with two exquisite poems) that perfectly captures my mood. On the cover, painted in muted shades of winter and limned by streetlamps stands a tall building, a relic of days gone by. From the attic story a light glows even at this late hour. And in the alley a black cat stands poised, waiting like me, to slip inside The All Night Bookshop.

     I am guessing that if you clicked your way to this blog you are not just someone who Loves to Read but a card-carrying member of a group that Reads to Live. And I don’t know the actual statistics but would hazard a guess that most people who Read to Live have insomnia. AND if you are an R to L’er with insomnia, you have most certainly suffered at some point from abibliophobia…fear of running out of things to read.

 Oh I know things are different now and those same clicks that brought you here can send a net into the ether and haul in as many books as your credit card can handle, but it is not the same is it? Not the same as slipping in with the cat over the threshold of an All Night Bookshop.

     Once inside, the story lives up to the cover’s promise… books higgledy-piggledy, overstuffed armchairs, odd insomniac customers and odder staff. The black cat, some romance and just the right amount of mystery were the perfect remedy for this particular Read to Live member who suffers chronically from insomnia and at times acutely from abibliophobia.

     Did I mention the exquisite poems? There are two, delightful bookends to the story. Unlike some befores and afters, these poems give context to the booklet and celebrate bookshops and their precious contents. Fetch a mug of cocoa and a fleece, your companion of choice (husband and dog for me) and enjoy.

    

And now Fran extolling the poetic virtues of the nation's favourite little Christmas bird...

Ten Poems about Robins

selected and edited by Hamish Whyte

 

Sociable, perky, Britain's national bird and recognised by most , the robin has been associated with Winter and Christmas for centuries. Stories and myths abound; Stephen Moss writes of many in The Robin: A Biography  [2017]. Their habit of living in close proximity to humans [more common in British robins than those in Europe] means they have been closely observed and researched. David Lack published The Life of the Robin in 1943, a ground breaking book and early classic of nature writing.  His love of this common bird led him to also compile an anthology of prose and poetry which his son Andrew Lack updated and reissued as Redbreast ; The Robin in Life and Literature in [2008]. The book contains excerpts of poetry and prose, along with art from Anglo-Saxon times onwards showing quite how much has been written over the centuries. So it must have been quite a task for Hamish Whyte to narrow down the Candlestick collection of Poems about Robins to just ten.

John Clare was bound to feature;  his "The Red Robin" starts off the collection. Not his only poem about robins; a quick look through my books and I have found four. In this one he writes of the a robin's song, heard throughout the year, and he notes,  changing slightly with the approach of autumn. A bit further on Christina Rossetti also writes of the poignant autumn/winter song  in The Key Note.

The connections with Christmas begin with UA Fanthorpe's "Robin's Round"- " I am the proper/ Bird for this season"…  For me the lines '' I dine in his garden/ My spoon is his spade"  from this poem are the highlight of this collection. Next time I am out digging and suddenly sense a robin's presence close by I know I shall recall this. Still out side in the garden Norman MacCaig compares man and robin in "Real life Christmas Card".

The custom of sending Christmas cards started in 1843. Since then robins have, and still do feature on many. Reading "After Christmas " [ Peter Wilson] I find I am not the only one who gathers together my robin cards as they arrive and group them in one place.  In the natural world of course this would never happen; a collection of robins altogether. Notoriously territorial it has been observed they will fight intruders, sometimes to death should their space be invaded. Peter Walton writes of a winter walk and seeing plenty of robins along the way. He wonder's if there has been " … a mantelpiece migration'.. yet returning home finds all his robin cards still up and occupied.

Watching birds feed outside the windows is one of my simple pleasures of wintertime. So many of us put out seed and fat balls, eagerly eaten by robins and many other garden birds. Both Fleur Adcock and Hamish Whyte write of this in "To the Robins" and "I watch the robin". Hamish notes the fact that robins have adapted their feeding habits now that humans often provide hanging supplies. Traditionally ground feeders they have learnt that good things maybe found from suspended feeders; …" whirring at the half coconut shell….like a humming bird…."

Living as they often do in close proximity to us we are very aware of their characteristics; their bright feathered fronts and beady eyes which often look so knowingly at us. The final two poems in this collection speak of this connection; "Robin Redbreast" by Stanley Kunitz and John Freeman's "Gardener's Friend". This final one with the poet talking to a robin has become another favourite of mine.

Plenty to ponder on here, as well as enjoy. One left unmentioned; "You know Her-by Her Foot" by Emily Dickinson. I confess I have read, and re-read several times and as yet have not really "got" it. Not that it really matters, always good to have a challenge. It crossed my mind she may have been writing about an American Robin, bigger than our European species but, it would seem, a songster too.

That is the great thing about these booklets. Unlike the cluster of robin cards which I will tidy away soon after the festivities have ended I can keep this booklet on my shelf. It will fit well amongst all my "birdy" books and throughout the year revisit those poems which I have so enjoyed. This would make a perfect small gift/Christmas card in one. Just as robins are with us year round so can these poems be. I shall be putting it out amongst the robin cards as part of my decorating, the front cover is illustrated with a very knowing robin perched on some frosty teasels, so festive enough. Then turn to the window and watch "my own" robin as he feeds close by, his beady eye watching me back.

 

My thanks to Jessica and Fran for their thoughtful contributions and please do scroll down for gifts.

 

 

 

 

 

From me to you, instead of a card...Candlestick Press Prize Draw

Candlestick Press very kindly send out copies of the pamphlets for the Chapter members to read and they send me two of each. I keep one copy on my shelf and set the spares aside, sending them hither and yon when the moment arises, especially In Memoriam Thirty Poems About Bereavement, which arrived in my life at exactly the right moment and copies of which I have sent to some of you. 

At year's end I have a small accumulation of pamphlets on various themes, including this year's Christmas collections, which I think would be much better re-homed than left sitting in my desk drawer, so if you would like one (apologies UK ADDRESSES only) please do leave a comment on this post. We will draw the recipients names in the usual way (thank you Magnus) and hopefully a little bit of pot-luck poetic treasure will arrive from Me to You, and before Christmas if we get a wriggle on.

 

 

A Pentameter of Poetry...

A small regathering of the Candlestick Chapter has been convened and we have been busy reading the latest pamphlets (Robins, Christmas Lights, and, pre-empting the Chapter verdict but I loved it, an exquisite short story The All Night Bookshop) and will be reporting back on them dreckly. Meanwhile I thought I would parade a pentameter of poetry books that are by my side at the moment, and likely to stay there for a while because it takes me months to read a collection of poetry properly.

Seamus Heaney 100 Poems 

It was apparently always on his list of Things to Do. To compile...

'a personal selection of his poems from across the arc of his writing life, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction to all-comers'

Sadly times wasn't on Seamus Heaney's side but his family have done his wishes proud with 100 Poems...

'By its very nature, this is a different selection from the one Dad might have made...we have also made some special choices that have special resonances for us individually...each one of us approached the task with a lifetime's memories...'

and thus does the Family Note at the beginning of this collection set the seal on a wondrous and intimate selection of Seamus Heaney's poems. I did 'cherish' and I was 'surprised' , as the family hopes each reader will be, by the selection of poems and yes, I do (because I am still reading them) bring my own memories of first reading some of these choices too. The Rain Stick, we have one here somewhere...

Upend the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And a diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

The subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Upend the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand times before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

 

 

Treelines - A Collection of Poems

We've had Shorelines and Washinglines and now we have Treelines, another themed collection from Lautus Press, selected by Janie Hextall and Barbara McNaught. When I opened the book at random and settled on a poem by Alice Oswald I knew I was going to love this one. Poems by Wendell Berry, Helen Dunmore, John Clare, Gillian Clarke, Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gerard Manley Hopkins and so many more, and all beautifully interspersed with etchings and wood engravings (twenty-five exquisite illustrations) make this little tome incredibly good value and one that will keep me going for months.

 

Green Noise ~ Jean Sprackland

I've barely been able to let go of Green Noise since I found a copy of Jean Sprackland's latest collection tucked away on the shelves in Waterstones whilst browsing recently. To think I might have missed it when I loved her last collection Sleeping Keys so much, and before that Tilt and Hard Water.

I read Jean Sprackland very methodically, a poem a day, in order and I keep notes. Each day I revisit previous poems as well as reading the new one, because re-reads reveal hidden layers. Poetry is the gift that keeps on giving, and these poems especially, for their observations of ordinary life that becomes far from ordinary when seen through Jean Sprackland's lens. The value of the notes became apparent when I looked back over my Sleeping Keys experience in 2013...

Sincerity ~ Carol Ann Duffy

This Carol Ann Duffy's final offering as Poet Laureate and so the quest begins for her replacement, though I don't really want to think about that because, like many, I have so enjoyed her years as the incumbent. This collection a distillation and a reveal about much that has mattered to her in that time...

'Time and its passage are at the heart of this reflective work, which gazes out from the autumn of life. There are moving elegies here for what has departed; whether that be children who have flown the nest, a way of life, literary luminaries, past loves, lost parents or our own youth. As Duffy dramatizes scenes from childhood, adolescence and adulthood, she finds moments of grace or consolation in memory, love and language amid the complexities of life.

This collection finds a poet at the height of her powers using her full poetic range, casting her eye both inwards, in poems of a deeply personal nature, and yet also outwards, taking stock of a world in turmoil. In some of her most radical work yet, we see Duffy satirise and unpick the deception and dishonesty at the heart of our current political situation. A rallying cry builds steadily through the book culminating in a moving closing ode to the virtue of sincerity.'

 

Injury Time ~ Clive James

Since reading The River in the Sky, my love and respect for Clive James now knows no bounds and this collection makes it sparkle even more. What a bright and honest light he shines on these his most treasured of days...

'Injury Time finds James with more time on the clock than he had anticipated, and all the more determined to use it wisely – to capture the treasurable moment, and think about how best to live his remaining days while the sense of his own impending absence grows all the more powerfully acute. In a series of intimate poems – from childhood memories of his mother, to a vision of his granddaughter in graceful acrobatic flight – James declares ‘family’ to be our greatest blessing. He also writes beautifully of the Australia where he began his life, and where he hopes to 'reach the end'. Throughout Injury Time, James weaves poems which reflect on the consolation and wisdom to be found in the art, music and books which have become ever more precious to him in his last years.

The poems in this moving, inspirational and unsentimental book are as accomplished as any he has ever written; indeed the unexpected gift of James's Injury Time shows him to be in the form of his life.'

 Well, there's my pentameter of poetry for you, meanwhile if you have more collections to recommend, or are familiar (or not) with any of these, please do leave a comment.

The older I get the more I can't manage without poetry. Fiction. Non fiction, new, old, classics, contemporary novels all very lovely but if push came to shove I'd want poetry on that desert island.

How about you...any collections you couldn't manage without...

Which poets would you want by your side...

 

 

 

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

Staying north of the border for one more post, I'm hoping some of you will have heard of The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and if not you are about to, so please settle back in your chair and read on because I NEED you.

Honouring the achievements of the founding father of the historical novel, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world.  With a total value of over £30,000, it is unique for rewarding writing of exceptional quality which is set in the past.

Sponsored by Sir Walter Scott’s distant kinsmen the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, the Prize celebrates quality, and innovation of writing in the English language, and is open to books published in the previous year in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth. Reflecting the subtitle ‘Sixty Years Since’ of Scott’s most famous work Waverley, the majority of the storyline must have taken place at least 60 years ago.

The Prize was founded in 2009, and is awarded at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland, in June every year. The winner receives £25,000 and shortlisted authors each receive £1000.  In addition, the Walter Scott Prize Academy, made up of a panel from across the Commonwealth and UK, chooses a ‘recommended’ list of titles every year.

Firstly let's sort this out...if you are trying to pronounce 'Buccleuch' remember DorOthy Dunnet like Buck-loo.

If I am honest, the Walter Scott Prize has only really entered my radar recently, and more especially with the most recent winner The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers  but I (and I expect many others) have been approached by Richard, Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury in a letter as follows...

Dear Lynne,

As founder and sponsor of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, I am hoping I may be able to enlist your help to spread the reach of this prestigious prize further around the world.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction awards a book published in the previous year with a substantial £25,000 award – making it one of the most valuable fiction prizes in the UK.  Founded in 2010, the prize seeks to honour the reputation of the inventor of the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott, and has been awarded to some of our best-loved authors as well as some whom we hope will be newly discovered by readers.  Previous prizewinning books have included Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, The Long Song by Andrea Levy, John Spurling’s The Ten Thousand Things, Simon Mawer’s Tightrope, Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End and, last year, Benjamin Myers’ The Gallows Pole.  

We very much hope that you might agree to join an honorary ‘Academy’, made up of well read folk who can share their enthusiasm for, and knowledge of, new books that might be suitable for our prize.  All we ask is that, as an Academician, you let us know of any novels published in 2018 in any of the Commonwealth countries, the UK or Ireland, that you think would be suitable for the prize. If eligible, these would then go forward for judging.  

The prize rules demand that the book has its first publication between 1st January and 31st December 2018, and has a historical setting – the benchmark taken from Walter Scott himself is ‘at least sixty years ago’, although we accept books which switch between past and present, as long as the majority is set in the past.  

A panel of 8 judges (including broadcasters James Naughtie and Kirsty Wark, writers Kate Figes and Elizabeth Laird, my wife the Duchess, and chair of judges Alistair Moffat) decides on a longlist in February and a shortlist in April, basing their choices on the criteria of originality, innovation, and potential longevity of the work, with quality of writing as the deciding factor.  We are proud to insist on a high literary standard for our shortlists, and our reputation grows every year....

With thanks and best wishes

Richard

Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry

I'm very happy to spread the word about the prize and though I read a lot I think between us we read even more, so I wrote to the prize administrators to ask if I could possibly add all of you to the academy and they said yes.

I've worked with prize lists before, doing some pre-reading to whittle down submissions to a long list for the judges to then work with (I won't name the prize but it was 104 books reduced to thirty or so). This is slightly different and seems like a wonderful opportunity for us ordinary, yet as we all know extraordinary readers to suggest books for consideration for a major literary prize.

I have highlighted the selection criteria in red above and now I'm hoping you might all have a few suggestions for the prize committee to consider, especially as (don't blush) I have been singing your praises..

I have a supremely well- read worldwide audience who would certainly offer you some excellent suggestions. We will have read far more between us than I have on my own.

Previous winners with links to those I have read are Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, On Canaan's Side and Days Without End by Sebastian Barry, The Long Song by Andrea Levy, The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris, The Ten Thousand Things by John Spurling and Tightrope by Simon Mawer. It's worth checking out previous shortlists too, some excellent reads tucked way there.

Meanwhile a few suggestions from me for next year's Walter Scott prize would have to be 

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar , 

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje, (does this squeak through the criteria? I hope so.

Little by Edward Carey

 

Now over to you...I'm relying on you all, check out the eligibility criteria in red above and please do share your best historical fiction reads of 2018.

 

 

 

Shall we read ...

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Why stray from annual tradition and the words of John Betjeman. I couldn't think of a good reason not to fire up the tortoise stove again. So here we are then, 'tis Advent, we can all make a start on the calendars and say the word 'Christmas'...

It's a few years since I have bought an Advent calendar, but this year we have something special to countdown because Offspringette will be flying in from New Zealand to spend three weeks with us over Christmas and New Year, and I'm thinking opening the doors on this lovely Angela Harding creation will be a fine way to wish Landing Day that bit closer. 

Meanwhile I am very grateful to Fran H-B who reminded me about this when we met up recently...that last year I had suggested we might read A Box of Delights by John Masefield over the Christmas season.

I had immediately ordered the DVD of the BBC series last year (as yet unwatched as I always have to read the book first), but have only just ordered a copy of the book having NEVER read it before. I found a nice copy of the NYRB edition very reasonably priced on eBay.

But how can this be.

How have I missed such an iconic children’s classic first published in 1935 and by the Poet Laureate of the time too.

'Strange things begin to happen the minute young Kay Harker boards the train to go home for Christmas and finds himself under observation by two very shifty-looking characters. Arriving at his destination, the boy is immediately accosted by a bright-eyed old man with a mysterious message: “The wolves are running.” Soon danger is everywhere, as a gang of criminals headed by the notorious wizard Abner Brown and his witch wife Sylvia Daisy Pouncer gets to work...’

I’m not promising a series of lucid and in depth blog posts all over the festive season because as usual the scribbles will be shifting into its habitual doze, bar the odd post now and again, but it wouldn’t it be nice to think some of us were reading and enjoying the same book. I will of course create a post where anyone can add comments as and when, with no pressure at all, so maybe some of you would like to join in....

What do you think...

 

 

 

St Kilda - The Silent Islands ~ Alex Boyd

I still have this ridiculous idea that I want to go to St Kilda. Even though I know it's unlikely and not all 'otters and primroses' as Kathleen Jamie would say, or quaint little cottages gathered around Village Bay and the voices of the departed residents echoing on the wind. Nice coloured aerial shots of the island on a sunny calm day...

You know me, I'm a sucker for all this, village children, women knitting on clifftops...

The chaps gathering barefoot...

I even bought the wool...

And before you ask, no of course I'm not wearing it yet. This is slow-knitter-do-it-dreckly me remember.

I bought the music too, thanks to Carol S who told me about it here...

Hirta Songs, and now I see it features Robin Robertson whose latest book The Long Take I read recently, so I must listen to this one again.

But how often I've looked at those pictures of the women and children...the likenesses, the low-set hairline, the clothing, the headscarves, and then just wondered about the sheer toil of it all.

No matter that I'd probably be as a sick as a dog on the three hour sea journey to see for myself where they, whose 'way of life broke on the wheel of the world' (Kathleen Jamie) had lived. In fact Kathleen Jamie did go to St Kilda, as a gift for her fortieth birthday even though it took repeated attempts to land, and she did put me right about all this, the 'modern myth', in her essay Three Ways of Looking at St Kilda (Sightlines) . If you still don't know of Kathleen Jamie's writing then hie thee there instantly. Sightlines and Findings would be two books on my Desert Island list without a doubt. 

None of it has been enough to stop me reading every book that comes along though, this was my last hefty investment...

St Kilda - The Last and Outmost Isle by Angela Gannon and George Geddes and exquisite and informative it is too. I've just checked the comments on that post from 2016 and I wonder if / hope Jane from Derbyshire is still reading here. Jane’s OH had a potentially very exciting opportunity coming up and I think we’d all love to know how that particular adventure went. 

 

So when I heard about St Kilda The Silent Islands by Alex Boyd I was on it  and had pre-ordered a copy from here in a nano second.

 

Alex Boyd, a landscape and documentary photographer, previously based in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and now living on the mainland. I'd been to the Hebrides on another armchair journey with Madeline Bunting in her far-reaching and deeply informative book,  Love of Country - A Hebridean Journey; a book which explained clearly much of which I had never really had an understanding. In the preface to his book Alex Boyd is compared to Fay Godwin, ' that great seer of cultural landscape', Godwin a photographer whose work is synonymous with Ted Hughes, and with which I was very familiar.

The paradox of St Kilda, thousands of years of continuous habitation rendered unsustainable by the twentieth century, and to be replaced by militarisation and the need for Cold War surveillance, is a stark and perhaps uncomfortable reality for anyone nursing romantic notions about the island.

The cottages of Village Bay, abandoned during the evacuation of 1930, were left to decay until restoration work began in the 1960s

©Alex Boyd (with kind permission)

Making several trips to the islands Alex Boyd seeks a balanced view (and achieves it) aiming to dispel distorted and romanticised perceptions whilst incidentally using a camera that once belonged to Faye Godwin. To this end the book includes 'a hard hitting' essay on the myth and reality of St Kilda by Dr Kevin Grant who was the island's archaeologist. The series of  monochrome images and commentary are compelling, arresting and quite beautiful. Radar stations and military installations juxtaposed with the more familiar scenes of wild landscapes, all brooding and desolate, and I have pored over them at length. There is an honest intensity to the images, a truthfulness that puts my imagined visit into a new perspective.

Dùn and Ruabhal in the mist 

© Alex Boyd (with kind permission)

Images laden with mood, atmosphere and a narrative that all adds to my informed appreciation of this place, making this book an essential addition to my St Kilda shelf.

Ab Mullach Bi from Ruabhal. The precipitous cliffs reach a height of 358m.

  © Alex Boyd (with kind permission)

And, the thing is, yes,  I still want to go.

On the other side of Village Bay is the island of Dùn (fort), which provides protection to the bay from the prevailing south westerly wind. It is separated from Hirta by a narrow strait 

©Alex Boyd (with kind permission)

 

With grateful thanks to Alex Boyd for permission to use the images on dovegreyreader scribbles.