Personal anecdotes rub shoulders with cruel history

THERE are guidebooks aplenty to help the visitor better understand the Highlands and Islands. Some are good while others are pretty awful, cliche-ridden efforts. Many are written by those who hail from outwith the area.

But that can’t be said about a welcome new addition to the genre. Where Seagulls Dare is by Iain MacDonald and Rab MacWilliam. Journalist MacDonald was for many years BBC Radio Scotland’s “voice of the Highlands” until the corporation embarked on a cost-cutting programme and his job no longer existed.

He is only occasionally on the airwaves. But he has not been idle, teaming up with his long-time friend, the publisher and writer Rab MacWilliam, to produce what they are billing as “the insider guide to the best of the Highlands and Islands”. MacDonald is from Stornoway. MacWilliam is Inverness born and bred but moved to London in the mid-1970s and worked for more than 20 years for leading publishers including Penguin, Hutchinson and Hamlyn.

Both are alive to the “self-seeking hyperbole, misleading myths, romantic but error-strewn histories” of the region that too often appear under the guise of a guidebook. They have produced something that is different.

While providing the essentials of the Highland story (history, culture, geography, natural heritage and so on) they also embrace the human ecology: the Highland people and their place at different times, regardless of whether that was the Assynt Crofters and their journey towards their historic community buyout in 1993 or Ross County’s fans travelling to Glasgow for their famous victory over Celtic in the 2010 Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden Park. They tell of those in the clearance village of Badbea five miles north of Helmsdale who had to tether their children and livestock so they would not be blown off the cliffs, but also of the 19 who turned up in Dingwall Town Hall to hear the Beatles in 1963 while 1,200 were up the road in Strathpeffer where a local band was appearing,

Those cleared by the house of Sutherland to make way for sheep, the Skye Bridge anti-tolls campaigners and the Gairloch Bard, William Ross (17621791), are all part of the story, which is effectively told in dialogue. The two authors comment separately about each of the 25 locations they have selected. Personal anecdotes rub shoulders with cruel history.

So MacWilliam recalls a Glenmorangie-fuelled night in Cromarty when he decided he should join a dance band on stage to tickle the electric ivories, wrongly believing he could play like Jerry Lee Lewis, or indeed play at all. But within two pages he is recalling a huge naval tragedy a few miles away on the Cromarty Firth when HMS Natal blew up in December 1915 with more than 400 dead.

It is a rather eccentric approach which shouldn’t really work but it does.

The title it is not only a play on that of Alistair Maclean’s book and film Where Eagles Dare but it is also apparently a metaphor about venturing into “another quite different land”.

‘‘ The authors have produced what they are billing as ‘the insider guide to the best of the Highlands and Islands’

Published by Kessock Books, £12.99.