Scottish Exodus: Travels Among a Worldwide Clan - Softcover

"Extraordinary . . . no book has gone to these lengths to unpick so many human elements of the diaspora" (The Herald)

"Whatever your surname or origins, Scottish Exodus is a compelling, thoughtful, witty and beautifully written book. It is Hunter's best for at least a decade" (The Scotsman)

"Endlessly fascinating . . . Hunter is at his best when describing the powerful forces in Scotland - hard-times, poor land, high rents, rapacious landlords, two-faced clan chiefs, the prospect of better lives" (Sunday Herald)

Millions of Scots have left their homeland during the last 400 years. Until now, they have been written about in general terms. Scottish Exodus breaks new ground by taking particular emigrants, drawn from the once-powerful Clan MacLeod, and discovering what happened to them and their families. These people became, among other things, French aristocrats, Polish resistance fighters, Texan ranchers, New Zealand shepherds, Australian goldminers, Aboriginal and African-American activists, Canadian mounted policemen and Confederate rebels. One nineteenth-century MacLeod even went so far as to swap his Gaelic for Arabic and his Christianity for Islam before settling down comfortably in Cairo.

This gripping account of Scotland's worldwide diaspora is based on unpublished documents, letters and family histories. It is also based on the author's travels in the company of today's MacLeods - some of them still in Scotland, others further afield.

Scottish Exodus is a tale of disastrous voyages, famine and dispossession, the hazards of pioneering on faraway frontiers. But it is also the moving story of how people separated from Scotland by hundreds of years and thousands of miles continue to identify with the small country where their journeyings began.