The Field of Sighing: A Highland Childhood - Softcover

'full of hardness and tenderness, close to mountain, burn and the sea, and in its prose there is an ever-present music' - Punch 'A beguiling picture of Highland boyhood. To read this book is to realize what spiritual riches the Highland survival can add to twentieth-century industrialised society' - Aberdeen Press and Journal 'a deeply felt book...recalls with candour the wayward impulses of growing-up' - New Statesman

Part autobiography, part fiction, this is a story of crofting life in the run up to the Second World War. Set in Ardnamurchan, it is a celebration - not simply of the crofting way of life, but also of the astonishing natural beauty of the area, from the mountains to the grandeur of the sea, which form an imposing backdrop to the book, to the intimacy of the meadows and flowers. The members of the small community around which the author's narrative revolves, particularly his grandmother, "Herself", a figure of immense significance in his life, a cleverly characterized. The work is full not only of day-to-day happenings of the community, which are recorded with perception and humour, but also of the folk wisdom and traditions of the area.