"A singular story, and an inspiring journey with one of the original characters of the contemporary scotch whisky world. Find out how an ordinary man discovers his first dram of single malt, and unwittingly departs on a journey over time, ... and then online. Ralfy relates stories, tales and anecdotes full of real characters, real events, real places, and real whisky."--Page 4 of cover.
An authentic and humorous autobiography by a whisky reviewer with a youtube channel called 'ralfydotcom' travelling from early childhood memories to an adults apprenticeship with scotch and Scotland. People and places are explored and whisky is sampled, and all for the sake of malt-moments.
A guidebook celebrating the bothies of England, Scotland and Wales: a network of huts, cottages and shelters – often in remote mountainous locations – that are completely free to use. The author presents a selection of 26 of her favourite bothies, with notes on access, water, facilities, history and wildlife-spotting opportunities. Includes advice on how to use bothies and bothy etiquette Routes (with mapping) to all of the 26 bothies featured, plus suggestions for what to do when you get there (including nearby hills you might climb) A history of bothies Personal recollections of visits to the 26 bothies Taigh Seumas a' Ghlinne (Glen Coe), Ben Alder Cottage, Ruigh Aiteachain, Ryvoan, Shenavall, Warnscale Head, Greg's Hut and Nant Syddion The majority of bothies are in the Scottish Highlands, but the guide also includes bothies in Dumfries and Galloway, Northumberland, the Pennines, the Lake District, Snowdonia, Mid-Wales and the Brecon Beacons
Eleven entertaining, and individual fictional short stories based on factual conversations with people over the years in whisky bars in Scotland, and including some of the authors own adventures. A Chapter per Dram is a good warming measure, and entertaining reading for whisky-lovers. and those who like a good story.
Although the nineteenth-century elite looked on the Highlands and Islands as a sporting paradise, for the indigenous population it was a turbulent place. Rather than a rural idyll, the glens and moors were home to poachers and whisky smugglers, while the towns were always ready to explode into riot and disorder. Even the Hebridean seas had their dangers while the islands seethed with discontent. Whisky Wars, Riots and Murder reveals the reality behind the facade of romantic tartan and vast estates. Augmenting the usual quota of petty thefts and assaults, the Highlands had a coastal town where riots were endemic, an island rocked by a triple murder, a mob besieging the jail at Dornoch and religious troubles in the Black Isle. Add the charming thief who targeted tourist hotels and an Exciseman who was hanged for forgery, and the hidden history of the Highlands is unearthed in all its unique detail.
Like so many people who live south of the border in England, Helen thought that she knew all about Scotland. It was a part of Britain after all, a place that was surely more the same than it was different. But then she actually went there – and everything changed...
*A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK* 'Utterly enthralling - a beautifully-written voyage of discovery that takes us deep into the heart of music-making' Deborah Moggach From the moment she hears Lev's violin for the first time, Helena Attlee is captivated. She is told that it is an Italian instrument, named after its former Russian owner. Eager to discover all she can about its ancestry and the stories contained within its delicate wooden body, she sets out for Cremona, birthplace of the Italian violin. This is the beginning of a beguiling journey whose end she could never have anticipated. Making its way from dusty workshops, through Alpine forests, cool Venetian churches, glittering Florentine courts, and far-flung Russian flea markets, Lev's Violin takes us from the heart of Italian culture to its very furthest reaches. Its story of luthiers and scientists, princes and orphans, musicians, composers, travellers and raconteurs swells to a poignant meditation on the power of objects, stories and music to shape individual lives and to craft entire cultures.
Acknowledged as a classic of mountain writing, this book takes you into the bothies, howffs and dosses on the Scottish hills as Fishgut Mac, Desperate Dan and Stumpy the Big Yin stalk hill and public house, evading gamekeepers and Royalty.
First edition in book form, originally published in the columns of the Northern Warder according to the dedication. The author, who worked first in a spinning mill, writes of the moral degradation of the female spinners and the drinking habits in mills, and of his own reading (Defoe, Smollet, Bunyan). He then turned shoemaker, met Robert Nicoll, the poet, married, and settled down. An uncommon contribution to Victorian working-class literature.
