Taking you through the year day by day, The Dumfries Book of Days contains quirky, eccentric, amusing and important events and facts from different periods in the history of the town. Ideal for dipping into, this addictive little book will keep you entertained and informed. Featuring hundreds of snippets of information gleaned from the vaults of Dumfries's archives and covering the social, criminal, political, religious, industrial, military and sporting history of the town, it will delight residents and visitors alike.
Taking you through the year day by day, The Dumfries Book of Days contains quirky, eccentric, amusing and important events and facts from different periods in the history of the town. Ideal for dipping into, this addictive little book will keep you entertained and informed.Featuring hundreds of snippets of information gleaned from the vaults of Dumfries’s archives and covering the social, criminal, political, religious, industrial, military and sporting history of the town, it will delight residents and visitors alike.
Along with its rich history and spectacular scenery, Dumfries and Galloway is home to a great many curious and unusual buildings, objects and landscape features that have survived the centuries. This well-illustrated book is a guide to 100 of these remarkable sights, including Scotland's highest village, the world's narrowest hotel, and even the statue of a rhinoceros on top of a bus shelter. Dumfries & Galloway Curiosities will encourage readers to explore this area of south-west Scotland and perhaps make their own curious discoveries.
New, and the only detailed colour atlas of Dumfries and Galloway that gives comprehensive coverage of the region from Stranraer in the west to Gretna in the east. No other atlas shows every street in Dumfries and Galloway.The mapping is based on Ordnance Survey data and gives the user complete coverage of all urban and rural areas. The mapping is at a scale of 134 inches to 1 mile (1 1/3 inches to 1 mile in the pocket edition) with larger scale mapping of 3 1/2 inches to 1 mile (2 2/3 inches to 1 mile in the pocket edition) for the towns of Annan, Castle Douglas, Dalbeattie, Dumfries, Gretna, Kirkcudbright, Lockerbie, Lochmaben, Moffat, New Galloway, Newton Stewart, St John's Town of Dalry, Sanquhar, Stranraer and Wigtown. The mapping is also complete with postcode boundaries.The atlas is ideally suited for both business and leisure use. There is a route-planning map at the front of the atlas. The main maps show every named road, street and lane clearly with through-routes highlighted. School locations are marked and emergency services, hospitals, police stations, car parks and rail and bus station locations are all featured. There is a comprehensive index of street names and postcodes including schools, industrial estates, hospitals, sports centres, etc. These are highlighted in red.Main map scale: 1.3 inches to 1 mile and 2.6 inches to 1 mile
“Let’s go, shall we? Just the two of us?” “I consider Galloway the country’s best kept secret: a place where time holds its breath, where ancient ruins dot the countryside in moss-covered splendor, where the natives are friendly and tourists are few, only because they don’t know what they’re missing. “So, ten days in bonny Scotland. You’ll join me, aye?” –from My Heart’s in the Lowlands Best-selling novelist Liz Curtis Higgs invites you to take an entertaining journey through the South West of Scotland, known as Dumfries and Galloway. Without crossing the pond, changing time zones, or driving on the left side of the road, you’ll explore quaint villages and crumbling castles, old bookshops and charming tearooms in the delightful company of a guide whose love for this quiet nook of Scotland illuminates every page. The verdant hills and glens of the Lowlands are awash in history, rich with culture, and peopled with engaging characters. The setting for Higgs’s acclaimed series of historical novels, Dumfries and Galloway also serves as her home away from home. Her decade-long love affair with this unique area of the world, combined with her award-winning storytelling skills, makes her the ideal armchair travel companion. Warm, personal, and deeply evocative, My Heart’s in the Lowlands transports you to an unforgettable corner of Scotland that will lay claim to your heart forever. Liz Curtis Higgs is the best-selling author of 25 books, including her Scottish historical novels Thorn in My Heart, Fair Is the Rose, Whence Came a Prince, and Grace in Thine Eyes. She is currently writing her fifth historical novel, Here Burns My Candle.
A WRY AND HILARIOUS ACCOUNT OF LIFE AT A BOOKSHOP IN A REMOTE SCOTTISH VILLAGE "Among the most irascible and amusing bookseller memoirs I've read." --Dwight Garner, New York Times "Warm, witty and laugh-out-loud funny..."—Daily Mail The Diary of a Bookseller is Shaun Bythell's funny and fascinating memoir of a year in the life at the helm of The Bookshop, in the small village of Wigtown, Scotland—and of the delightfully odd locals, unusual staff, eccentric customers, and surreal buying trips that make up his life there as he struggles to build his business . . . and be polite . . . When Bythell first thought of taking over the store, it seemed like a great idea: The Bookshop is Scotland's largest second-hand store, with over one hundred thousand books in a glorious old house with twisting corridors and roaring fireplaces, set in a tiny, beautiful town by the sea. It seemed like a book-lover's paradise . . . Until Bythell did indeed buy the store. In this wry and hilarious diary, he tells us what happened next—the trials and tribulations of being a small businessman; of learning that customers can be, um, eccentric; and of wrangling with his own staff of oddballs (such as ski-suit-wearing, dumpster-diving Nicky). And perhaps none are quirkier than the charmingly cantankerous bookseller Bythell himself turns out to be. But then too there are the buying trips to old estates and auctions, with the thrill of discovery, as well as the satisfaction of pressing upon people the books that you love . . . Slowly, with a mordant wit and keen eye, Bythell is seduced by the growing charm of small-town life, despite —or maybe because of—all the peculiar characters there.
Through his personality, ingenuity and ability, he initiated a resistance movement which ultimately secured the nation's freedom and independence. Yet, Wallace was reviled, opposed and eventually betrayed by the nobility in his own day to re-surface in the epic poetry of the fifteenth century as a champion and liberator. Eventually, his legend overtook the historical reality, a process which has continued for centuries as manifested in modern media and film. A team of leading historians and critics from both Scotland and England investigate what is known of the medieval warrior's career from contemporary sources, most of which, unusually for a national hero, were created by his enemies. His reputation, from the time of his horrendous execution to the present, is examined to ascertain what the figure of Wallace meant to different generations of Scots. Too dangerous perhaps for his own era, he became the supreme Scottish hero of all time; the archetypal Scot who would teach kings and nobles where their duty lay, and who would live free or freely die for the liberty of his nation.
