ROGER HUTCHINSON

In September 1939, groups of horsemen in battledress cantered down a broad, grassy plain on the western edge of Europe. The young men of the Western Isles were going to war again. They included a tall, shy 24-year-old called Angus MacPhee (1916-97).Angus returned from war alive but in chronic mental pain and was referred to the asylum in Inverness, where he spent the next 50 years of his life there. During his time at Craig Dunain Hospital, he retreated into his own silent world, and did not speak again until shortly before his death. But the quiet big man as he was known spent his time creating a huge number of objects out of woven grass, sheeps wool and beach leaves - mostly clothes, caps and hats - which he then let decay or deliberately burned. Only when an art therapist discovered him and his miraculous creations were some of them preserved for posterity. And only then did Angus MacPhee come home to South Uist, where he died a year later.The Silent Weaver is a rich, moving and enthralling exploration of mental health, the creative process, human frailty and ancient traditions.

In the 1830s and 1840s the district of Glendale on the island of Skye was swamped by immigrants cleared from other north Skye estates. The resultant overcrowding and over-use of land caused simmering discontent - not against the incomers, but against the landowners, who regarded their tenants as no more than chattels.This book is a definitive account of what happened when the powder-keg erupted and a full-scale land-war ensued. Pitched battles with police, factors and bailiffs, military intervention, arrests, trials, imprisonment and the personal intervention of the Prime Minister were to have huge consequences for crofters all over the Highlands, who, ultimately, were the victors. At the heart of the rising was a man named John MacPherson of Lower Milovaig in Glendale, a courageous, charismatic and articulate crofter who was twice imprisoned for leading a rebellion against a system which kept all but the wealthiest in a state of bitter servitude. MacPherson quickly became known as the Glendale Martyr.Martyrs tells the story of John MacPherson, his comrades, his allies, his enemies and his final success.

This is the full, unofficial and uncensored story of one of the greatest football clubs in the world. It brings to life the sensational early successes of the great Anglo-Scottish team before the First World War and follows the clubs successes as Cup giants in the 1950s and European conquerors in the 60s, to the Macdonald and Keegan squads of the 1970s and 80s, to its rebirth in the 1990s and through its trials and tribulations of the first decade of the 21st century.Exploring and explaining the lean years as well as the successful decades, Roger Hutchinson brilliantly portrays the managers and players throughout the clubs long history and brings the story right up to date as, after the relegation traumas of 2008/09, Newcastle United looks forward to a resurgence in their fortunes as they return to the Premiership in 2010.

St Kilda is the most romantic and most romanticised group of islands in Europe. Soaring out of the North Atlantic Ocean like Atlantis come back to life, the islands have captured the imagination of the outside world for hundreds of years. Their inhabitants, Scottish Gaels who lived off the land, the sea and by birdcatching on high and precipitous cliffs, were long considered to be the Noble Savages of the British Isles, living in a state of natural grace.St Kilda: A Peoples History explores and portrays the life of the St Kildans from the Stone Age to 1930, when the remaining 36 islanderswere evacuated to the Scottish mainland. Bestselling author Roger Hutchinson digs deep into the archives to paint a vivid picture of the life and death, work and play of a small, proud and self-sufficient people in the first modern book to chart the history of the most remote islands in Britain.

Early on a Sunday morning in October 1905, in Eriskay, one of the smallest and most isolated of Hebridean islands, a forty-five year old Catholic parish priest died of pleurisy. It was a disease which had claimed many of his parishioners, and Father Allan McDonald undoubtedly contracted it while ministering to his flock. He was mourned all over Scotland. Now, over a century later, his name is still remembered with reverence throughout Catholic Scotland and beyond. Father Allan Maighstir Ailein to his Gaelic-speaking people was a witty, accomplished, intellectual and dedicated man; one of the most renowned of Hebridean personalities and probably the most celebrated Hebridean priest since St Columba.An exceptionally effective and articulate local politician in the southern Outer Hebrides, which at the turn of the twentieth century was amongst the poorest and most neglected in Europe, he was also an accomplished Gaelic poet and writer and one of Scotlands greatest collectors of folklore. His achievements attracted attention and visitors came to his lonely parish from the United States, England and elsewhere. The compelling tale of his remarkable life is also implicitly the story of the north-west Highlands in the late nineteenth century and the Catholic Hebrides in their transcendent prime, where culture overflows with myth and adventure, colour, character and extraordinary unspoilt beauty.

In 1918, as the First World War was drawing to a close, the eminent liberal industrial Lord Leverhulme bought - lock, stock and barrel - the Hebridean island of Lewis. His intention was to revolutionise the lives and environments of its 30,000 people, and those of neighbouring Harris, which he shortly added to his estate. For the next five years a state of conflict reigned in the Hebrides. Island seamen and servicemen returned from the war to discover a new landlord whose declared aim was to uproot their identity as independent crofter/fishermen and turn them into tenured wage-owners. They fought back, and this is the story of that fight. The confrontation resulted in riot and land seizure and imprisonment for the islanders and the ultimate defeat for one of the most powerful men of his day.The Soap Man paints a beguiling portrait of the driven figure of Lord Leverhulme, but also looks for the first time at the infantry of his opposition: the men and women of Lewis and Harris who for long hard years fought the law, their landowner, local business opinion and the entire media, to preserve the settled crofting population of their islands.

An incredible testament to one mans determination The Sunday Herald Calum MacLeod had lived on the northern point of Raasay since his birth in 1911. He tended the Rona lighthouse at the very tip of his little archipelago, until semi-automation in 1967 reduced his responsibilities. So what he decided to do, says his last neighbour, Donald MacLeod, was to build a road out of Arnish in his months off. With a road he hoped new generations of people would return to Arnish and all the north end of Raasay. And so, at the age of 56, Calum MacLeod, the last man left in northern Raasay, set about single-handedly constructing the impossible road. It would become a romantic, quixotic venture, a kind of sculpture; an obsessive work of art so perfect in every gradient, culvert and supporting wall that its creation occupied almost twenty years of his life. In Calums Road Roger Hutchinson recounts the extraordinary story of this remarkable mans devotion to his visionary project.

Walking To America follows and recreates the immense journey, in search of a new life and of a miracle doctor who could cure the blindness of one of their number. The journey was taken largely on foot by a small working-class family unit from England in the 1880s, to Liverpool, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and back again. Written as travelogue and as a history of one of the great neglected subjects - the New World immigrants who returned home to the Old, Walking to America is a personal tale, full of characterisation and human stories, based upon received lore, followed footsteps and careful historical research.An epic, covering thousands of miles and cultures and environments as diverse as the Victorian UK coalfields, the great imperial entrepot of Liverpool, the post-bellum American south, roaring 1880s New Orleans, the stew of the free-for-all Pittsburgh mines, Texas in the wake of the Alamo, the unclaimed Indian Territory of North America and the ultimate frontier of the Petrified Forest in Arizona - all seen through the eyes of a small group of identifiable and sympathetic, real and ordinary men, women and children from the north-east of England. Walking to America is a great and gripping adventure of discovery, hope and loss. And it is all true.

In 1918 Lord Leverhulme bought the island of Lewis with ambitious plans to massively expand its fishing industry and increase its population.In 1923, when his plans had failed, he offered it free of charge to the islanders in two parts. One part, which included impoverished rural areas, was economically unviable. But the other, based around the busy fishing port and administrative centre of Stornoway, was a different matter. In accepting Leverhulmes offer, the hardheaded, churchgoing business class of Stornoway took on the responsibility of making the radical slogan Land for the People a reality. It was an unlikely coupling, but it worked to perfection.The 20th century was a tumultuous time for Lewis. Migration and depopulation were exacerbated by two world wars. Such problems could not be addressed in the lottery of private landownership, but in the stable, democratic government of the Stornoway Trust, town and country alike would weather the storms.Roger Hutchinson tells the story of those storms, and of the people who guided their pioneering estate into the relative security and prosperity of the 21st century. In doing so he paints a vivid portrait of a unique landholding experiment, of Highland land struggle and of the island of Lewis itself.

Early on a wartime winters morning in 1941, the 8,000-ton cargo ship SS Politician ran aground in the beautiful but treacherous seas of Scotlands Outer Hebrides. Among its cargo were 260,000 bottles of whisky destined for the American market a godsend to the local Eriskay islanders whose home-grown supply had dried up due to wartime rationing. News quickly spread and boats came from as far as Lewis, and before local excise officer Charles McColl could intervene, more than 24,000 bottles had been rescued. Villages were raided as bottles of whisky were hidden in the most ingenious ways or simply drunk to get rid of the evidence. Meanwhile, official salvage operations foundered, and in order to pre-vent what the islanders themselves regarded as legitimate salvage, the hull of the Politician was dynamited. The story is well known through Compton Mackenzies bestselling book Whisky Galore and the famous 1949 Ealing comedy of the same name. In this book, acclaimed journalist and Hebridean expert Roger Hutchinson tells the true story of one of the most bizarre events ever to have happened in Scottish waters.