Booklets
During the first thirty years and more of the Society’s existence, it published a range of attractive booklets on aspects of West Highland history.
UK based buyers: Please browse the list of publications below, and add to your cart any that you would like to purchase. When you are ready you may proceed to the checkout page to complete your order. Postage to an address anywhere in the UK is included in the price.
Non-UK based buyers: Please browse the list of publications below, and e-mail our secretary with a list of the booklets you would like to purchase, and we’ll get back to you with a price (which will include postage costs to your destination).
If you wish to purchase issues of our popular series West Highland Notes & Queries, please see the ‘Highland Notes & Queries’ section of this website.
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| Cover | About the book | Add to basket | |
|---|---|---|---|
 | The Life and Troubled Times of Sir Donald Campbell of Ardnamurchan by Alastair Campbell of Airds, Unicorn Pursuivant (1970) This account of his ancestor, who is said to have been ‘Fleshed in Blood from his Verie Infancie’, is a daunting task even for Airds, who points out that although he is only a descendant through the female line, Sir Donald made Airds’s male ancestor his heir and was thus the founder of the fortunes of his branch of Clan Campbell. Sir Donald, an illegitimate son of Campbell of Cawdor, rose to be the confidant of two successive chiefs of his clan and one of the most powerful leaders of Clan Campbell at the height of the civil wars of the seventeenth century. | Price £7.50 | |
 | The Founding of Tobermory by Jean Munro (1976) The development of Tobermory, begun in 1786, was one of the first initiatives of ‘The British Society for Extending the Fisheries and Improving the Sea Coasts of this Kingdom’. The Society aimed to raise money for buying land to lease to fishermen and for building storehouses, piers and sheds to encourage settlements. The choice of Tobermory as one of its first projects was an obvious one. The bay sheltered by Calve Island was already a popular anchorage for as many as sixty or seventy vessels at a time sailing from the Clyde, Campbeltown and even the west of England, as much of the trade between Bristol and the Baltic, especially during war with France, passed through the Sound of Mull. | Price £7.50 | |
 | Tiree Bards and their Bardachd: the Poets in a Hebridean Community by Eric Cregeen & Donald W. Mackenzie (1978) The bards of Tiree deserve a place in the understanding of the Western Isles if only because of the commanding influence which they exercised on life and society. Most of the poetry discussed in this booklet was composed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As the authors point out: ‘oral transmission has ceased to operate with any vigour …Yet the “quick vein of poesy” still exists in the island and among its emigrants, and it is perhaps only awaiting a rekindling of interest in the language and the tradition to flourish once again’ | Price £7.50 | |
 | The Raising of the 79th Highlanders by Loraine Maclean of Dochgarroch (1980) The 79th Highlanders, or Cameron Highlanders, were one of the Highland regiments raised in 1793 for the war with France. Unlike other Highland regiments, which were raised by noble landlords or a clan chief, its ‘Colonel and Sole Founder’ Alan Cameron of Erracht was neither; as the author, who was his great, great, great, granddaughter, proudly writes, he was a ‘private gentleman’ who ‘brought to the ranks of the British Army more men than any other who, like himself, was commissioned to raise regiments’. | Price £7.50 | |
 | Hebridean Decade: Mull, Coll & Tiree 1761-1771 by Nicholas Maclean-Bristol (1982) Highland lairds in the late eighteenth century have been accused of deserting their people, their race and their culture and becoming mere landlords in the Southern mould. Our author argues the opposite. He takes the example of three islands in examining the pressures facing them as the population of their islands soared dramatically, whilst the land to support them did not. He draws particular attention to the young Maclean of Coll who, to quote James Boswell, was determined ‘to improve his father’s lands without hurting the people or losing the ancient Highland fashions’. | Price £7.50 | |
 | Taming the Rough Bounds – Knoydart 1745-1784 by R.W. Munro (1984) Knoydart is the peninsula between Skye and the waters of Loch Nevis and Loch Hourn. It consists of 85 square miles of some of the roughest country to be found in Scotland. It was once part of the vast island and mainland territories of the descendants of Somerled, who came to hold their land from the Scottish crown in the thirteenth century. Part of Knoydart formed the disjointed estate of Barrisdale, whose notorious proprietor was forfeited after the Jacobite Rising of 1745-46. It was not returned to the family which had owned it until 1784. This study, by one of the most knowledgeable Highland historians of his generation, examines what it was like and how its people fared during the period under Government control. | Price £7.50 | |
 | Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair: The Ardnamurchan Years by Ronald Black (1986) To English speakers, he is Alexander MacDonald. To a Macdonald critic, he was a poet second to none that Great Britain has produced. But to Gaelic speakers, he was, is, and always will be simply Alasdair, mac Mhaighstir Alasdair: ‘Alexander, the son of Master Alexander’. To most people little else is known of this literary colossus save that he was a schoolmaster in Ardnamurchan from at least 1729 until 1745, and that he took part in the rising of ’45 as a captain in the Clanaranald regiment. In what has become a fundamental work in an ever-growing list of publications about this great Scottish poet, Ronald Black charts his life to the moment he abandons his school to join Prince Charles’s army. | Price £7.50 | |
 | Iona Through the Ages, 2nd Edition by Alan Macquarrie & E. Mairi MacArthur (1992) The authors outline the history of the Hebridean island of Iona from the time of its settlement from Ireland in the sixth century AD to the era of its sale to the Scottish nation in 1979. Although it concentrates on the time of Saint Columba and his successors, it gives space to the less well-known story of the medieval monastery and the rivalry of Campbells and Macleans before and after the Reformation. It also draws particular attention to the Latin poet Roderick Maclean, bishop of the Isles and commendator of Iona, who died in 1553. The final six pages focus on the secular history of Iona, outlining changes to landholding, work and worship from the 16th to the late 20th centuries. | Price £7.50 | |
 | The Kirk on the Hill: The Story of the Church in the Isle of Coll AD 550-2007 by Nicholas Maclean-Bristol (2007) This booklet was written to celebrate the centenary of the present Parish Church. It tells the story of the church on the island from the earliest recorded times to 2007, through the Reformation when the old church at Kilunaig was abandoned, the ‘Glorious Revolution’ when the Episcopal regime was overthrown, the triumph of Presbyterianism, the Disruption in 1843 and the building of new Parish Church at Arinagour, led by the untiring efforts of the Reverend Dugald MacEachern. | Price £7.50 |
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Founded in 1972, the Society’s aims are to encourage research into the history of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland and to make this research available to the general public.
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