Andrew Greig

Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2014. 'One of the best historical novels of recent years, Greig dusts off the past and presents it with tremendous skill' - Literary Review 'A Triumph of suspense' - Guardian Saltire Award-winning author Andrew Greig reimagines the Border Ballad Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Lea as a dark romance and stirring adventure. Often called the Scottish Romeo & Juliet, here it is re-presented as the source of an equally famed, more complex drama. The Scottish Borderlands, 1590s Harry Langton is called back to the country of his childhood to aide an old friend, Adam Fleming, who believes his life is in danger. He's fallen for Helen of Annandale and, in turn, fallen foul of her rival, Robert Bell: a man as violent as he is influential. In a land where minor lairds vie for power and blood feuds are settled by the sword, Fleming faces a battle to win Helen's hand. Entrusted as guard to the lovers' secret trysts, Langton is thrust into the middle of a dangerous triangle; and discovers Helen is not so chaste as she is fair. But Langton has his own secrets to keep - and other friends to serve. Someone has noticed his connections, and recruited him in their bid to control the hierarchy of the Border families; someone who would use lovers as pawns in a game of war.

A Veritable Account of 'Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Lea' Scrieved by Harry Langton

Fair Helen

I should like you to fish for me at the Loch of the Green Corrie,' MacCaig commanded months before his death. 'Go to Lochinver and ask for a man named Norman MacAskill - if he likes you he may tell you where it is. If you catch a fish, I shall be delighted. If you fail, then looking down from a place in which I do not believe, I shall be most amused.' The quest sounds simple and irresistible, but the loch is as demanding as it is beautiful. In the course of days of outdoor living, meetings, and fishing with friends in the remote hill lochs of far North-West Scotland, the search broadens. The waters of the Green Corrie finally reflect personal memoir, joy and loss, poetry, geology, land ownership in the Highlands, the ambiguous roles of whisky, love and friendship. At the Loch of the Green Corrie is a richly atmospheric narrative, a celebration of losing and recovering oneself in a unique landscape, the consideration of a particular culture, and a homage to a remarkable poet and his world.

At the Loch of the Green Corrie

Student, Trader, Makar, Conduit, Would-Be Lover in Early Days of Our Reform

Rose Nicolson : Memoir of William Fowler of Edinburgh

It is 1940 and Britain is at war with Germany. France has fallen and with Britain the next, and most crucial, country in Hitler's path, the threat shifts to unfamiliar terrain - the skies and an epic battle between the Luftwaffe and the RAF. Lenny is a young and inexperienced fighter pilot stationed in Gravesend. After a meeting at a dance with Stella, a radar operator with a more worldly attitude altogether, he falls in love for the first time. She is his eyes on the ground, he is her protector in the air, and as the battle intensifies so their affair gathers pace in an increasingly uncertain time. Class and national barriers lose their distinction and a heady whirl of parties, drinking and promiscuity distracts from the more serious business at hand. Told in intimate, alternate chapters from the perspectives of Lenny and Stella, That Summer matures into a breathtaking novel; a classic love story and a thrilling picture of life during wartime.

That Summer

An adventure, a poacher's handbook, a romance and a moving story of loss and renewal. When three friends decide to revive the challenge of the legendary poacher John Macnab (to take a grouse, salmon and deer from three Royal Estates), they plan for everything - except an unstoppable young woman with a past and time on her hands. Bold, sassy, impulsive, with a taste for a good time, flirtation and strong drink, Kirsty Fowles very nearly gets the better of everyone.

The Return of John Macnab

An Armchair Climber's Initiation to Glencoe, Mortal Terror and 'The Himalayan Matterhorn'

Summit Fever

A memoir of recovery by a Scottish novelist, poet, and golfer describes how he nearly lost his life before a last-ditch operation, his inspiration to resume playing golf after three decades, and his visits to courses on the Orkney Islands and St. Andrews.

A Journey Into the Heart of Scottish Golf

Preferred Lies

A book about golf that will appeal to both players and non players, by Scottish poet and novelist. Surely golf is a game for posh people, country clubs and networking businessmen, for unfortunate sweaters, politics and trousers? Andrew Greig grew up on the East coast of Scotland, where playing golf is as natural as breathing. He sees the game as the great leveller, and has played on the Old course at St Andrews as well as on the miners' courses of Yorkshire. He writes about the different cultural manifestations of the game, the history, the geography, the different social meanings, as well as the subjective experience, the reflections between shots. He plays alone, with friends and brothers, with ghosts. He is looking for the essence of golf, the pure heart of it, which can be found, Andrew Greig believes, on the free 9 hole course on North Ronaldsay.

A Journey to the Heart of Scottish Golf

Mike Heron

'Mike Heron, as part of the Incredible String Band, changed the way I looked at music. Read it!' Billy Connolly 'Mike Heron's lyrics always sparkled with wit and warmth and his prose is a delightful continuation. The book evokes a smoky, unheated eccentric Edinburgh that was a crucible for so much creativity.' Joe Boyd, author of White Bicycles This singular book offers two harmonising memoirs of music making in the 1960s. Mike Heron for the first time writes vividly of his formative years in dour, Presbyterian Edinburgh. Armed with a love of Buddy Holly, Fats Domino and Hungarian folk music, he plays in school cloakrooms, graduates to rock, discovers the joy of a folk audience, starts writing songs, tries to talk to girls, wishes he was a Beatnik all while training as a reluctant accountant. When asked to join Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer, the Incredible String Band are formed - and their wildly innovative, astounding music became indelibly linked with the latter Sixties. Andrew Greig was a frustrated provincial schoolboy when he heard their songs. It changed everything. Undaunted by a lack of experience and ability, he formed a band in their image. Fate & Ferret populated back-country Fife with Pan, nymphs and Apollo, met the String Band and caught the fish lorry to London to hang around Joe Boyd's Witchseason office, watching at the fringes of the blooming Underground scene. It was forty years later that he and Mike became friends. These entwined stories will delight anyone who has loved the Incredible String Band; and their differing portraits of that hopeful, erratic and stubborn stumble towards the life that is ours will strike a chord with everyone.

Tuning into the 1960s

You Know What You Could Be

'A tale I have for you.' Embra, winter of 1574. Queen Mary has fled Scotland, to raise an army from the French. Her son and heir, Jamie is held under protection in Stirling Castle. John Knox is dead. The people are unmoored and lurching under the uncertain governance of this riven land. It's a deadly time for young student Will Fowler, short of stature, low of birth but mightily ambitious, to make his name. Fowler has found himself where the scorch marks of the martyrs burned at the stake can be seen on every street, where differences in doctrine can prove fatal, where the feuds of great families pull innocents into their bloody realm. There he befriends the austere stick-wielding philosopher Tom Nicolson, son of a fishing family whose sister Rose, untutored, brilliant and exceedingly beautiful exhibits a free-thinking mind that can only bring danger upon her and her admirers. The lowly students are adept at attracting the attentions of the rich and powerful, not least Walter Scott, brave and ruthless heir to Branxholm and Buccleuch, who is set on exploiting the civil wars to further his political and dynastic ambitions. His friendship and patronage will lead Will to the to the very centre of a conspiracy that will determine who will take Scotland's crown. Rose Nicolson is a vivid, passionate and unforgettable novel of this most dramatic period of Scotland's history, told by a character whose rise mirrors the conflicts he narrates, the battles between faith and reason, love and friendship, self-interest and loyalty. It confirms Andrew Greig as one of the great contemporary writers of fiction.

Memoir of William Fowler of Edinburgh: Student, Trader, Makar, Conduit, Would-Be Lover in Early Days of Our Reform

Rose Nicolson

This novel of obsession, passion and death occupies the borderlands between the supernatural novels of Scott, Hogg and Stevenson, and the psychological novels of Rendall and Highsmith. An unknown woman walks out of a border mist with an old satchel over her shoulder. Spied on by the factor of the estate, she enters a cottage that has been locked and empty for more than twenty years since the violent deaths of its previous inhabitants. The woman, who will claim to be the daughter of the dead couple, is carrying a set of antique plates that tell the story of adultery, betrayal and murder implicit in the most famous of the sixteenth century Border Ballads: The Twa Corbies. She believes these plates can tell her the truth both about what happened here in the past and what she is to do now. Who is this powerful woman intent on revenge? It is possible she doesn't know the truth about herself as she works to ensnare the son and heir of the estate, break the factor to her will, seduce the young man's fiancee, and harry the estate owner, Sim Elliot to an early death. This novel's genius is to marry the atmosphere of the Border Ballads - stark, poetic and timeless - with a story at once ancient and contemporary, told through the highly charged and erotic Corbie Plates. Written in prose of extraordinary power and beauty, When They Lay Bare is a gripping, dreamlike narrative, at the heart of which is a burning love story and mystery.

When They Lay Bare

In March 1985, Mal Duff led a new expedition to conquer Everest by the unclimbed north-east ridge.The last attempt by a Chris Bonington team had ended in failure and tragedy - with the deaths of two great climbers, Joe Tasker and Pete Boardman.Everyone knew the risks as well as the excitement of the challenge. In this extraordinary book, Greig chronicles not only the assault on the peak but also the complex inter-relationships of nineteen very different personalities living together.

Everest, the Unclimbed Ridge

Kingdoms of Experience

'Two small, confined communities in which established connections are cut across by shifting allegiances as people come and go: in cold climate as in hot, now as then, love is a complicated, compromising business' Times Literary Supplement A young man leans over the railings of the ocean liner bound for the exotic shores of Penang. It is early in the 1930s and Dr Alexander Mackay is on his way to take up his post running a maternity hospital in the colony. During the voyage he meets two beautiful sisters and the seeds of a scandal are sown. Seventy years later Edward Mackay wakes after a major brain trauma. In the hazy shadowlands of illness, he conjures the figure of his dead father, a man he knew so little about. This near-death experience provokes a move to the wilds of Orkney, where Edward joins a project to harness the tides around the island as a renewable source of energy. But he is pursued by the mysteries surrounding his father's early life and resolves to discover more.

In Another Light

'Two small, confined communities in which established connections are cut across by shifting allegiances as people come and go: in cold climate as in hot, now as then, love is a complicated, compromising business' Times Literary Supplement A young man leans over the railings of the ocean liner bound for the exotic shores of Penang. It is early in the 1930s and Dr Alexander Mackay is on his way to take up his post running a maternity hospital in the colony. During the voyage he meets two beautiful sisters and the seeds of a scandal are sown. Seventy years later Edward Mackay wakes after a major brain trauma. In the hazy shadowlands of illness, he conjures the figure of his dead father, a man he knew so little about. This near-death experience provokes a move to the wilds of Orkney, where Edward joins a project to harness the tides around the island as a renewable source of energy. But in the tight-knit island community passions also run high.

Kathleen Jamie

Set in the almost mythical summer of 1940, A Flame in Your Heart tells the story of the al-too-brief love of a Spitfire pilot and his girl. Written by two young Scottish poets born after the War, A Flame in Your Heart was broadcast on Radio 4. Its 'intense' atmosphere earned praise in The Times: 'The true feel of the period was there.' For Catherine Lockerbie, writing in The Scotsman, it was a 'languid' atmosphere: 'A most beautiful and musically constructed gaze at life and death over the ripening fields and above the strawberries.'

A Flame in Your Heart

The hunt for the crowning stone of the Dalriadic kings, the Stone of Scone, has begun. 'You could easily make a case that Andrew Greig has the greatest range of any living Scottish writer' - Scotsman A motorcyclist with a stolen ring walks into Rothiemurchus Forest and finds a quiet place to die. A woman with an eventful past has signed the Official Secrets Act and gone to Dumfries to forget a man and keep out of trouble. In comfortable Crieff, a retired historian publishes an obscure article on the survival of the Stone of Destiny then has his throat cut. A man with a long blade in a tan holster under his suit, a fondness for bird-watching, and memories of his short-lived Punk band Anger Management, has taken a commission to retrieve an object so valuable and mythic it might not exist. A rugby-playing half-Maori named Leo Nagotoa stands in the sleet by Romanno Bridge in the Scottish Borders, trying to thumb a lift when his Destiny slithers up alongside him. Some of the cast of The Return of John Macnab are back, but the times and the mood have changed. Romanno Bridge is a wintry thriller, an entertainment, a quest and an exploration of contemporary themes of fakes, frauds, copies, and a struggle to find the Real Thing, wherever and whatever it might be.

Romanno Bridge

Memoir of William Fowler of Edinburgh: student, trader, makar, conduit, would-be Lover in early days of our Reform

When poet Andrew Greig was asked by Scottish mountaineer Mal Duff to join his ascent of the Mustagh Tower in the Karakoram Himalayas, he had a poor head for heights and no climbing experience whatsoever. The result is this unique book. Summit Fever has been loved by climbers and literary critics alike for its refreshing candour, wit, insight and the haunting beauty of its writing. Much more than a book about climbing, it celebrates the risk, joy and adventure of being alive.

At the centre of Electric Brae is the crumbling sea-stack of the Old Man of Hoy and the consuming relationship between a young artist, Kim, coldly passionate, talented, secretive, and Jimmy, a North Sea roughneck, engineer and climber. Acclaimed on publication for marking a brave new direction in the course of Scottish fiction, Electric Brae is a story of love and loss, loyalty and betrayal, and fathers and children.

A Modern Romance

Electric Brae

'That Summer' presents a romance set against the backdrop of the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940. A young pilot, Len Westbourne, falls for Stella Gardam, a radio operator. Both know their time together may be short.

Andrew Greig

About

Books

Join the club