Nan Shepherd Biography Launch

Charlotte Peacock signs a copy of Into The Mountain

It's not often that an event in Grantown-on-Spey is so popular that the venue has to be changed at the last minute but that's what happened with the launch event for Charlotte Peacock's biography of Nan Shepherd, Into The Mountain.

Well over a hundred people turned up to listen to Moira Forsyth of Sandstone Press and an author herself interview Charlotte Peacock about how an English woman in Suffolk discovered Nan Shepherd and became so entranced by her that she wanted to write her biography. This was followed by questions on the process of researching and writing the book and on the author's feelings about Nan Shepherd - the last coming across as a mixture of fondness and respect. I felt the author, who described Shepherd as reticent, was somewhat reticent herself at times here. A huge amount of difficult and impressive research has clearly gone into the book.

Following the interview there were questions from the audience - and what questions! There were people there who had met or been taught by Nan Shepherd and had fascinating and revealing stories to tell. Then there was the man who'd bought an old booklet about the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition published in 1907 and discovered Nan Shepherd had written her name in it. Wonderful!

After this really enjoyable and informative evening I now have to finish reading Into The Mountain and write a review. I'm well into the book now and enjoying it greatly. It's well-written and packed with interesting details. I'm going to be rereading The Living Mountain and then reading some of Nan Shepherd's other books for the first time too.

Nan Shepherd Biography Launch In Grantown-On-Spey

The first biography of Nan Shepherd, author of the classic book on the Cairngorms, The Living Mountain, will be launched in the Cairngorms National Park at Grantown Museum on November 7th.

Into the Mountain by Charlotte Peacock is a detailed look at an intensely private woman about whom little was previously known. I have an advance copy and will be reviewing it in The Great Outdoors. Looking through the book and having read the first chapter I think I'm going to really enjoy it. The Living Mountain is one of my favourite outdoor books and I'm looking forward to learning about its author

Tickets for the launch are £5 and are available from The Bookmark in Grantown-on-Spey. I'll be there.

Book Review: John Muir The Scotsman who saved America's wild places by Mary Colwell

There are many books about John Muir plus of course the extensive writings of the man himself. I’ve read most of them but there’s always something new to discover when a new book comes out. The latest, published last year, is one of the few by a British rather than American writer, which distances the content a little from the Muir and the American psyche approach of some US writers. It’s a straightforward biography, concentrating on Muir’s early life and the experiences that led up to him becoming a campaigner for wild places. As most other biographies concentrate on his later activist years this book is useful and humanises Muir – there is a danger of him being seen as an iconic other-worldly figure speaking from on high - by detailing his upbringing and the people who influenced him. Mary Colwell writes well and the book is easy to read whilst packed with information.

This isn't a critical book and it doesn’t go into much detail let alone analysis of Muir’s beliefs and writings. I think it makes a good companion volume to Michael P. Cohen’s The Pathless Way: John Muir and American Wilderness which does go deeply into Muir’s intellectual approach and how it developed and is, in my opinion, the best book on John Muir.

There are more of my thoughts on John Muir in this post from last year.