My first real review from Roger Hutchinson in the Scotsman. A very thoughtful piece from another man who – like John Lorne Campbell – adopted the Hebrides as his home.
Roger brings out some points which I had overlooked myself (Compton Mackenzie’s patrician prejudices, for example), but I am surprised he did not comment on landownership, which was a common thread in the West Highland Free Press in the years when Roger edited it. John Campbell was unusual in being a laird who tried (unsuccessfully) to break up his estate into smaller farms and supported crofting as a means of changing the culture as well as the ownership of the Highlands and Islands. Rather than extinguishing crofts on his land – which many landowners tried to do – he created new ones.