{"title":"The Naomi Mitchison Library","description":"\u003cp\u003eRediscover the brilliance of Naomi Mitchison, a pioneering Scottish writer. From historical fiction to speculative tales, this collection showcases her bold imagination and progressive spirit. Start your Mitchison journey here.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"early-in-orcadia-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210591","title":"Early in Orcadia","description":"Early in Orcadia was first published in 1987, and consists of five stories, set hundreds of years apart in time and dealing with different characters, but connected by their location in a particular corner of Orkney during the period known as the Stone Age. Mitchison links them formally by interpolating passages of fact and explanation between the fictional episodes, and by speculating in her own voice about what happened in prehistory, as far as it can be known from archaeological research, and how it fits in with the world of today. The slightly awkward jumps from one story to the next indicate that the development of the human race was not a completely smooth and seamless process. There must have been significant moments when a highly important discovery or invention took place. The structure of the book is demonstrating its theme - that there are sudden advances but just one story running from the earliest times to the present day, and it is the story of humankind. From the Introduction.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50401439351057,"sku":"CIN1849210594VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51111990886673,"sku":"NIN9781849210591","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210594.jpg?v=1751123420"},{"product_id":"memoirs-of-a-spacewoman-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210355","title":"Memoirs of a Spacewoman","description":"Naomi Mitchison, daughter of a distinguished scientist, sister of geneticist J B S Haldane, was always interested in the sciences, especially genetics. Her novels did not tend to demonstrate this, and she did not publish a Science Fiction novel until almost forty years into her fiction-writing career. Isobel Murray's Introduction here argues that it is by no means 'pure' Science Fiction: the success of the novel depends not only on the extraordinarily variety of life forms its heroine encounters and attempts to communicate with on different worlds: she is also a very credible human, or Terran, with recognisibly human emotions and a dramatic emotional life. This novel works effectively for readers who usually eschew the genre and prefer more traditional narratives. Explorers like Mary are an elite class who consider curiosity to be Terrans' supreme gift, and in the novel she more than once takes risks that may destroy her life. Her voice, as she records her adventures and experiments, is individual, attractive and memorable. Isobel Murray is Emeritus Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50933396013329,"sku":"GOR008364166","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053607485713,"sku":"NIN9781849210355","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51879687029009,"sku":"CIN1849210357VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210357.jpg?v=1751217130"},{"product_id":"travel-light-with-the-varangs-saga-book-naomi-mitchison-9781904999973","title":"Travel Light, with the Varangs' Saga","description":"In her novels, Naomi Mitchison frequently tackled serious issues, war and peace, conflicts of loyalties, freedom and slavery, and of course feminism. But a very few times she allowed her work to be primarily a question of fun, or play. In Travel Light (1952) she wrote a charming fairy tale in which a king's daughter was saved from death as a baby, then successively lived with bears and dragons. It is set in a Never Land which is nonetheless gently Norse, where Odin, the All-Father, 'made men in order to amuse himself'. In the course of her journey, Halla becomes perhaps the most individual Valkyrie in literature. This edition also contains The Varangs' Saga, a previously unpublished holiday entertainment from 1926, where most of the fun comes from describing young British couples with children on a group holiday in France, but describing them in the manner of an Old Norse saga. Mitchison wrote: 'Play is absolutely necessary to everyone: we are the kind of animal that plays.'","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50987311661329,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50987311923473,"sku":"GOR007251280","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1904999972.jpg?v=1751218014"},{"product_id":"vienna-diary-1934-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210218","title":"Vienna Diary 1934","description":"In this day-by-day diary Mitchison tells us what she saw, did and felt: and the whole forms at once what is called a \"human document\" of rare poignancy and dramatic interest, and a book of some historical importance. In her words: \"Very few people have both money and leisure, and the will, to do this. I've got this because of my profession. I rang up V[ictor] G[ollancz] on Monday evening, and asked if he'd give me an advance on a, very hypothetical, book about it. He said he would, and I'm going on that. I couldn't have otherwise. Simply as an observer I shall be some use; it's the one thing I'm sure I can do well, though I don't think I'm a good analyser. What I should like to do is to write a full diary every day, as truthful as it can possibly be. I shall type it on both sides of the sheet, so that it will fold small, and shall try and leave a duplicate with somebody; if I get my copy through, they can destroy theirs. But perhaps the whole thing is moonshine; perhaps there won't be anything to write down! If so, looking back on this afternoon from whenever it is in the future, I shall see myself looking a perfect fool. However, that won't be the first time ! Anyway, for what it's worth. I feel all thrilled now, screwed up like a child going to play Indians. Perhaps I shall be more grown-up by the end of it.\"","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51053556891921,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053559578897,"sku":"NIN9781849210218","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210217.jpg?v=1750768044"},{"product_id":"cloud-cuckoo-land-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210348","title":"Cloud Cuckoo Land","description":"Ancient Greek history and politics fascinated Naomi Mitchison, and in particular the long antagonism or rivalry of Athens and Sparta. In this, her second novel, she investigates the two city states through Alxenor, a young man from the tiny island of Poieessa, which changes hands as the balance of power changes. He does not choose his loyalty in a theoretical way, but as he experiences rough treatment from both. By Alxenor's day, Athens had declined from the golden age of Perikles, and the city was prone to bully smaller entities, but he is forced to recognise the much worse reality of Spartan civilisation, with iron discipline, cruelty and loss of individuality. Eventually, Mitchison came to see even the twentieth century in terms of struggles between Athens and Sparta, democracy and totalitarianism. Isobel Murray is Emeritus Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053571571985,"sku":"NIN9781849210348","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51391513297169,"sku":"GOR009484223","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210349.jpg?v=1750834182"},{"product_id":"small-talk-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210201","title":"Small Talk ...","description":"Small Talk. avoids the temptation of a full-blown 'My Life and Times' type of autobiography and presents instead a recreation of childhood years in Oxford before the First World War - a child's-eye view of the family, the friends, the servants, the pets and the holidays in Scotland and Cornwall that made up that childhood. It is as much concerned with her own development as an amateur field botanist as with the occasions when the adult world intruded, when 'Uncle Richard' (Lord Haldane) might lead the younger members of the family out to the wash-house to watch the messy business of heating wax to take the impression of the Great Seal of England. If Lord Baden-Powell and Andrew Lang appear briefly, it is less as famous figures of the period, but rather as irritating visitors with passions either for tying knots or talking about fairies who interrupted the pleasures of raiding the kitchen garden for fruit, or reading at night behind the curtains of the drawing-room. There are glimpses of her reactions to scientific theories, as they reached her in repercussions from her father's work, and to the High Tory politics of her formidable mother. Small Talk. is a precise, vivid picture of the people and manners of a world which has receded so rapidly that it is now further from the experience of people today as the other side of the moon. In another sense, though, it is a timeless picture of childhood itself. The introductory essay by Ali Smith The Woman From The Big House was first first published in Chapman 50.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51053577011473,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053579731217,"sku":"NIN9781849210201","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210209.jpg?v=1751027719"},{"product_id":"behold-your-king-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210317","title":"Behold Your King","description":"Retells in realistic terms and colloquial dialogue the story of the passion and death of Jesus, hour by hour, as it unfolds over the twenty-four hours of Good Friday.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053620003089,"sku":"NIN9781849210317","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51362627649809,"sku":"GOR014240702","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210314.jpg?v=1750995915"},{"product_id":"we-have-been-warned-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210263","title":"We Have Been Warned","description":"This is Naomi Mitchison's least successful novel, and new readers should not start here! It is shaped by her own life and fears in her own experience in 1931, and is the first of her novels and stories not to have a historical setting. Mitchison was appalled by the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy, and wanted to warn the world. She was rather dismayed by the results of the Russian Revolution, of which she had once had great hopes. She also poured all her most personal feelings into the novel, and covered a plethora of subjects - not only free love, abortion and rape, but the unmentionable discussion of marital infidelity, trouser buttons and rubber goods. Her own love life was so complex that she divided it between two sisters in the novel! It spent two years being censored by the publisher while she championed it, but it was crowded, over-written, hectic and unbalanced. It is poor, but Mitchison-lovers will find it impossible to put down. Isobel Murray is Emeritus Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053634617617,"sku":"NIN9781849210263","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51777241776401,"sku":"GOR011634190","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210268.jpg?v=1751412586"},{"product_id":"delicate-fire-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210379","title":"The Delicate Fire","description":"The Delicate Fire  illustrates a fundamental change in Naomi Mitchison's work.  The early stories are set in ancient Greece, like many before them. But here Mitchison effectively says farewell to that setting with accounts of the worlds of Sappho and 'Lovely Mantinea'. By the end, she seems wholly turned to the twentieth century - a new departure for her - tackling subjects such as the General Strike of 1926 and contemporaneous Hunger marches, and battles against censorship. This shift marks her politicisation, her growing fear of fascism, but more personally also the end of her long affair with a distinguished scholar of the ancient world. She turns away from Greece for good. She turns to the present, and will spend the thirties warning against fascism. Isobel Murray is Emeritus Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51053647397137,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053649592593,"sku":"NIN9781849210379","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210373.jpg?v=1751314079"},{"product_id":"life-for-africa-book-mitchison-naomi-9781849212144","title":"A Life for Africa","description":"Naomi Mitchison's account of the life and work of the Afrikaner lawyer and political activist Bram Fischer (1908-1975) was first published in 1973, two years before his death. She writes from the perspective of her own experience - gained during regular visits and a commitment to Southern Africa, particularly Botswana, from the 1960s onwards - to present the key elements and actors in the story of the country and the peoples of South Africa. Above all, of Bram Fischer, who gave up a life of privilege to oppose, professionally and underground, the Government's 'monstrous policy' of apartheid.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51053836239121,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053839221009,"sku":"NIN9781849212144","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849212147.jpg?v=1750963241"},{"product_id":"to-the-chapel-perilous-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849212212","title":"To the Chapel Perilous","description":"In his 1999 Introduction to the first reprint of this novel from 1955 - a year of the Cold War that began with the Baghdad Pact and ended with the official start of the Vietnam War - Raymond H. Thompson described Naomi Mitchison's contribution to the Arthurian tradition as 'not only a comic masterpiece, but a guidebook into spiritual growth'. She achieves this by drawing on her own experience as a journalist to explore the fantastic events surrounding King Arthur and the Holy Grail through the eyes of two young reporters - on competing newspapers, with mid-twentieth century values and skills - as they follow the breaking stories and conflicting accounts of the grail quest. Michael Amey, who writes the Introduction to this new edition, points out that her approach was not universally liked by her fellow writers. Tolkien for one objected to her introduction of 'a curious and disturbing blend' of journalists and 'dwarfs with photographic apparatus'. Amey himself argues that To the Chapel Perilous is in name and fact a 'call to adventure' in which Mitchison sets out 'to tell a story of how stories are told'.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053862519057,"sku":"NIN9781849212212","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53069061619985,"sku":"GOR014726199","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/184921221X.jpg?v=1751314083"},{"product_id":"friends-and-kindred-book-louisa-kathleen-haldane-9781904999997","title":"Friends and Kindred","description":"Louisa 'Maya' Haldane was the widow of physiologist John Scott Haldane, and the mother of J. B. S. Haldane and Naomi Mitchison. In these memoirs she gives a remarkably detailed account of the life of the well-to-do in the second half of the nineteenth century - in Ireland, Scotland and the Con-tinental spas as well as in England - as seen through the eyes of a growing girl and an independently-minded young woman. The story continues up to the time of the First World War, with chapters focusing on particular topics: her education, her husband's early career, the position of servants in town and country, a young lady's wardrobe. We are reminded graphically of the high feeling that ran in the country during the Boer War, Queen Victoria's Jubilees and her funeral, all of which are still vivid in Mrs Haldane's memory. This fascinating material is informed and enlivened by a certain dry wit, nowhere more telling than in personal anecdote: particularly in the account of her father's experi-ences when, during a sea voyage for his health - always precarious through excessive perusal of medical literature - he unexpectedly found himself obliged to take over the duties of British Consul in Samoa. The author's objective irony, together with her remarkably clear and detailed memory for people and places, helps to re-create an ambience and moral climate of a now remote era.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51053959315729,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053963772177,"sku":"NIN9781904999997","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1904999999.jpg?v=1751092801"},{"product_id":"beyond-this-limit-book-naomi-mitchison-9781904999850","title":"Beyond This Limit","description":"Naomi Mitchison published her first novel, The Conquered, in 1923. In her more than seventy succeeding books she has produced an extraordinary out-put, especially in the novel and the short story. This selection of the shorter fiction is intended to illustrate her range and achievement over more than fifty years. Beyond This Limit was the result of a unique co-operative partnership with illustrator Wyndham Lewis, and story and pictures are here first reproduced from the limited edition of 1935. The other contents range from a story of the cave painters of Lascaux, through Mitchison's major fictional preoccupations, ancient Greece, Scotland, Africa, to a story of post-holocaust Scotland first published in 1982. Central to all of them is a very individual intelligence constantly examining the politics of power in human relationships, including sexual ones. Edited with an Introduction by Isobel Murray, Emeritus Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51053982941457,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053985792273,"sku":"NIN9781904999850","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1904999859.jpg?v=1751218013"},{"product_id":"bull-calves-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210256","title":"The Bull Calves","description":"The Bull Calves was researched and written during the Second World War. This is very surprising, as Naomi Mitchison was tremendously busy at her home in Carradale, Kintyre, keeping open house for evacuees and refugees, running the farm and driving the tractor, organising the local Labour Party, and writing and producing for the dramatic society - and so on. She also wrote a diary for Mass Observation, of more than a million words. But she had to take her time with the novel and plan it more carefully than she usually had time for. She wanted to give Scotland and the world a message, of the need for peace and working together after a bitter war. She chose to write about the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745, and set her novel at Gleneagles, on the Highland line, with her characters her own ancestors. A very personal prefatory poem indicates that the whole operation was very close to her heart, and the ensuing novel is her best historical novel, and still topical today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51054589509905,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51054592524561,"sku":"NIN9781849210256","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51544546115857,"sku":"GOR008684886","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/B09L77HD68.jpg?v=1751217129"},{"product_id":"conquered-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210324","title":"The Conquered","description":"The Conquered was young Naomi Mitchison's first novel, published in 1923, just five years after the end of the First World War, in 1918. Mitchison chose to write about wars, but about historic ones, Julius Caesar's bloody and gradual conquest of Gaul. Instead of Caesar's serene lists of victories and setbacks, we have the impact of these wars on her Gallic hero Meromic. Profound and traumatic. From being heir to a proud tribe, the Veneti, he becomes by turns a slave, a revenge killer, a wanted man - and a slave again, with a severed right hand, a man looking to end it all. But his life was remediably complicated by his loyalty to and affection for Titus Barrus, the Roman who bought him, and treated him as man, not brute. His conflicts of loyalties are powerfully central. Mitchison was conscious that after the Great War there was still fighting in Ireland. Just as her natural and immediate sympathies were for the Gauls under Vercingetorix fighting the Roman giant, we are shown her own contemporary sympathies were with the Irish against the might of the British Empire. With an Introduction by Isobel Murray.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51054597931281,"sku":"NIN9781849210324","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210322.jpg?v=1750995915"},{"product_id":"oath-takers-and-sea-green-ribbons-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210249","title":"The Oath-Takers, and Sea-Green Ribbons","description":"'We story-tellers have a delightful time playing with history, perhaps finding something fascinating, perhaps making dreadful mistakes.'  Here, in The Oath-Takers, the 'central maypole round which the people ... must swing and fall' is Charlemagne, and one of 'the people' a young man who makes his journey to manhood in a world of feudalism and a powerful Church. In the second short novel, Sea-Green Ribbons, the reader enters the political, religious and social tumult of the English Civil War through the story and choices of a young woman, Sarah, from a radical Leveller family in London.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51109972312337,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51109973950737,"sku":"NIN9781849210249","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210241.jpg?v=1751314078"},{"product_id":"other-people-s-worlds-and-mucking-around-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849212069","title":"Other People's Worlds, and Mucking Around","description":"In 1957, Naomi Mitchison enjoyed two months 'of observation and thought' as she travelled in parts of postcolonial West Africa. She was the guest of friends new and old and, in Ghana, stayed at the Press Hotel, in her then role as a correspondent with The Manchester Guardian. Her reflections are presented in chapters - on social bars and classes, language, words, history, religion, morals, education, politics, clothes, art and music - as she pulls together her view of the ways in which 'Other People's Worlds', at different stages of development, impact on one another. 'Perhaps', she concludes, 'it is really everyone's world'.  Fasten your seat belts, for the delights of Naomi Mitchison's 1981 overview of her travel writing from the 1920s onwards. Drawn from her writings as an author, journalist, letter writer and diarist 'Mucking Around. Five Continents over Fifty Years' is the memoir of an enthusiastic traveller and outspoken observer of 'other countries' - that is, countries across the world as visited from Scotland. The accounts are divided into four sections or bearings: South-West-by-North, West-by-East, East-by-South-East and South.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51111130202385,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51111132594449,"sku":"NIN9781849212069","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849212066.jpg?v=1750725380"},{"product_id":"five-men-and-a-swan-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210409","title":"Five Men and a Swan","description":"This collection, which Naomi Mitchison published in 1957, is recognisably a 'Carradale book', containing as it does vivid and realistic stories and poems of the landscape and the people. Mitchison had moved to the village in Kintyre, on the west coast of Scotland, some twenty years before and was still much involved in its affairs, supporting the fishing fleet and running her own small farm. Yet, as Moira Burgess suggests in her Introduction to this new edition, these thirteen stories and fourteen interspersed short poems and songs do not make a straightforward, celebratory, collection. The first five stories have historical settings in Caithness and Orkney, with the rest set in the contemporary West Highlands - some drawing on Highland myth and legend. And then, as Burgess writes, 'tucked modestly and apparently at random' is 'Five Men and a Swan' - 'a fine story, probably her best, a classic of Scottish literature'. Mitchison's years of intense involvement with the community were in fact drawing to an end. From the early 1960s onwards, she applied her energy and enthusiasm to the cause of the Bakgatla tribe in the newly independent country of Botswana. Her writing would turn to African themes, and, in 'a marvellous late flourish', to science fiction. Seen in this light, the book may be not so much a celebration as a coda to Mitchison's Carradale years.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51120525869329,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51120528556305,"sku":"NIN9781849210409","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210403.jpg?v=1750899667"},{"product_id":"essays-and-journalism-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210119","title":"Essays and Journalism","description":"The writing career of Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999) stretched over some seventy years, encompassing at least seventy works of fiction as well as non-fiction, poetry and plays. Almost unknown, however, is the mass of shorter prose pieces - journalism, essays, polemics, reminiscences - which Mitchison produced during her long career. There are many hundreds of these pieces, covering a tremendously wide range of topics, an untapped resource both in Mitchison biography and in the wider field of social history. Volume 2 in the seven-volume edition of Naomi Mitchison's Essays and Journalism is devoted to her writing about the West Highland village of Carradale, to which she moved in the late 1930s and where she lived for over sixty years. She writes about many aspects of Carradale: her farm, the local fishing industry, the big garden which was particularly dear to her heart, and 'the village and the Big House'. A long essay, 'Rural Reconstruction', never reprinted before, is a snapshot of Carradale in the 1940s and a spirited presentation of Mitchison's dreams for its future. These digressive, charming, combative pieces show both the practical and the thoughtful sides of her writing, often to touching effect: she cared deeply for Carradale and its people, and the book is a wonderful introduction to a beautiful part of Scotland and a major writer.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51139125608721,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51139126264081,"sku":"GOR008630069","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/184921011X.jpg?v=1750866849"},{"product_id":"cleopatra-s-people-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210331","title":"Cleopatra's People","description":"Eschewing Plutarch and Shakespeare's tale of Mark Antony's fatal romance, Naomi Mitchison's 'Cleopatra's People' starts with the next generation, with the children of the Queen and of Charmian, one of her 'mates'. The impact of Cleopatra's life and personality is reflected through them, and their efforts to follow in her wake.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51153473995025,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51153474715921,"sku":"NIN9781849210331","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210330.jpg?v=1750866850"},{"product_id":"anna-comnena-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210294","title":"Anna Comnena","description":"Anna Comnena is described as the first female historian, the author of her father's celebratory biography. She was an educated princess in eleventh-century Constantinople, the daughter of the Emperor Alexius. She was expected to succeed him, and raised as heir, but her hopes were dashed by the birth of a younger brother. In what is over-modestly described as a biography, Naomi Mitchison combines her story with that of her father, and the whole civilisation of the Eastern Empire, indeed the whole known world of the time. The Eastern Empire is seen as a necessary bulwark between a young and promising Europe and the perils of Islam and wild tribes in Asia. Mitchison also warns her readership of the perils of a dead civilisation, and writing in 1928 she poses a challenge to the direction of Europe in these perilous postwar years. Thwarted ambition at last drove Anna to attempt to kill her brother, who, says Mitchison, went on to be one of the best of Emperors. Isobel Murray is Emeritus Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51391513329937,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51391513461009,"sku":"GOR014252292","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52755388137745,"sku":"NIN9781849210294","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210292.jpg?v=1751027719"},{"product_id":"big-house-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210430","title":"The Big House","description":"The Big House is a children's book with much to say to adult readers. On one level it is a charming and absorbing fantasy novel with a fairy hill, a Brounie and an enchanted piper all drawn from Celtic myth and legend, set in a West Highland village which is clearly Carradale in Kintyre, Naomi Mitchison's home for many years. On another level it is an examination of the social relationships in such a village at the time (it was first published in 1950), and this too is rooted in Mitchison's Carradale life. Su from the Big House and Winkie the fisherman's son have the same ancestry and their time-travel adventures show that their respective positions have changed back and forth over the years. Why should there be any difference between them now? Moira Burgess is a novelist, short story writer and literary historian who lives in Glasgow, but was brought up in Kintyre, the setting of The Big House. She is the author of Mitchison's Ghosts (Humming Earth, 2008), on supernatural and mythical elements in the writing of Naomi Mitchison, and is working on a collected edition of Mitchison's essays and journalism to be published in several volumes by Kennedy \u0026amp; Boyd.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51444195852561,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51444195983633,"sku":"GOR014283684","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52755386171665,"sku":"NIN9781849210430","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849210438.jpg?v=1750899668"},{"product_id":"solution-three-book-naomi-mitchison-9781849210362","title":"Solution Three","description":"In her post nuclear Holocaust world, overpopulation and feeding the people are the major problems. The third attempted Solution involves conditioned homosexual love for all, and the only babies born are clones of the best two individuals, Her and Him, born to favoured Clone Mums. Some'Professorial' scientists have refused to abandon marriage and heterosexual reproduction, and are an embarrassment. They have developed powerful new strains of cereals to feed the world, but ominous signs of failure and new diseases occur. Has this new world done enough to preserve gene pools in both humans and foodstuffs? Mitchison was one of the first to raise the potential problems of GM crops: her novel remains urgent, thoughtful and relevant in today's world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51878936838417,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51878936903953,"sku":"GOR008037392","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781849210362.jpg?v=1754385148"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/the-naomi-mitchison-library-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}