History – Vee Walker writes…

To Swona – June 2026

For bigger birthdays, I like to buck the trend, dodging the horrific ‘surprise’ party bullet in favour of a small adventure, often alone, or at least away from my nearest and dearest.

I have worked in Iceland (50), climbed Ben Wyvis (55) and explored Bennachie and the archaeology/history of Aberdeenshire (mid-Lockdown, 60).

This time it turned out to be another island which beckoned.

I was already in Orkney for the magnificent 50th Anniversary St Magnus Festival (well done Alasdair Nicolson and team) but I found I wanted a wilder moment to mark turning 65.

John Cordock of OrcaVentures, skipper of the well-appointed 12-passenger tour vessel Boy Ryan, offers fabulous wildlife cruises (which happen most days, sea conditions permitting) – but – given that we have our own trips to see bottlenose dolphins and often whales here in the coastal waters around the Black Isle, I was hoping for something a wee bit more challenging.

It was then I noticed John was offering a longer trip (though trip is not really the right word for this adventure!) – a longer exploration of the remote island of Swona. It is costly, but this is a riskier, more complicated exercise than the bog standard oh look, a seal of a wildlife tour. Plus a large chunk of the fee goes to support the hard work of the Swona Heritage Group (see link at end), and as I was to discover that is money very well spent. And if sea conditions prevent the trip from happening, then you are refunded in full.

I am so glad I went.

If you have ever taken the Orkney ferry from Gills Bay in Caithness to St Margaret’s Hope in Orkney, you’ll have passed two islands nearer the mainland than the archipeligo en route – Stroma, dotted with houses, which is still farmed – and then wilder Swona, with only scattered buildings, which now has no permanent residents other than its herd of extraordinary wild cattle. These were turned loose when their last owners, siblings James and Violet Rosie, left the island for medical reasons, intending to return but never doing so, thus bringing to an end the era of permanent human habitation on Swona.

I had read about the evolution back to feral of the Swona cattle in Cal Flyn’s remarkable collection of essays Islands of Abandonment (2021) but I never imagined I could travel there to see them for myself.

And I so nearly didn’t. The booking conditions require a signed disclaimer, and (rightly) warn off anyone with mobility issues. If you are prone to tripping or stumbling, this may not be the island for you. Aging is a cruelly insidious process, however, and if I had listened to my own inner demons – it might be too much for you… you’ll be the oldest… the slowest… you’ll spoil it for everyone else – I would have bottled it. I have my daughters to thank for encouraging me, even paying half the cost ❤.

There aren’t many trips to Swona so if you get the chance, grab it! The tides and the weather have to be exactly right. Our midsummer trip left at 13.00 and arrived back about 20.15, so later than scheduled, for reasons I will explain. I wore a dryrobe over jeans and a fleece, then tossed up over wellies or walking boots. The latter won, and I took a thumbstick too, both good calls.

As Boy Ryan bobbed across a remarkably calm and increasingly sunny Pentland Firth (thanks for the pic Eleanor), it became obvious that six of the passengers were Orcadians, several of whom knew each other, and a few of whom had strong connections to the island already. Swona is sometimes known as Orkney’s St Kilda due to its dicey seas, isolation and state of abandonment, so clearly it has a special place in the hearts and minds of local people and is not ‘just for the tourists’. Other than a friendly South African lady (wearing unfortunate footwear about which more later) who was lending John a hand in the onboard catering front, I was the only outsider. I found I felt a wee bit shy, like a new girl in the classroom.

As we approached Swona, John told us there were just two possible places to land a tender on the island (we had been towing a small orange dinghy which was now brought alongside).

Getting onboard this was quite interesting (an undignified scrabble over shipside rails then a drop into the tender while hanging on to a vertical handrail) but with John keeping me right I managed it fine. We were lucky and landed without incident in the preferred northwest inlet known as The Haven, closest to the greatest concentration of former island homes.

The buildings on Swona are not subsistence-farming blackhoose ruins, they are solid, stolid and often two-storey houses, several still in a reasonable state of repair (with the Heritage Group determined to improve on this). Others are being allowed to become roofless winter shelters for the wild cattle.

Before the collapse of the fishing which sustained its wealth, this was a thriving island community with modern farm machinery and even its own school. Swona folk lived off fishing, farming and anything salvaged from the many shipwrecks around the coast. The northeast part was the most densely inhabited.

It was really sunny by the time I landed and I was already regretting the hot dryrobe, so Lindsay – retired firefighter, diver, self-confessed Swona addict and our expert guide for the day – allowed some of us to leave surplus kit in Norhead Cottage.

This was in good repair with a surprising amount of timber inside – some bought and brought to Swona no doubt, but some salvaged shipwreck timber too. This is used as a base by visiting specialist groups (Gordonstoun School regularly brings field trips to Swona) so had camp chairs and a lived-in feel, as well as a photograph of the late Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in their glamorous youth, setting the time-stands-still tone of the place.

We walked onwards and upwards, Lindsay wisely leading us up the steepest terrain while we were still fresh. Carpets of orchids (mainly northern marsh), ragged robin and cats-ear had me gasping, with here and there a bright blue dab of late vernal squill, a tiny flowering bulb related to our garden scylla. I was able to be useful in tentative identification of most species we found, including the fluffy seeds of creeping willow – a ground-level shrub, if not an actual Swonan tree.

I wondered if a small patch of unexpected primroses found in the cliff edge could be a deliberate planting as they looked so outbof place.

We admired the fearsome gloup, a collapsed sea cave, now a nesting place for shags. I read later that this was also the perfect hiding place for the island’s illicit whisky still.

This is more a shelfy/ledgy coastline than a cliffy one but plenty of seabirds were scolding us from nests or roosts in the Caithness flag nooks and crannies, notably puffin, fulmar and shags and we watched seals from the clifftop.

We had to watch our feet (and heads!) as a few late bonxie chicks were huddled into the grassland – we walked on quickly to avoid parental skua indignation. The entirety of the north ‘head’ of Swona is a ternery and wisely put out of bounds in spring/summer as tern chicks are tiny and fragile and their parents understandably fierce in their defence.

In the south of the island Lindsay led us to an idyllic spot for a snack near carpets of rare blue and grey oysterplant, a plant very dear to my late mother’s heart. I would love to return and paint it.

The older archaeological features of the island are concentrated in the south, with the stones of the chambered cairn offering dramatic views. More excavation work is planned here soon.

There are also fish-drying sk-yeos, walled enclosures where sea harvests could be air-dried.

A giant rock pool lured many of our group down to it but no-one was quite brave enough to take a dip, though Lindsay has done so in the past.

The modern lighthouse still keeps vessels clear of this treacherous coastline, fringed with shipwrecks and tragic tales of loss. I read in the late John S. Findlay’s epic Swona Revisited (2014) how one Norwegian vessel came ashore and the only survivor was a big dog, who led the islanders to the wreck. Later the Norwegian ambassador sent an urgent message from the captain’s brother with a description of the captain and an assurance that all repatriation and quarantine costs would be met for the dog, but alas, the animal had already been shot: possibly inconsolable at the loss of its master, and too great a risk to have a non-local dog among free range livestock. Still very sad!

A modern lighthouse shed has been knocked over by the wind like a stack of playing cards.

In this area I noticed there were fewer northern marsh orchids and more early purple orchids (unless they are the same and it is simply a strong colour variation – I am no orchid expert?). If the cattle concentrate in this wetter area, their dung will be gradually enriching the soil, so this may explain the variation.

One of the planticrues, shelters for growing vegetables.

The vegetation around Rose Cottage, the home of the Rosies, showed surviving potato haulmes and stands of.rhubarb, with camomile, Scots lovage and sorrel also present (nice to know the youngsters from Gordonstoun won’t go hungry, providing they can dig and forage!). The Rosie family barns are full of useful flotsam and jetsam found while beachcombing.

The South African lady stepped into a giant cowpat up to her ankles at this point – Swona is no place to explore in slip-on loafers.

The island cattle were vigilant, not aggressive, and moved as we did, always at a cautious distance. It can be a rather different story if there is a taurine power struggle taking place, as newly-deposed bulls can be feisty and sullen.

Ordinary farmed cattle associate humans with food and tend to approach out of greed or just dull curiosity. Not so these. I counted about 30 in all, maybe 20 cows, 6 calves and four bulls. They watched us closely as we plodded across the flat area known as Dyke End, the hardest walking, as the terrain is dried into rigid ruts made by hooves and these ruts are masked by longer vegetation. I was glad of my stick here.

Three deposed bulls – each a former clan chief – watched their former consorts longingly from the periphery of the herd. Here and there, a winter-bleached and wind- and bird-picked skull augured their future. We saw one long dead animal and a healthy-looking calf lying freshly dead in different parts of the island. Why they died will never be known, as this is a truly wild herd (some descriptions of Swona have suggested that a vet keeps an occasional eye on the herd but that is not the case).

This is not sad, but natural. What is on Swona stays on Swona.

The same goes for the old coastguard/lighthousekeeper records, which seemed in good condition. From a curatorial point of view it would be wise, I think, to make digital photographic copies of everything paper-based on the island for duplication to Orkney Archives, just as a safeguard. This could be done in situ. It is astonishing that anyone should sail as far as the dangerous skerries of Swona in order to steal or vandalise these old homes, but bampots abound, and it has already happened 💔.

All accessible buildings are now kept padlocked as a result.

By the time we got to the school and North-houses, back at The Haven, my legs were wobbly, but I felt cleansed by the air and the exercise and all the wonders I had seen. I had had a very tough spring and felt like I laid down a heavy burden, somehow.

Being on Swona reminds you of what matters in life.

John came back to pick us up, in two groups again, in the wee orange dinghy. I always save the best till last! he grinned and promptly turned the bow not for Boy Ryan but for the cliffs to the south of The Haven. I won’t spoil John’s surprise by telling you where we ended up, but it was an exciting moment at the end of a fabulous day!

John exudes an air of total confidence and is obviously a man happy in his life and work, but when he mentioned a bit of a swell with studied nonchalance I thought oh-oh. This is the Pentland Firth, a place where the tides change, the winds can rise and a whirlpool can appear out of nowhere.

Our first attempt to board was aborted as the swell was slapping the dinghy against the side of the boat. I got soaked as the dryrobe was deemed too hazardous to wear in the tender. Not happy with this, says John, and we pulled away again. A clever manoeuvre then saw us moving parallel with the ship on the opposite side and boarding as both vessels moved through the water. We all scrambled aboard, some of us less elegantly than others, hearts thudding and gleeful. John’s seamanship meant we felt safe the whole time. We sailed for home through rougher seas and a whirlpool.

Thank you again to Lindsay and to John for this wonderful experience.

Timings on all Swona trips are of necessity approximate. On the way back I found I had missed my bus by half an hour, so begged a lift from lovely Ruth (who kindly allowed me to use her orchid and pool and puffin shots for this blog as they were much better than my own) who was also heading for Kirkwall. Thanks to her accelerator pedal made it back in time for almost all the Voces Thules concert in St Magnus Cathedral.

A more-than-just memorable experience. So much more than a boat trip too, a true adventure. Afterwards I was able to identify 21 plant species and send the list over to Lindsay for future fine-tuning and use. Nice to give something back to the island.

If you’re coming to Orkney, do try to go to Swona – but maybe leave those leather loafers at home…

Vee Walker

June 2026

Vee stayed at Feolquoy Farmhouse in Harray 👇

Airbnb https://share.google/0wt82ElQ2m4b2ePNF

Vee travelled with Pentland Ferries 👇

Pentland Ferries https://share.google/15EkVJLl3HFJ63BdF

Book your adventure to Swona with John at OrcaVentures (he does wildlife tours and even seafood cruises with an onboard hot-tub too!) 👇

Orca Ventures https://share.google/nqwuVah5XOQBY2NH7

More on the magnificent work of Swona Heritage Group here 👇

Swona Heritage https://share.google/c6uuMptgZTYkVa0nf

Roses all the way to the New World

When you think of a rose, do you think of this?

Or of this?

My latest work, The Glen Nevis Rose, is an unusual collaboration with Lochaber author Ewen A. Cameron, who lives at Glen Nevis House. It began with Ewen’s fascination for a little-known local story, grew into an idea for a pamphlet (which is when I became involved) and since then has snowballed into something rather remarkable: a full colour, 90 page book which explores the life of one family in the years after Culloden, both through fiction and well-researched non-fiction.

Just over 250 years ago, Lady Mary Cameron of Glen Nevis turned her back on the self- same house where Ewen now lives, to board a mysterious vessel named the Pearl at Fort William. Former staunch Jacobite families like Mary’s had suffered badly at the hands of the victors after Culloden and many set their faces towards the New World. The Pearl was already almost filled to the gunwales with MacDonells of Glengarry. They must have offered some of the few remaining berths to their friends and neighbours, among them Mary’s family.

Mary had young children. Her old father was dying. The preparations for departure must have been emotional, complex and protracted.

Why, then, dig up a rose to take with her, of all things?

We could so easily have got it all wrong and just seen the rose – an ancient variety named Great Maiden’s Blush – as a perfumed, romantic, nostalgic gesture.

That would be to ignore its vicious thorns, and once we found out the role it is said to have played in the family’s past, we understood.

The story of the journey of the Camerons, their brood of children and the rose to America and beyond is one of love, tenacity, courage and adventure.

Our understanding of the Jacobite Rising tends to end in April 1746 at Culloden, but the aftermath of civil war echoed through the glens for decades after that, triggering the start of an epic migration of wealth and youth and talent from our shores which would later evolve into the Highland Clearances.

If you want to understand what it was like to survive Culloden and then choose to emigrate, please consider reading this book.

It is not available on Amazon and never will be. We are distributing it through smaller bookshops and outlets only at present. Feel free to get in touch and I will let you know your nearest outlet.

Signed copies can be sent by mail order worldwide, too.

Review: A blast of fresh Faroes air

Oh my. What a treat this book is!

I have only very occasionally ventured into writing poetry myself, usually as interpretive commissions for clients. I am more of the why-use-one-word-where-297-will-do persuasion. I do admire good poets and poetry, though, and have a sneaking adoration for the really epic stuff; the adventurous Aeneid, the transformations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the gore of The Lays of Ancient Rome, the glorious Highland fakery of Ossian.

I have long enjoyed Jennifer Morag Henderson’s historical and biographical work – Daughters of the North is real edge-of-the-seat stuff – but Jofrid Gunn is a step miles out of her admirable comfort zone. I find this extraordinary book defies any normal description. It is, but is not just, a collection of poems. It is a biography of sorts. There is a direction of travel of sorts – Faroes to Highlands, Highlands to Faroes, both time and place shifting with the tides and centuries. Yes, the story of Jofrid is related through this journeying, to a degree – if not as literally as I had anticipated, but this was no disappointment. Instead, the reader experiences a kind of multi-sensory immersion in carefully patterned words. When I had finished the book and its copious notes, I felt salt-blasted, wind-blown, refreshed, and deeply sorry that the experience was over.

Jennifer has been learning Faroese to give her work increased authenticity. Has that mammoth effort paid off? Without question, yes.

This style of prose poetry is less about rhythm than the shapes and patterns of words and phrases within the text. Again, the closest comparison I can draw is with epic Celtic poetry – the Taìn bò Cùlaìgne, the Mabinogion and the brilliant imitation of these in Macpherson’s Ossian.

The patterns within Jennifer’s poetry rouse and enchant and beguile in equal measure, and soon I found myself enjoying them far too much to bother myself unduly about any analysis of their (huge variety of) themes and threads and structures. Whether Jennifer is writing as or about Jofrid or as or about herself, I was not always certain, and for me, this is a boundary pleasingly blurred.

Hard to pick out favourites. The poignant story of the violin which was played to sound like the wind, one of several prose interludes, I found deeply moving and reread several times.

The Salt and the Coal reminded me of how long the remarkable Jean Gordon had to wait for the right time and place in which to marry her true love in Daughters of the North.

I have had a similar (if less poetic) conversation than Wedding-ring Shawl – advice from a mother-in-law, all about a knitted shawl in wool fine enough to draw through a wedding ring – patterns again: an old family friend, Eva Holmes, used a special frame surrounded by tiny pin-tacks to shape and launder them, and gave me a fine shawl for my firstborn. I had not thought about that for a long time. Good, powerful poetry like this is provocative in its original sense; it calls forth voices from deep within a reader’s heart and head.

Do read this remarkable book, which is so much more than just a debut poetry collection.

Jennifer Morag Henderson – Jofrid Gunn https://share.google/bScBpItj2dA23q7up

Why is the Black Isle ‘black’?

Golden stubble, green oak, blue sky – Black Isle

This blog is prompted by a recent commercial post circulating on Facebook which gives one rather poor definition for the Black Isle’s ‘black’ nomenclature and then encourages folk to sign up for a tour with the company.

No thanks.

For those who have never visited my home turf, the Black Isle is not an island but a peninsula attached to the mainland Highlands by a narrow neck of land starting at the River Beauly and ending at the river Conon. To the north it is bounded by the Cromarty Firth, to the south the Beauly Firth and to the east the Moray Firth, opening into the North Sea. It is an area with a warmer microclimate than the mainland, resulting in fertile farmland with rich dark soil and pockets of ancient, lush and biodiverse woodland.

An-t-Eilean Dubh in Gaelic, there is some suggestion that Dubh, black, is just a corruption of Duthac. The Black Isle was on the popular Elgin to Tain pilgrimage route but St Duthac’s shrine was in Tain itself not at the Chanonry in Fortrose, so I find this one unconvincing.

Let’s explore some of the other reasoning (one added courtesy of Paul Johnson, thanks Paul!): 👇

The truth is no-one really knows why the Black Isle is called the Black Isle, but in this blog I will set out five explanations as told to me as a local at intervals over the past fifty or so years. They are geographical, supernatural, historical, social and natural, with some overlap between the five.

If you know of any others, please get in touch!

A contrasting foreground

The Black Isle in times past would not have been capped with today’s commercial coniferous pine forests, most of which are under 100 years old, and it was known as the Black Isle before that. The backbone, the Mulbuie, was, as the name suggests (buidhe means yellow in Gaelic), so at some point in the past it must have been a golden moorland ridge scattered with peat-moss heather and fragrant whin (gorse) bushes.

So why not the Golden Isle?

The answer is in the contrast with the startling bulk of Ben Wyvis behind and to the west of the Black Isle in winter. Travellers from the south who had slogged up the Slocht must have welcomed the sight of the dark bulk of the low-lying Black Isle (barely 1000′) across the water as they descended towards Inverness, contrasting with Ben Wyvis, our much higher (3000′ + Munro) and weather mountain. From the first frost in October to Easter and often later, ‘the Ben’ has a summit white with frost or snow. We look to Ben Wyvis to predict how the day will turn out weatherwise.

A traditional winter greeting hereabouts is ‘Snaw on the Ben’, usually said with doom-laden glee.

Or…

Black magic

The Scottish Reformation of 1560 swept away a now-forgotten Roman Catholic past. With it went carved wayside crosses like those you see on the continent and local religious tolerence of difference, of the old ways. A fearsome zeal for the new Protestant religion (which, ironically, had its roots in an English king’s lust as well as a desire to purge the Christian church of corruption) swept the Highlands like a brush fire. Standing stones were defaced and broken. Carved tombstones were reused as plainer slabs (see more on that at Kirkmichael).

Accusations of witchcraft became numerous in the 1600s, often aimed vindictively at decent, prosperous women as well as those vulnerable through deformity or madness. The outcome of any witch trial was generally a foregone conclusion, but not always.

Sir Thomas Urquhart, the eccentric genius laird of Cromarty, saved one young pair of Croms who had accused themselves of ‘consorting with demons’ – presumably in the grip of some kind of religious fervour whipped up by an enthusiastic witchfinder. Sir T had just returned from a grand tour of the continent and was having none of it. Rather than agree to ‘the cleansing fire’ he put the pair up overnight, got them merry and encouraged a couple of his servants to ‘dally’ with them. In the morning, sure enough, the accused claimed to have consorted with demons that very night. Sir T quickly saw these gullible souls married to their willing ‘demons’, the sacrament of marriage protecting them from further reprisals. Unsurprisingly the church hated Sir Thomas thereafter, and the feeling was mutual.

More about Sir Thomas Urquhart at Cromarty Courthouse!

Less fortunate was the Brahan Seer, one Coinneach ‘Odhar’ (Dun-headed Kenny) Mackenzie, a Lewis man with the second sight. He came unstuck by ‘seeing’ the husband of Isabella Countess Seaforth – the head of the politically powerful Mackenzie clan – up to no good in Paris, and unwisely sharing this insight with his wife publicly. Coinneach was accused of witchcraft and burned to death in a tar barrel (likely the ferry beacon for summoning the vessel from Ardersier) on the highest point of Chanonry Point, where a mediaeval cross base can still be seen today. Before his grim end he thoroughly and chillingly cursed the great House of Seaforth: he predicted the death of all male heirs before the last of the line himself died, and that this doomed chief would know this time had come when various other clan chiefs had a variety of gruesome disfigurements and disabilities.

Worst of all, Coinneach predicted that a ‘white-coiffed lassie from the East’ would then ‘kill her sister’. Sure enough, once all the male heirs had predeceased Francis Humberston Mackenzie, and he himself had died, his widowed daughter returned from India (and in India, white is the colour of mourning) to take up her inheritance. She was at the reins of a carriage one day when it overturned, killing her sister.

It is not uncommon still for local people to have strange presentiments, perhaps echoes of Coinneach Odhar’s ‘seeing’. It is particularly useful for avoiding Police speed traps.

From black magic to…

Black Raiders

It’s hard to shake off the image of Vikings as tall, blonde, handsome chaps with horned helmets, isn’t it (thank you, Uthred son of Uthred…) but this part of Scotland was colonised by dark haired Danes (because ‘there ain’t nuthin’ like a Daaaaane….’). Although the indigenous locals probably did not welcome these new arrivals with open arms, not all Viking settlement was about dark deeds, burning churches, rape and pillage and so forth. The canny seafarers whose ships once stole, terrifyingly, up the firth under cover of a sea-mist or haar (a fine Old Norse word) would eventually settle and embrace Christianity and intermarry and farm the land just like everyone else. Dingwall was the place of the Thing, the Viking parliament (believed to be under the monument car park near the old library building). And in the Black Isle we still have Udale bay, Old Norse for The Bay of the Yew Trees.

Black Islers who belive themselves to be true locals who do an Ancestry-type DNA test will often be surprised to find a high percentage of Scandinavian blood. Tsk. We were all incomers once!

Or…

Black smoke from many homes

We have forgotten what it is like to warm ourselves and cook solely with open fires. For centuries people in the Black Isle burned wood and ‘moss’ or peat – turf they cut and stacked to dry up on the common land along the Mulbuie Ridge or even from along the coast. Again, travellers from the south might have seen a pall of yellow-black smoke from hundreds of hearths hanging over the Black Isle, rising from the many coastal chimneys of Redcastle, North Kessock, Kilmuir, Munlochy, Avoch, Fortrose, Rosemarkie and Cromarty.

People disposed of rubbish the same way too. Stubblefields were burned off after harvest to nourish the ground for the next crop. I have a happy memory of being allowed to play in a burning stubblefield, jumping through the quick-burning fires of waste straw in the early 1970s!

Higher up among the heather, too, a paler, more mysterious smoke would once have drifted upwards, juniper wood burned to fuel dozens of illicit whisky stills. Winters in the past were longer and harsher than they are now, and a dram of uisge-beatha helped them pass more easily. One Statistical Account relates that there were more whisky stills in the Black Isle than anywhere else in the Highlands.

The first legal distillery was licensed to the Forbes clan in Ferintosh.

Or…

Ancient Woodland

My friend Paul Johnson points out that there are still legacy Caledonian-type Granny Pines all over the Black Isle, from Mount Eagle on top all the way down to sea-level. Many are hidden either singly or in small groups in the current forestry plantations (and Gallowhill, Blackhills and also on the Rosehaugh estate to name just a few) and also in more deciduous woods such as the Beechwood at Raddery and the natural Birchwoods at Gallowhill – even in the Oakwoods at Drummonreach and Tore.

Many of the plantations and other woods are included on the Ancient Woodland Inventory for Scotland, almost all in fact. The Black Isle was once (maybe still is) home to Capercaillie and still has many of the usual pinewood residents, from Pine Martens to Crossbills. We still have the Bog Woodland Monadh Mor which is not considered part of the Caledonian Pinewood Fragments inventory for some stupid bureaucratic reason, but it should be!

Mature pines are dark green that look black from a distance. Most of the Black Isle may well have been part of the Great Wood, but it was systematically felled for timber and to clear land for farming and housing over the last 1500 years or so. Perhaps there was always a moorland ‘top’ above the trees, covered in moorland and whin, hence the ‘Mulbuie’ ridge – looking a bit like a monk’s tonsure.

From a distance, a mass of ancient woodland would look black…

So…

.. landscape, witchcraft, Vikings, whisky or ancient pines could all explain why our Isle is known as Black today.

Which do you reckon? Or is it something else?

A tale of two covers…

Left, the hardback cover; right, the paperback

This blog post was inspired by my Canadian cousin Cathy Brydon, who is related to me through my grandmother’s side of the family. After congratulating me on the paperback of Major Tom’s War, she asked, slightly ominously – ‘but – the cover – whatever has happened to Evie?’

What indeed. One minute my beloved grandmother is there on the hardback, clutching a rose, and the next, on the paperback edition, she has vanished.

Cover anxiety is a very real thing!

A cover exists to protect the book within, but should also to communicate the essence of the book to the reader. The original cover’s beautiful artwork is by the Canadian Sikh artist Keerat Kaur (www.keerat-kaur.com). Evie stands tall in her red cross uniform, offering a (highly symbolic) rose to Tom. He gazes down at her through rather spooky white spectacles.

We had a tight launch date for the hardback and the last editorial and cover choices had to be made at a bewildering speed. I remember seeing the final version for the first time at the book launch at the National Army Museum and it being a bit of a shock. The whole process had felt, understandably, rather rushed, and I was jittery (and authors very seldom love their covers at first, apparently).

The process of cover design had however begun months before, with a completely different concept – a bright red background with the silhouette of a horseman emerging from it, face on. It seemed oddly familar and yet I could not work out how. I posted it on the Women In the Arts Scotland Facebook Group and the answer soon came back – it looked (entirely coincidentally) very like the cover of this popular edition of Michael Morpurgo’s fabulous book War Horse.

The WIAS responses were divided in those early days on whether this similarity would be a good thing or not. Some thought the instant gut response – WWI! Cavalry! Man and horse! – was appropriate. I felt, probably a bit arrogantly, that I wanted the cover for Major Tom’s War to be unique, just like the book.

A word here about my extraordinary publishers, Kashi House (www.kashihouse.com). Their creative team had quickly come up with the initial Morpurgo-esque cover based on a photograph they had and some clever computer design. If I had just said yes to it – and I almost did – it would have saved them all time, stress and money. And yet, even though Parmjit Singh and his team were already operating beyond full stretch (setting up for their massively successful London exhibition, Empire of the Sikhs), they politely took on board everything I had said and scrapped the prototype. We started from scratch, and Parmjit commissioned Keerat to produce something far more original and memorable. Not just that, but they also added shiny copper lettering for the title – and a silky dust-jacket. Both hardback, and, now, the paperback, look – and feel – sensational.

As I mentioned above, Keerat’s initial design did not in fact have Evie on it – her figure was added in response to my feedback. Back in 2018 I had been anxious about going with Tom alone – would it alienate my female readers? Would it look like a work of non-fiction?

I have learned a lot about the process of bringing a book into existence over the past two years. I now understand that a book cover’s job is to make you want to pick it up/click on it and ideally take it home/order it, simple as that. We were trying to do a bit too much with the first edition cover – and that was my fault.

The paperback gave us the perfect chance for a rethink. No-one wanted to start from scratch, thank goodness – the hardback cover had built the foundations for the book’s identity well – but it was clear that shrinking it to fit the paperback would result in some detail being lost and would not work.

After Major Tom’s War won a prize at the SAHR Military History Fiction Awards, and several other reviewers had Said Nice Things about it, there was also the need to give space to some of those Nice Things Said on the paperback cover. Dame Penelope Keith DBE, DL wrote me a beautiful letter from which we quote just one compelling word on the front – ‘Unputdownable.’ This is also a subliminal suggestion of course – ‘please don’t put it back down – take it to the till instead!

When I realised we would have to lose Evie to make way for the Nice Things Said I thought the rose would have to go too – and that made me sad. As you will know if you have read it, roses crop up as a bit of a leitmotif in Major Tom’s War. The rose is also symbolic of the unlikely tenderness which blossomed between Tom and Evie. Designer Paul Smith (www.paulsmithdesign.com), who gave both editions their classy overall look and feel, cleverly isolated the rose and lifted it to the title above, allowing its petals to fall, and settle, on Daisy’s neck.

The single petal lying on Daisy’s neck, to me, symbolises all the horses who died or were injured in the Great War.

The beautiful SAHR prizewinner’s rosette, bottom left, matches the title colour and catches the eye – but sadly would not do so as much if set against Evie’s dark uniform.

The spooky specs were a bit of a surprise at the book launch and were possibly the result of crossed wires between my desire to make Tom look more human and last-minute discussion with Keerat or Paul. Again views on the specs are divided: Daniel Scott at the book’s distributors, Allison & Busby, said he thought they might draw the eye and so attract sales.

Others thought they were ghostly and offputting, myself included, and so Tom’s specs are less intimidating on the paperback. Who is right? Who knows?

The first paperback I lifted out of its nest of tissue paper (and stroked, crooned over and sniffed – come on, don’t we all with a new baby?) convinced me that the book is now, if not perfect, certainly as I had always imagined it. I think we have taken the right cover decisions – but of course only time – and future sales – will tell.

Enjoy the read – within whichever set of covers you have chosen. And thank you to Parmjit and Keerat and WIAS and Paul and Daniel and everyone else involved in the wild ride thus far 🙏🌹.

Major Tom’s War by Highland author Vee Walker will be out in paperback via all good booksellers from 19th November priced £9.99. It is already available as an e-reader edition and in hardback.

Vee will be signing advance copies of the paperback at Storehouse of Foulis near Dingwall from 11am to 3pm on Saturday 14 November 2020.