|
Showing 1 - 14 of
14 matches in All Departments
What are the contours of a life? For Andrew Greig: childhood,
adolescence, the country then the city, sex, love, marriage,
break-ups and breakdowns personal and political, mountain
adventures, illness and recovery, increased awareness of mortality
and the preciousness of the moments left, late love...they're all
here in these wildly diverse, affirmative, open-hearted poems. As a
poet and latterly as a novelist, Andrew Greig is one of Scotland's
most esteemed writers. Each of his poetry books has been
distinctively different, from the early and late poems rooted in
the natural world, to the game-playing extended narratives of
exultation and risk, from human love to the mountaineering poems.
But this selection covering 35 years of his poetry shows how the
thrust of all his work is the re-enchantment of this life.
This is a book of awakenings - to loss and renewal, to present and
past and place. To dailiness, mortality and marriage. Playful or
serious, colloquial or formal, they speak directly of life lived.
Celebratory or elegiac, whether set in Orkney, Spain, coastal Fife
or Edinburgh, Andrew Greig's poems are acts of attention, when the
mind wakes up and the world snaps into focus. They invite the same
pleasure in the reader.
Alongside the mountain poems from Men on Ice, Order of the Day and
Western Swing will be brand new material, facsimiles of previously
unpublished material - including his first poem, written in 1972 -
and illustrations and material from the National Library of
Scotland archive. A beautiful collector's item full of
illustrations, marginalia and notes.
'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.
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.
'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.
|
Fair Helen (Paperback)
Andrew Greig
|
R314
R256
Discovery Miles 2 560
Save R58 (18%)
|
Ships in 9 - 15 working days
|
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.
'Highly Engaging' - Sunday Herald 'You could easily make a case
that Andrew Greig has the greatest range of any living Scottish
writer' - Scotsman The wager To poach a salmon, grouse and a deer
from three Royal Estates. The challengers Three men in a mid-life
crisis who should know better. The wild card A flirtatious female
journalist who won't take no for an answer. Striding over the
Scottish Highlands with a poet's eye on the wilderness and a firm
grip on the adventure, Andrew Greig re-imagines John Buchan's
classic novel with a little less tweed, a little more sex, and just
the right measure of whisky.
A homage to a remarkable poet and his world. 'At The Loch of Green
Corrie is more than merely elegant, more than a collection of
albeit fascinating insights, laugh-out-loud observations and
impressively broad erudition' - Sunday Herald 'You could easily
make a case that Andrew Greig has the greatest range of any living
Scottish writer' - Scotsman For many years Andrew Greig saw the
poet Norman MacCaig as a father figure. Months before his death,
MacCaig's enigmatic final request to Greig was that he fish for him
at the Loch of the Green Corrie; the location, even the real name
of his destination was more mysterious still. His search took in
days of outdoor living, meetings, and fishing with friends in the
remote hill lochs of far North-West Scotland. It led, finally, to
the waters of the Green Corrie, which would come to reflect Greig's
own life, his thoughts on poetry, geology and land ownership in the
Highlands and the ambiguous roles of whisky, love and male
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.
A stunning novel set in the stark beauty of Orkney and the heady
atmosphere of Penang in the 1930s '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.
|
Summit Fever (Paperback, Main)
Andrew Greig; Introduction by Joe Simpson
2
|
R521
R417
Discovery Miles 4 170
Save R104 (20%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
When poet Andrew Greig was asked by the near-legendary 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. Short-listed
for the Boardman-Tasker Prize and already something of a classic in
adventure literature, Summit Fever has been loved by climbers and
literary critics alike for its refreshing candour, wit and insight,
and the haunting beauty of its writing. It is for every armchair
adventurer who ever wondered what it would be like to climb in the
Himalayas. Much more than a book about climbing, it celebrates the
risk, joy and adventure of being alive.
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.
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.
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 the tragic deaths of two
great climbers, Joe Tasker and Pete Boardman. In this book,
shortlisted for the Boardman-Tasker Awards, Greig chronicles not
only the assault on the peak, but also the complex
inter-relationships of 19 very different individuals living
together, yet each of them very much alone.
|
|