Poet and historian Angus Martin was born in Campbeltown in 1952 and has lived there all his life. In this, his thirty-seventh book, he has employed his intimate knowledge of the history and families of his native community to produce the definitive account of the distillers, distilleries and related trades and industries which transformed a small West Highland fishing town into the whisky-making capital of the world. Exhaustive research in neglected sources has resulted a study with unprecedented detail and insight.

This is an adventurous new collection of poems in which past companions are recalled, and the lives of the occupants of long-ruined farms imaginatively reconstructed, amid a spectacular landscape of hills, moors and cliffs. The fauna and flora of Kintyre's west coast come to life in affectionate detail. The poems - all written in the winters of 2015/16 and 2016/17 - also capture the spiritual values inherent in the silence and strangeness of remote places. They will speak both to local people who know and love such places as The Inneans, Craigaig and Largiebaan, and to those who have appreciated Angus Martin's poetry in the past or who wish to discover it now.

While reflecting the style and character of its predecessor, 'A Summer in Kintyre', this new book is rich in differences. The narrative begins in April 2014 and ends in September, but real time is irrelevant, as the author dips frequently into history and prehistory, evoking people and events associated with the places he visits by bicycle and on foot. Artists, poets, musicians, cave-dwellers, convicts, winkle-pickers, travelling tinsmiths, shipwrecked sailors, saints, school friends, fishermen, shepherds, farmers and fellow-ramblers share the pages with flowers, butterflies, birds, otters, whales, adders, and much else. A close engagement with places, people and nature is ever-present and, using the journals he has kept since his teens, the author is able to recreate his early adventures in the outdoors. Besides familiar haunts in South Kintyre (Learside, Ben Gullion, Inneans, and Largiebaan), he visits Barr Glen, Ballochroy Glen and Lussa, and explores their history. Illustrated with 50 images, the result will inform and delight any reader with an interest in one of Scotland's most fascinating yet least appreciated areas.

A Third Summer in Kintyre completes Angus Martin's trilogy of books about consecutive summers spent walking and cycling in Kintyre, exploring the history and natural history of the places he visits and documenting his own past. In this book, which covers the year 2015, he also looks back on his literary beginnings and mentors, in particular the poets Iain Crichton Smith, Edwin Morgan and Robin Fulton Macpherson. Largiebaan, an area of cliffs and Atlantic seascapes, features prominently in his accounts of searches for botanical rarities. But his journeys also take him into North Kintyre, where he visits ruined settlements in Carradale Glen, the deserted shepherd's cottage of Lagloskin, and a laird's grave in a remote glen near Killean. As readers have come to expect, the reach of Martin's curiosity is broad, encompassing place-names, languages, literature, genealogy, social history, folklore, flora and fauna, all interspersed with human presences, people met and people remembered. For all who love Kintyre and its little-visited scenic corners, this book will evoke the pleasures of times past and perhaps also inspire personal journeys in the author's footsteps.

This social history of the 'ordinary' people of the south-western peninsula of Argyll, in Western Scotland, has become a classic since its original publication in 1984. It is reprinted here with a new Introduction by the author, a native of Kintyre who knows its geography intimately. The greater part of the book is based on original research from a wide range of sources, from nineteenth century registers of the poor to material passed on through the oral tradition. It traces the evolution of the extraordinarily mixed stock of Kintyre from the Gaelic settlement in the fifth century AD through the subsequent settlements of the Lowlanders and Irish, and explores the nature of these diverse cultural legacies. The darker aspects of social history - epidemic diseases, sanitary and housing conditions and destitution - are also explored, and the sinister activities of grave-robbers in nineteenth century Kintyre are substantiated for the first time. There is also information on Irish immigrant families, the anglicisation of native surnames and surviving Gaelic elements in the local dialect.

Kintyre poet and historian Angus Martin's interest in placea'names extends back over 40 years. This meticulously researched exploration covers over 200 Gaelic place-name elements, plus many others of Norse, Scots and English origin. Over 1200 individual place-names are examined, from the well-known to the obscure and forgotten. These names are drawn from a diverse range of sources, from mid-19th century Ordnance Survey maps and field notebooks to fishermen and shepherds whose store of names contained many known only to themselves. As well as looking at the origin and meaning of place-names, Martin also looks at their historical associations - the events and families connected with them - to provide a full and fascinating account which will illuminate the landscape of his native Kintyre. This, then, is a book which will interest not only students of place-names, but also archaeologists, local historians, genealogists, naturalists, and anyone with a passion for Kintyre and its colourful past.

In the idyllic summer of 2013 in Kintyre, the author's journeys by bicycle and on foot were also 'a journey through landscapes of memory and emotion'. The story begins in the rugged south-west, at the Inneans and Largiebaan, and ends in the north-east, at a little loch near Tarbert, with people, places and happenings a-plenty in between. The people include poets Seamus Heaney, Hugh MacDiarmid and George Campbell Hay, musicians Hamish Henderson, Dick Gaughan and Jack Bruce, as well as hill-walking companions, past and present. Incidents of drama on cliffs, episodes of irrational terror and spiritual calm in remote places, memories of the psychedelic Sixties, and a boat trip to Cara Island - haunt of the infamous 'Broonie' - combine with the author's characteristic ruminations, on history, natural history, folklore, place-names and genealogy, to illumine the landscapes. The book contains 62 illustrations and six appendices and is a worthy successor to Martin's 'By Hill and Shore in South Kintyre', published in 2011 by The Grimsay Press. It will engage the interest and imagination of all who cherish Kintyre and its outdoor delights, both natural and cultural.

When it was first published in 1987, this picture of the lives of country folk from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth completed a trilogy on the history and culture of the author's native Kintyre. The material, from both oral and written sources, tells of everyday lives - working the land, raising livestock, building and furnishing homes, finding fuel and preparing food and celebrating special days. There are also accounts of sheep-stealing, shinty battles, and violent encounters between excise-men and the distillers - and smugglers - of illicit whisky. Illustrated with maps of the peninsula and photographs and reproductions taken or collected by the author.

For 20 years, since 1991, historian and poet Angus Martin has been documenting in the Kintyre Magazine his observations and experiences while walking the hills and shores of his native Kintyre. This volume - an eclectic mix of natural history, history, archaeology, folklore, and much else, ranging from snippets to mini-essays - comprises a selection of 'By Hill and Shore' from the past 40 issues, plus supplementary articles and some 90 illustrations, mostly his own photographs taken during the past 30 years. Rich in its evocation of places, people, and creatures great and small, this anthology should provide lasting enjoyment to all readers, at home and abroad, with a passion for 'lovely, long Kintyre'.

The House of Argyll acquired its Kintyre lands in 1607 and sold them in 1956. During that period, the Campbells exerted a powerful influence in Kintyre, through politics, religion, and agrarian reform. The core of this book is the 5th Duke of Argyll's estate instructions to his Kintyre chamberlain, or manager, from 1785 to 1805. Through these annual directions, and the chamberlain's responses, emerge the complex workings of a West Highland estate. Kintyre historian Angus Martin has taken the late Eric R. Cregeen's hitherto unpublished transcript of the instructions and illuminated them with a lengthy series of commentaries, explaining agricultural practices, social customs and cultural nuances, and providing biographical sketches of the chief personalities of the time. The study is informatively introduced by both Cregeen and Martin, enhanced by 72 illustrations, ranging from eighteenth century portraits to present-day photographs, contains a reproduction of George Langlands' celebrated 1801 map of Kintyre, and is fully furnished with references, notes and index.

A Lexicon of Alchemy or An Alchemical Dictionary Containing a full and plain explanation of all obscure words, Hermetic subjects, and arcane phrases of Paracelsus.