ROGER HUTCHINSON

In September 1939, groups of horsemen in battledress cantered down a broad, grassy plain on the western edge of Europe. The young men of the Western Isles were going to war again. They included a tall, shy 24-year-old called Angus MacPhee (1916-97).Angus returned from war alive but in chronic mental pain and was referred to the asylum in Inverness, where he spent the next 50 years of his life there. During his time at Craig Dunain Hospital, he retreated into his own silent world, and did not speak again until shortly before his death. But the quiet big man as he was known spent his time creating a huge number of objects out of woven grass, sheeps wool and beach leaves - mostly clothes, caps and hats - which he then let decay or deliberately burned. Only when an art therapist discovered him and his miraculous creations were some of them preserved for posterity. And only then did Angus MacPhee come home to South Uist, where he died a year later.The Silent Weaver is a rich, moving and enthralling exploration of mental health, the creative process, human frailty and ancient traditions.

In the 1830s and 1840s the district of Glendale on the island of Skye was swamped by immigrants cleared from other north Skye estates. The resultant overcrowding and over-use of land caused simmering discontent - not against the incomers, but against the landowners, who regarded their tenants as no more than chattels.This book is a definitive account of what happened when the powder-keg erupted and a full-scale land-war ensued. Pitched battles with police, factors and bailiffs, military intervention, arrests, trials, imprisonment and the personal intervention of the Prime Minister were to have huge consequences for crofters all over the Highlands, who, ultimately, were the victors. At the heart of the rising was a man named John MacPherson of Lower Milovaig in Glendale, a courageous, charismatic and articulate crofter who was twice imprisoned for leading a rebellion against a system which kept all but the wealthiest in a state of bitter servitude. MacPherson quickly became known as the Glendale Martyr.Martyrs tells the story of John MacPherson, his comrades, his allies, his enemies and his final success.

This is the full, unofficial and uncensored story of one of the greatest football clubs in the world. It brings to life the sensational early successes of the great Anglo-Scottish team before the First World War and follows the clubs successes as Cup giants in the 1950s and European conquerors in the 60s, to the Macdonald and Keegan squads of the 1970s and 80s, to its rebirth in the 1990s and through its trials and tribulations of the first decade of the 21st century.Exploring and explaining the lean years as well as the successful decades, Roger Hutchinson brilliantly portrays the managers and players throughout the clubs long history and brings the story right up to date as, after the relegation traumas of 2008/09, Newcastle United looks forward to a resurgence in their fortunes as they return to the Premiership in 2010.

St Kilda is the most romantic and most romanticised group of islands in Europe. Soaring out of the North Atlantic Ocean like Atlantis come back to life, the islands have captured the imagination of the outside world for hundreds of years. Their inhabitants, Scottish Gaels who lived off the land, the sea and by birdcatching on high and precipitous cliffs, were long considered to be the Noble Savages of the British Isles, living in a state of natural grace.St Kilda: A Peoples History explores and portrays the life of the St Kildans from the Stone Age to 1930, when the remaining 36 islanderswere evacuated to the Scottish mainland. Bestselling author Roger Hutchinson digs deep into the archives to paint a vivid picture of the life and death, work and play of a small, proud and self-sufficient people in the first modern book to chart the history of the most remote islands in Britain.

Early on a Sunday morning in October 1905, in Eriskay, one of the smallest and most isolated of Hebridean islands, a forty-five year old Catholic parish priest died of pleurisy. It was a disease which had claimed many of his parishioners, and Father Allan McDonald undoubtedly contracted it while ministering to his flock. He was mourned all over Scotland. Now, over a century later, his name is still remembered with reverence throughout Catholic Scotland and beyond. Father Allan Maighstir Ailein to his Gaelic-speaking people was a witty, accomplished, intellectual and dedicated man; one of the most renowned of Hebridean personalities and probably the most celebrated Hebridean priest since St Columba.An exceptionally effective and articulate local politician in the southern Outer Hebrides, which at the turn of the twentieth century was amongst the poorest and most neglected in Europe, he was also an accomplished Gaelic poet and writer and one of Scotlands greatest collectors of folklore. His achievements attracted attention and visitors came to his lonely parish from the United States, England and elsewhere. The compelling tale of his remarkable life is also implicitly the story of the north-west Highlands in the late nineteenth century and the Catholic Hebrides in their transcendent prime, where culture overflows with myth and adventure, colour, character and extraordinary unspoilt beauty.

In 1918, as the First World War was drawing to a close, the eminent liberal industrial Lord Leverhulme bought - lock, stock and barrel - the Hebridean island of Lewis. His intention was to revolutionise the lives and environments of its 30,000 people, and those of neighbouring Harris, which he shortly added to his estate. For the next five years a state of conflict reigned in the Hebrides. Island seamen and servicemen returned from the war to discover a new landlord whose declared aim was to uproot their identity as independent crofter/fishermen and turn them into tenured wage-owners. They fought back, and this is the story of that fight. The confrontation resulted in riot and land seizure and imprisonment for the islanders and the ultimate defeat for one of the most powerful men of his day.The Soap Man paints a beguiling portrait of the driven figure of Lord Leverhulme, but also looks for the first time at the infantry of his opposition: the men and women of Lewis and Harris who for long hard years fought the law, their landowner, local business opinion and the entire media, to preserve the settled crofting population of their islands.

An incredible testament to one mans determination The Sunday Herald Calum MacLeod had lived on the northern point of Raasay since his birth in 1911. He tended the Rona lighthouse at the very tip of his little archipelago, until semi-automation in 1967 reduced his responsibilities. So what he decided to do, says his last neighbour, Donald MacLeod, was to build a road out of Arnish in his months off. With a road he hoped new generations of people would return to Arnish and all the north end of Raasay. And so, at the age of 56, Calum MacLeod, the last man left in northern Raasay, set about single-handedly constructing the impossible road. It would become a romantic, quixotic venture, a kind of sculpture; an obsessive work of art so perfect in every gradient, culvert and supporting wall that its creation occupied almost twenty years of his life. In Calums Road Roger Hutchinson recounts the extraordinary story of this remarkable mans devotion to his visionary project.

Walking To America follows and recreates the immense journey, in search of a new life and of a miracle doctor who could cure the blindness of one of their number. The journey was taken largely on foot by a small working-class family unit from England in the 1880s, to Liverpool, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and back again. Written as travelogue and as a history of one of the great neglected subjects - the New World immigrants who returned home to the Old, Walking to America is a personal tale, full of characterisation and human stories, based upon received lore, followed footsteps and careful historical research.An epic, covering thousands of miles and cultures and environments as diverse as the Victorian UK coalfields, the great imperial entrepot of Liverpool, the post-bellum American south, roaring 1880s New Orleans, the stew of the free-for-all Pittsburgh mines, Texas in the wake of the Alamo, the unclaimed Indian Territory of North America and the ultimate frontier of the Petrified Forest in Arizona - all seen through the eyes of a small group of identifiable and sympathetic, real and ordinary men, women and children from the north-east of England. Walking to America is a great and gripping adventure of discovery, hope and loss. And it is all true.

At the beginning of each decade for 200 years the national census has presented a self-portrait of the British Isles.The census has surveyed Britain from the Napoleonic wars to the age of the internet, through the agricultural and industrial revolutions, possession of the biggest empire on earth and the devastation of the 20th centurys two world wars.In The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker, Roger Hutchinson looks at every census between the first in 1801 and the latest in 2011. He uses this much-loved resource of family historians to paint a vivid picture of a society experiencing unprecedented changes.Hutchinson explores the controversial creation of the British census. He follows its development from a head-count of the population conducted by clerks with quill pens, to a computerised survey which is designed to discover the address, place of birth, religion, marital status, ability to speak English and self-perceived national identity of every twenty-seven-year-old Welsh-speaking Sikh metalworker living in Swansea.All human life is here, from prime ministers to peasants and paupers, from Irish rebels to English patriots, from the last native speakers of Cornish to the first professional footballers, from communities of prostitutes to individuals called abecedarians who made a living from teaching the alphabet.The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker is as original and unique as those people and their islands on the cutting edge of Europe.

In 1918 Lord Leverhulme bought the island of Lewis with ambitious plans to massively expand its fishing industry and increase its population.In 1923, when his plans had failed, he offered it free of charge to the islanders in two parts. One part, which included impoverished rural areas, was economically unviable. But the other, based around the busy fishing port and administrative centre of Stornoway, was a different matter. In accepting Leverhulmes offer, the hardheaded, churchgoing business class of Stornoway took on the responsibility of making the radical slogan Land for the People a reality. It was an unlikely coupling, but it worked to perfection.The 20th century was a tumultuous time for Lewis. Migration and depopulation were exacerbated by two world wars. Such problems could not be addressed in the lottery of private landownership, but in the stable, democratic government of the Stornoway Trust, town and country alike would weather the storms.Roger Hutchinson tells the story of those storms, and of the people who guided their pioneering estate into the relative security and prosperity of the 21st century. In doing so he paints a vivid portrait of a unique landholding experiment, of Highland land struggle and of the island of Lewis itself.

Early on a wartime winters morning in 1941, the 8,000-ton cargo ship SS Politician ran aground in the beautiful but treacherous seas of Scotlands Outer Hebrides. Among its cargo were 260,000 bottles of whisky destined for the American market a godsend to the local Eriskay islanders whose home-grown supply had dried up due to wartime rationing. News quickly spread and boats came from as far as Lewis, and before local excise officer Charles McColl could intervene, more than 24,000 bottles had been rescued. Villages were raided as bottles of whisky were hidden in the most ingenious ways or simply drunk to get rid of the evidence. Meanwhile, official salvage operations foundered, and in order to pre-vent what the islanders themselves regarded as legitimate salvage, the hull of the Politician was dynamited. The story is well known through Compton Mackenzies bestselling book Whisky Galore and the famous 1949 Ealing comedy of the same name. In this book, acclaimed journalist and Hebridean expert Roger Hutchinson tells the true story of one of the most bizarre events ever to have happened in Scottish waters.

Thirty years ago, the Gaelic language and culture which had been eminent in Scotland for 1,300 years seemed to be in the final stages of a 200-year terminal decline. The number of Gaelic speakers in Scotland had fallen tenfold over the previous century. The language itself was commonplace only in the scattered communities of the north-west Highlands and Hebrides.By the early years of the 21st century, however, a sea-change had taken place. Gaelic - for so long a subject of mockery and hostility - had become what some termed fashionable. Gaelic-speaking jobs were available; Gaelic-medium education was established in many areas; and politicians and business-people saw benefits in acting as friends of the culture. While the numbers of Gaelic-speakers continued to fall as older people passed away, the decline was slowed and for the first time in 100 years the percentage of young people using the language began to rise proportionately. What had happened was a kind of renaissance: a Gaelic revival that manifested itself in popular music, literature, art, poetry, publishing, drama, radio and television. It was a phenomenon as obvious as it was unexpected. And at the heart of that movement lay education. A Gaelic Modern History will tell the story of one institution, Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic College in Skye that has stood at the centre of this revival. But, chiefly, the book will examine how a venerable culture was given hope for the future at the point when all seemed lost. It recounts the scores of personalities, from Sorley Maclean and Runrig to Michael Forsyth and Gordon Brown, who have become involved in that process.

Bho chionn deich bliadhna fichead, bha cnan agus cultar na Gidhlig, a bha air a bhith iomraiteach ann an Alba airson 1,300 bliadhna, a rir coltais ann an ceumannan deireannach cronadh bsmhor a mhair 200 bliadhna. Bha an ireamh de dhaoine a bhruidhinneadh Gidhlig ann an Alba air tuiteam deich uiread thairis air an linn a chaidh roimhe. Cha robh an cnan fhin cumanta ach a-mhin ann an coimhearsnachdan sgapte ceann an iar-thuath na Gaidhealtachd agus Innse Gall.Ro bhliadhnaichean trtha na ciad linne thar fhichead, ge-t, bha atharrachadh mara air tighinn. Theireadh cuid gun robh a Ghidhlig - a bha na cuspair magaidh is nimhdeis airson ineachan - a-nise fasanta. Bha obraichean Gidhlig rim faotainn; chaidh foghlam tro mheadhan na Gidhlig a stidheachadh ann an iomadh ite; agus chunnaic luchd-poileataigs agus luchd-gnomhachais gun robh buannachdan an lib a bhith cirdeil ris a chultar. Ged a bha ireamh luchd-labhairt na Gidhlig a sor thuiteam agus seann daoine a caochladh, dhfhs an cronadh na bu mhaille, agus airson a chiad uair ann an 100 bliadhna, thisich rdachadh co-roinneil a tighinn air an ireamh de dhaoine ga s a cheud a bha a cleachdadh a chnain. B e sersa de dhath-bhethachadh a bha anns na thachair: ath-bhethachadh Gidhlig a dhfhoillsich e fhin ann an cel pop, litreachas, ealain, brdachd, foillseachadh, drma, ridio agus telebhisean. B e morbhail annasach a bh ann ris nach robh dil. Agus aig cridhe a ghluasaid sin, bha foghlam. Gealach an Fhis ag innse sgeulachd aon ionaid, Sabhal Mr Ostaig, a cholaiste Ghidhlig san Eilean Sgitheanach a tha air a bhith aig teis-meadhain an dsgaidh seo. Ach, thar gach rud, tha an leabhar a mion-sgrdadh mar a thugadh dchas airson an ama ri teachd do chultar urramach aig m nuair a shaoilear gun robh gach n caillte.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) - mystic, writer, poet, astrologer, sexual revolutionary, painter, mountain climber and social critic - has a terrifying reputation. The contemporary press labelled him the wickedest man in the world, while he called himself the great beast. Crowley dabbled in the occult, supported Germany in the First World War, was addicted to opiates, and many who associated with him died tragically in mysterious circumstances.Working from the starting point that behind the demonic reputation there stood a human being, and that beyond the self-proclaimed black magician there was a man hungry for publicity and fame, Roger Hutchinson lifts the smokescreen of mythology to reveal a truly astonishing figure.Why did this curious product of the Plymouth Brethren found the first hippy commune in Sicily? What led this Cambridge graduate to be celebrated 20 years after his death on the cover of The Beatles Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album? Why did Mussolini expel him from Italy? Why did a British magazine label him the man wed like to hang? Roger Hutchinson reveals the real Crowley: warts, wickedness, talent, courage, cowardice and all.

. . . it is now! With these legendary three words the 1966 World Cup final came to an end. England had won, and at 5.15 p.m. on 30 July 1966, Bobby Moore wiped his hands on his shorts, shook hands with the Queen, and took delivery of the Jules Rimet trophy before a worldwide television audience of 600 million. It was, and remains, the single greatest British sporting achievement. Alf Ramsey had taken a national team whose fortunes and confidence were at their lowest ebb, and made them World Champions. In doing so he was accused of changing the face of soccer, of turning a noble game into a sport which was dominated by fitness, defences and the training park. Ramseys wingless wonders, it was said, put football back 100 years. How far did he and his squad set out to win sports greatest trophy by any means possible, and how much did accident and circumstance dictate their victory? How good were Ramseys England? Award-winning sportswriter and historian Roger Hutchinson tells a story which sparkles with wit and with sporting brilliance.66 is the story of the greatest sporting tournament ever to take place in Britain, one that marked the birth of the modern game. It is the story of a sporting adventure which, far from putting football back 100 years, catapulted it unwillingly into the future. It is a tragedy told with a smile on its face. It is a tale that no sports fan will want to miss.

Into the Light reveals the full thrilling story of Sunderland Football Club - charting the clubs progress from being the first great team to dominate the Football League, to the squad which returned to the top of English soccer at the dawn of the new millennium. Hutchinson traces a journey from Newcastle Road to the Stadium of Light by way of Roker Park. The early days of the Team Of All The Talents - the side in red-and-white stripes which took the English League by storm, breaking records and their opponents hearts year after brilliant year - are brought vividly to life for the first time. Great goalscorers like Johnny Campbell and Jimmy Gillespie and sensational goalkeepers such as the legendary Ned Doig stride out of the pages of Into The Light; and the figures whose brilliance made Roker roar - from Len Shackleton and Brian Clough to the modern greats - are vividly portrayed. League successes came easily and early to Sunderland. Into The Light explores the clubs devotion to winning trophies with style. The long - and finally triumphant - quest for FA cup victories is followed game by game. The heartbreaks and disappointments are also here in this see-saw ride through 120 years of English football, which ends as it began - right at the very top. This is the history of a football club and more - it is the tale of British soccer.

This is the full story, unofficial and uncensored, of one of the greatest football clubs in the country. From its birth in the 1890s to its rebirth in the 1990s and up to season 2003-4, The Toon tells of a small soccer club, long in the shadow of an enormous rival, which grew to eclipse that rival - and every other club in Great Britain. Roger Hutchinson brings to life the sensational early successes of Newcastle United, recreating the great Anglo-Scottish team which dominated the Football League before the First World War. He vividly describes the helter-skelter attacking sides of the 1930s and the Cup giants of the 1950s, and gives us the European conquerors of the 1960s and the squads of the 1970s and 80s, before showing us how todays cosmopolitan side of title-chasing internationals was built.This lively, hard-hitting book portrays the brilliant management of such legends as Frank Watt and takes us down through the thrilling decades right up to the reign of Sir Bobby Robson. In its pages we see the educated play of Andy Aitken and Colin Veitch; we watch as the fast and furious centre-forward play of Jock Peddie paves the way for the era of the great Hughie Gallacher and the unique Jackie Milburn. It assesses the merits of all of their heirs, from Keegan to Beardsley, from Macdonald to Shearer, from Moncur to Dyer. Exploring and explaining the lean years as well as the successful decades, The Toon exposes the bad managers, incompetent directors and players who were unworthy of the black and white stripes. It takes an unflinching look at the lost opportunities and the Geordie footballers who went missing. But it also offers us the geniuses, the household names, the men who have lit up Tyneside and the world beyond in a hundred-year sequence of unforgettable League and Cup campaigns. Most of all, The Toon looks from the past towards a glorious future.