Local people making their corner of rural Britain unique
This week
Saturday 28 October 2006
In this week's Open Country Richard Uridge is curiously off to the south of the north … Dumfries & Galloway is in Scotland, but is actually further south than Carlisle.
Listener Shaun Bythell – a bookshop owner in Wigtown – invited the programme to take a literary tour of the area, and hands Richard five books with local connections.
The first one he looks at is Dumfries and Galloway: a Literary Guide byJulia Muir Watt which leads him to Torhousekie Standing Stones. Here, historian and literary expert Jack Hunter who explains that it’s the remoteness of the area which has encouraged authors to write about it – it’s a place where strange and chancey things can happen …
The book of the film The Wicker Man takes Richard to Auchencairn, where he meets Trevor Leat and Alex Rigg, whose wood-weaving and performance art skills culminate each year in the creation (and destruction!) of a giant wicker figure for the local music festival.
The next book with local connections is Ring of Bright Water by local resident Gavin Maxwell. Richard meets up with otter researcher Rosie Green to talk about otters today and whether Maxwell’s book improved the lot of the little creatures or not.
Down at Whithorn Richard encounters Donna Brewster, author of My Ninian, a book about the first person to bring Christianity to Scotland – St Ninian began his work more than 100 years before Columba crossed the Irish Sea to Iona.
And to round up his literary tour, Richard has an assignation on a disused railway track with Russell Patterson of the John Buchan Society– for it was Galloway that Richard Hannay fled to in The 39 Steps. Buchan knew the area well and Russell explains how it’s possible to trace the locations in his stories in the Galloway landscape.
Books mentioned in the programme:
Dumfries and Galloway: a Literary Guide by Julia Muir Watt. Publisher: Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, Information and Archives ISBN: 0946280460
The Wickerman by Robin Hardy & Anthony Shaffer. Publisher: Tor ISBN: 033039018X
Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell. Publisher: ISIS Large Print Bks. ISBN: 1850895910
My Ninian by Donna Brewster Publisher: GC Book Publishers Ltd ISBN: 1872350046
The 39 Steps by John Buchan Publisher: Kessinger Publishing ISBN: 1419151126
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