The Birlinn imprint publishes Scottish and general UK interest books, from biography to history, military to politics, and Scottish Gaelic. The name comes from the old Norse word ‘birlinn’, meaning a long boat or small galley used especially in the Hebrides and West Highlands of Scotland in the Middle Ages
What’s new from Birlinn?
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£8.99Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2019 When Les and Chris Humphreys moved to Ardnamurchan 15 years ago, little did they realise they would be sharing their home with some of Britain’s most elusive and misunderstood mustelids. Amongst all the…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£4.99Brunch should evoke a sense of pleasure and relaxation – and perhaps also the temptation to try something new. Food writer and broadcaster Ghillie Basan offers 50 recipes in seven themed sections: brunch in a bowl, brunch with eggs, brunch on…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£16.99China is building the world’s first digital totalitarian state, a system of hitherto unimaginable social and political control. Internet freedom has been eliminated and ubiquitous surveillance cameras employ the latest facial recognition…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£9.99When Mike Tomkies moved to a remote cottage on the shores of Loch Shiel in the West Highlands of Scotland, he found a place which was to provide him with the most profound wilderness experience of his life. Accessible only by boat, the cottage he…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£6.99Customs play an important part in all societies and offer fascinating insights into a country’s history and culture. Scotland boasts a multitude of unique customs, many of which can be traced back to the times of the Druids, Celts and Romans. This…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£6.99Proverbs, once described as ‘the wisdom of many and the wit of one’, offer unique insights the way of life and the social mores of past generations. This book features an introduction which explores the role of proverbs in Scottish culture and…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£9.99Shortlisted for the The Great Outdoors Awards – Outdoor Book of the Year 2020 Shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature 2020 There are strange relics hidden across Scotland’s landscape: forgotten places that are…
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Hardback | Pub: 18 Mar 2021£20.00In 1995 the National Trust for Scotland acquired Mar Lodge Estate in the heart of the Cairngorms. Home to over 5,000 species, this vast expanse of Caledonian woodlands, subarctic mountains, bogs, moors, roaring burns and frozen lochs could be a…
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Paperback | Pub: 11 Mar 2021£12.99Vibrating with endeavours for Britain’s effort against the might of Nazi Germany, Clydebank was – in hindsight – an obvious target for the attentions of the Luftwaffe. When, on the evening of 13 March 1941, the authorities first detected…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Mar 2021£8.99Stretching for almost 10,000 miles (including numerous islands), the coastline of Scotland is one of the most varied in the world, from beautiful sandy beaches and flower-laden machair to dramatic cliffs and sea stacks. In this book Eilidh Muldoon…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Mar 2021£14.99Shortlisted for the Military History Matters Book of the Year Award, 2020 This is the first modern history for general readers of the entire Jacobite movement in Scotland, England and Ireland, from the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 that drove…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Mar 2021£9.99A Times Bestseller Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing 2020 Desperate to connect with his native Galloway, Patrick Laurie plunges into work on his family farm in the hills of southwest Scotland. Investing in the oldest and…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Feb 2021£12.99In a career spanning forty years, Angus Roxburgh lived and worked in Russia as a literary translator, as Moscow correspondent of the Sunday Times and the BBC, and as a media consultant to the Kremlin. He witnessed Russian history unfolding at first…
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Paperback | Pub: 07 Jan 2021£20.00In 1725 an extensive military road and bridge-building programme was implemented by the British crown that would transform 18th-century Scotland. Aimed at pacifying some of her more inaccessible regions and containing the Jacobite threat, General…
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E-Book | Pub: 17 Dec 2020£6.99‘A fabulous distillation of all the joy and bitterness, hurt and humour of an extraordinary man… I doubt there will be a better written, more interesting or important book published in Scotland this year’ – Daily…
Coming soon
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Hardback | Pub: 06 May 2021£20.00Scotland has its rugged Hebrides; Ireland its cliff-girt Arans; Wales its Island of Twenty Thousand Saints. And what has England got? The isles of Canvey, Sheppey, Wight and Dogs, Mersea, Brownsea, Foulness and Rat. But there are also wilder,…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99In a life stranger than any fiction, Grace O’Malley, daughter of a clan chief in the far west of Ireland, went from marriage at fifteen to piracy on the high seas. She soon had a fleet of galleys under her commander, but her three decades of…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99After giving up a hectic life as a journalist in Europe and Hollywood in the late 1960s to return to his boyhood love of nature, Mike Tomkies moved to Eilean Shona, a remote island off the west coast of Scotland. There he rebuilt an abandoned croft…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99The brainchild of bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith, historian Alistair Moffat and artist Andrew Crummy, the Great Tapestry of Scotland is an outstanding celebration of 420 million years of Scottish history and achievement. Involving a…
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Calendar | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99Following the continued success of the 2021 Scottish Maps Calendar, Birlinn is once again proud to collaborate with the National Library of Scotland. This new calendar features more of the most beautiful maps of Scotland ever made. From the very…
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Calendar | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99The Great Tapestry of Scotland is an outstanding celebration of 420 million years of Scottish history and achievement. Involving over a thousand volunteer stitchers who worked on 160 separate panels, the Tapestry is one of the biggest community arts…
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Calendar | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99This calendar features distinctive full-colour paintings by one of Scotland’s best-loved authors and artists and is a wonderful celebration of the extraordinary natural beauty of the Hebrides throughout the seasons. Mairi Hedderwick’s drawings,…
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Hardback | Pub: 06 May 2021£12.99This hardback desk diary is illustrated throughout with Mairi Hedderwick’s beautiful sketches of the Hebrides through the seasons. Featuring distinctive full-colour paintings by one of Scotland’s best-loved authors and artists, this exquisite…
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Hardback | Pub: 06 May 2021£7.99This hardback pocket diary is illustrated throughout with Mairi Hedderwick’s beautiful sketches of the Hebrides through the seasons. Featuring distinctive full-colour paintings by one of Scotland’s best-loved authors and artists, this exquisite…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 May 2021£12.99The destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 was the largest attack on Britain since World War Two. 259 passengers and 11 townsfolk of Lockerbie were murdered. Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£14.99Red kites were once Britain’s most common bird of prey. By the early 1900s they’d been wiped out in Scotland and England following centuries of ruthless persecution. When some reintroduced kites began roosting on their 1,400-acre farm at…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£9.99The brainchild of bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith, historian Alistair Moffat and artist Andrew Crummy, the Great Tapestry of Scotland is an outstanding celebration of thousands of years of Scottish history and achievement, from the end of…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£9.99In 1971 Alec Crawford is determined to make his fortune from ship salvage. Early attempts lead nowhere until he teams up with a new partner, Simon Martin. Diving in Hebridean waters, they explore remains of the Spanish Armada, and the wreck of the…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£20.00Ian Hamilton Finlay’s garden in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh is widely regarded as one of the most significant gardens in Britain. In addition to being a spectacular example of garden design, it also features almost 300 artworks by Finlay…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£12.99Mairi Hedderwick embarks on a six-month-long journey to 40 islands from Arran to Lewis, recounting her pilgrimage around the archipelago of the Western Isles with which she has had a lifelong love affair. Filled with wit and wisdom that is matched…
We think you might like:
Alistair Moffat
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Paperback | Pub: 08 Nov 2019£9.99
In an epic narrative, sometimes moving, sometimes astonishing, always revealing, Moffat writes an entirely new history of Britain. Instead of the usual parade of the usual suspects – kings, queens, saints, warriors and the notorious – this is a…
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Paperback | Pub: 21 Sep 2017£14.99From the Ice Age to the recent Scottish Referendum, historian and author Alistair Moffat explores the history of the Scottish nation. As well as focusing on key moments in the nation’s history such as the Battle of Bannockburn and the Jacobite…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 Mar 2017£9.99
Hadrian’s Wall is the largest, most spectacular and one of the most enigmatic historical monument in Britain. Nothing else approaches its vast scale: a land wall running 73 miles from east to west and a sea wall stretching at least 26 miles down…
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Paperback | Pub: 20 Mar 2017£9.99History has always mattered to Scots, and rarely more so than now at the outset of a new century, with a new census appearing in 2011 and after more than ten years of a new parliament. An almost limitless archive of our history lies hidden inside…
