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At Birlinn Ltd, we are home to the finest writing from an astonishing list of authors ranging across nearly every subject area from history to sport, fiction to poetry, children’s titles to academic works.
Check out the ON SALE NOW page where we hope to tempt you to try something new. And stop by the LATEST pages for author interviews, extracts, videos, events and more. To keep up to date with all our latest news, scroll down to sign up to the Birlinn newsletter.
There’s always something new going on.
Birlinn – Publishing in Scotland for the World.
BREXIT UPDATE
We have temporarily suspended our deliveries to Europe. As soon as transporting to Europe becomes feasible over the coming months this service will resume.
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£8.99
A SUNDAY POST TOP PICK FOR SUMMER READING ‘I am in awe of any writer who can make you hold your breath on the one hand and laugh out loud on the other. Such is For Any Other Truth’ – Waterstones Bookseller, Horsham When a light…
Latest Releases
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£12.99His name and image are everywhere – from Bank of Scotland fivers to the bizarre monument in Edinburgh’s city centre. Scott-land presumes that the reader will have only a hazy awareness of Sir Walter Scott, and, although Stuart Kelly will…
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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£8.99
In 2016 Scottish writer Iain Maloney and his Japanese wife Minori moved to a village in rural Japan. This is the story of his attempt to fit in, be accepted and fulfil his duties as a member of the community, despite being the only foreigner in the…
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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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Hardback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£100.00The legendary Scottish king Máel Coluim III, also known as ‘Malcolm Canmore’, is often held to epitomise Scotland’s ‘ancient Gaelic kings’. But Máel Coluim and his dynasty were in fact newcomers, and their legitimacy and status were far…
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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…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£14.99Little Wonder tells the epic, and until now largely unchronicled, story of Lottie Dod, the first great heroine in women’s sports. Dod was a champion tennis player, golfer, hockey player, tobogannist, skater, mountaineer, and archer. She was also a…
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Hardback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£14.99‘Deserves to sell like hot cakes’ – Allan Massie, The Scotsman From the Indian Mutiny to the London Blitz, offering a ‘nice cup of tea’ has been a stock British response to a crisis. But tea itself has a dramatic, and often…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£14.99‘It may perhaps interest you if I mention a few figures in connexion with the construction of the bridge. Its extreme length, including the approach viaduct, is 2,765 yards, one and one-fifth of a mile, and the actual length of the cantilever…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£12.99In this new Selected Poems, Kathleen Jamie explores the multi-faceted world of George Mackay Brown’s Orkney, the poet’s lifelong home and inspiration. George Mackay Brown’s concerns were the ancestral world, the communalities of work, the…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£12.99George Mackay Brown was a master of the short story form and produced a steady stream of short fiction collections, starting with A Calendar of Love (1967) and include A Time to Keep (1969) and Hawkfall (1974), as well as his poetry collections and…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£12.99First published in 1969, An Orkney Tapestry, George Mackay Brown’s seminal work, is a unique look at Orkney through the eye of a poet. Originally commissioned by his publisher as an introduction to the Orkney Islands, Brown approached the…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£14.99This is the ideal guide to the whole route, so rich in history and natural beauty. Designed to be used by walkers on the Path or visitors to any point along it, it introduces a wealth of castles, churches, harbours, monuments and red-roofed…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£8.99All over the world people associate the bagpipes with Scotland. In this informative and entertaining book Stuart McHardy introduces Scotland’s national instrument – its history, development and repertoire – and examines the part…
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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 420 million years of Scottish history and achievement. Involving a…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£8.99
A SUNDAY POST TOP PICK FOR SUMMER READING ‘I am in awe of any writer who can make you hold your breath on the one hand and laugh out loud on the other. Such is For Any Other Truth’ – Waterstones Bookseller, Horsham When a light…
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Calendar | Pub: 27 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: 27 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: 27 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…
Current Bestsellers
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Paperback | Pub: 14 Jan 2021£7.99THE JURA EDITION with new introduction by Alex Massie ‘For him Jura was home’ – Richard Blair on his father George Orwell ‘The book of the twentieth century . . . haunts us with an ever-darker relevance’ – Ben…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£9.99‘Hauntingly delicious’ – Sunday Post Bitterhall is a story of obsession told between three unreliable narrators. Daniel, Órla and Tom share a flat and narrate the intersections of their lives, from future-world 3D printing…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Jun 2020£8.99Voted Culture NL’s Book of the Year for 2020 Teenager Alison Doig disappeared from Kinloch over thirty years ago under mysterious circumstances. Her reclusive family still live in a remote part of the Kintyre peninsula, amidst rumours of…
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Paperback | Pub: 05 Apr 2018£8.99No bicycle repair was ever made easier by turning your bike upside down. White shorts are for other people. A helmet perched on the back of your head is perfect if you ride your bike backwards – These and a host of other handy pointers jostle…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£16.99‘one of the year’s most exciting releases’ – The Herald China is building the world’s first digital totalitarian state, a system of hitherto unimaginable social and political control. Internet freedom has been eliminated and…
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Paperback | Pub: 11 Jun 2020£8.99Paul Stewart has returned to Scotland to continue his successful career. His agent and girlfriend, Gloria, has arranged for him to write The Philosophy of Food in Six Easy Chapters, a project he relishes but that will have to be delivered in six…
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Paperback | Pub: 15 Jul 2013£9.99During the first millennium AD the most northerly part of Britain evolved into the country known today as Scotland. The transition was a long process of social and political change driven by the ambitions of powerful warlords. At first these men…
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Paperback | Pub: 10 Sep 2020£14.99The collapse in January 2018 of the construction giant Carillion, outsourcer of huge Government building contracts, is one of the great financial scandals of modern times. When it folded it had only £29 million in the bank and debts and other…
Smashing the Bestseller lists on DAY ONE!
04 Jun ’21
About George: a new film for GMB 100 by Orkney’s St Magnus Festival
18 Jun ’21
The Great Tea Race – Extract from Les Wilson’s PUTTING THE TEA IN BRITAIN
16 Jun ’21
Escape into a Good Book – we can deliver right to your door
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Hardback | Pub: 01 Oct 2020£12.99LONDON, 1942. A killer going by the name of ‘Crimson Jack’ is stalking the wartime streets of London, murdering women on the exact dates of the infamous Jack the Ripper killings of 1888. Has the Ripper somehow returned from the grave? Is…
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Paperback | Pub: 27 Jun 2019£8.99First published in 1973 by the Hogarth Press, Magnus is George Mackay Brown’s tour de force – his most poetic and innovative book. He links the twelfth-century story of the saintly Earl Magnus of Orkney’s brutal murder at the hands of his…
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Hardback | Pub: 02 Apr 2020£20.00In April 1820, a series of dramatic events exploded around Glasgow, central Scotland and Ayrshire. Demanding political reform and better living and working conditions, 60,000 weavers and other workers went on strike. Revolution was in the air. It…
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Paperback | Pub: 14 May 2020£8.99You can’t change your past. You can only use the experiences you live through to make your future better, wiser. Anna and her best friend George meet every week to remember, to sigh, to laugh, to reminisce about their moments of glory, guilt and…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 Feb 2020£12.99Scotland’s history has been told many times, but never exclusively by its women. This book takes a unique perspective on dramatic national events as well as ordinary life, as experienced by women down the centuries. From the saintly but severe…
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Paperback | Pub: 15 Jul 2013£9.99
During the first millennium AD the most northerly part of Britain evolved into the country known today as Scotland. The transition was a long process of social and political change driven by the ambitions of powerful warlords. At first these men…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 Mar 2017£12.99Hadrian’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: 04 Jul 2019£9.99Alone in his kayak, Brian Wilson sets off from the Solway Firth on a 2000-mile odyssey around Scotland’s extraordinarily varied coastline of cliffscapes, unspoiled shorelines, treacherous sea passages and beautiful Hebridean islands. Adventure is…
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Paperback | Pub: 10 Oct 2019£17.99Paul Murton has long had a love of the Viking north – the island groups of Orkney and Shetland and the old counties of Caithness and Sutherland – which, for centuries, were part of the Nordic world as depicted in the great classic the Orkneyinga…
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Paperback | Pub: 09 May 2019£14.99For a few brief months in 2007 and 2009, the Royal Bank of Scotland was the largest bank in the world. Then the Edinburgh-based giant – having rapidly grown its footprint to 55 countries and stretched its assets to £2.4 trillion under its…
