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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E-Book | Pub: 18 Sep 2020£6.99Scotland is a land of many languages – Gaelic, Norse, Pictish, Brythonic, Anglo Saxon, Modern English and some from before recorded time. The result for the visitor is a confusing series of overlapping layers of place names, difficult to…
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Paperback | Pub: 17 Sep 2020£9.99Every debate about the Scottish constitution should include the topic of Scottish Home Rule, and if there is to be another referendum in Scotland then Home Rule should definitely be one of the options on the ballot paper. Home Rule is not widely…
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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…
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Paperback | Pub: 03 Sep 2020£14.99In 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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Hardback | Pub: 03 Sep 2020£25.00Firths and estuaries are liminal places, where land meets sea and tides meet freshwater. Their unique ecosystems support a huge range of marine and other wildlife: human activity too is profoundly influenced by their waters and shores. The Solway…
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Paperback | Pub: 13 Aug 2020£9.99Climate change is the greatest challenge to humankind today. While the coronavirus sheds a light on the vulnerability of our interconnected world, the effects of global warming will be permanent, indeed catastrophic, without a massive shift in…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 Aug 2020£12.99This is a new edition of the bestselling guide to this increasingly popular pursuit. Scotland has the best-maintained records and facilities of any country in the world for undertaking family research, and now that the National Archives of Scotland…
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Paperback | Pub: 23 Jul 2020£8.99The ever-expanding world of whisky can be a daunting one, with a deluge of new brands, distilleries and literature on the subject making it all but impossible for the amateur whisky drinker to find their way. Blair Bowman provides a compact and…
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Paperback | Pub: 09 Jul 2020£8.99Ardnish, the Highlands of Scotland, 1944. On his deathbed, Donald John Gillies sends for a priest to hear his last confession. During his 85 years he has witnessed much – world wars, the loss of family through death and emigration, and the daily…
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Paperback | Pub: 02 Jul 2020£8.99The origins of the Scottish clans go back over a thousand years, and for centuries these extended networks of families dominated life in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. The warriors of the clan, fiercely loyal to each other and to their chief,…
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Paperback | Pub: 02 Jul 2020£8.99An essential read for fans of Outlander During the first half of the eighteenth century, Bonnie Prince Charlie and his diehard supporters – the Jacobites – almost changed the course of British history. Their attempts to drive out the house of…
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Hardback | Pub: 21 May 2020£14.99Shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature 2020 There are strange relics hidden across Scotland’s landscape: forgotten places that are touchstones to incredible stories and past lives which still resonate today. Yet why are…
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Hardback | Pub: 21 May 2020£20.00Scotland’s plants define its landscape – from the heather moorlands of its iconic habitats to the weeds and a garden plants of its towns and cities. Plants have shaped the country’s domestic economy and culture over centuries, providing…
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Calendar | Pub: 07 May 2020£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: 07 May 2020£12.99
This 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…
Coming soon
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Hardback | Pub: 08 Oct 2020£20.00Fourteen centuries ago, Irish saints brought the Word of God to the Hebrides and Scotland’s Atlantic shore. These ‘white martyrs’ sought solitude, remoteness, even harshness, in places apart from the world where they could fast, pray and move…
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Paperback | Pub: 05 Nov 2020£20.00Photography was crucial for E. A. Hornel (1864–1933). From 1891 to the end of his career, he built up an extensive photographic collection that was key in making him a successful painter. By analysing this collection, we can examine his ways of…
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Paperback | Pub: 07 Jan 2021£6.99In 1801, some five years after Robert Burns’ death, nine of his friends sat down to dinner in what is now known as Burns Cottage in Alloway to celebrate his extraordinary life and to give thanks for his friendship. Over the years the informal…
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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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Paperback | Pub: 04 Mar 2021£4.99Whether resident or tourist, no-one is spared from the bloodlust of Scotland’s most savage insect . . . The midge does not like sunlight and thrives in the wet, so the Scottish summertime brings perfect climatic conditions for this ruthless wee…
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Hardback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£20.00Greece has its sun-soaked Cyclades and Dodecanese; Scotland its Northern Isles and rain-drenched Hebrides and Ireland the Arans and Skelligs. And what has England got? The isles of Canvey, Sheppey, Wight and Dogs, Mersea, Brownsea, Two Tree and…
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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: 01 Jul 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…
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£14.99£11.99From 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 Jun 2016£7.99
As 8,000 Scottish soldiers, most of them spearmen, faced 18,000 English infantrymen, archers and mounted knights in June 1314 near the Bannock Burn, many would have thought that the result a foregone conclusion. But two days later, the English were…
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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£9.99£7.99History 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…
