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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Hardback | Pub: 02 Sep 2021£11.99In May 2018 NASA called a press conference to announce the successful test-run of their tiny nuclear reactor KRUSTY (Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology). This revolutionary technology, which runs on heat alone, may have profound…
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Hardback | Pub: 02 Sep 2021£25.00
Neville Chamberlain is remembered today as Hitler’s credulous dupe, the man who proclaimed in September 1938 that the Munich agreement guaranteed ‘peace in our time’. This is a magisterial reappraisal of Chamberlain and his legacy. It reveals…
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Paperback | Pub: 02 Sep 2021£16.99The Deeside Way is a long-distance path running for 66km (41 miles) from Aberdeen, the oil capital of Europe, to Ballater in Royal Deeside in the Cairngorms National Park. Mainly following the course of old Royal Deeside Railway line, it is suitable…
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Paperback | Pub: 05 Aug 2021£17.99Paul Murton journeys the length and breadth of the spectacularly beautiful Scottish Highlands. In addition to bringing a fresh eye to popular destinations such as Glencoe, Ben Nevis, Loch Ness and the Cairngorms, he also visits some remote and…
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Paperback | Pub: 22 Jul 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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Hardback | Pub: 22 Jul 2021£30.00The Great Tapestry of Scotland is an outstanding celebration of thousands of years of Scottish history and achievement, from the end of the last Ice Age to Dolly the Sheep and Andy Murry’s Wimbledon victory of 2013. The 1000+ stitches spent a…
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Calendar | Pub: 15 Jul 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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Paperback | Pub: 01 Jul 2021£14.99
Polly Pullar has had a passion for red squirrels since childhood. As a wildlife rehabilitator, she knows the squirrel on a profoundly personal level and has hand-reared numerous litters of orphan kits, eventually returning them to the wild. In this…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Jul 2021£12.99The Outer Hebrides lie 40 miles to the west of mainland Scotland, forming a barrier to the North Atlantic. Culturally distinct from early prehistory, the islands contain a wealth of historical and archaeological monuments, including the standing…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Jul 2021£12.99
On a hillside near Ballachulish in the Scottish Highlands in May 1752 a rider is assassinated by a gunman. The murdered man is Colin Campbell, a government agent travelling to nearby Duror where he’s evicting farm tenants to make way for his…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Jul 2021£8.99June 1945. Hitler has triumphed, Britain is under German occupation and America cowers under the threat of nuclear attack. In the dead of night, a figure flits through the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, searching for a hidden document he knows could…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Jul 2021£8.99The Great Tapestry of Scotland is one of the most ambitious community arts projects ever undertaken. The brainchild of bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith, historian Alistair Moffat and artist Andrew Crummy, it was created by a team of over a…
Coming soon
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Hardback | Pub: 07 Oct 2021£25.00On this culinary journey through the Highlands of Scotland, award-winning food writer Ghillie Basan meets a host of artisan food producers, farmers, crofters, fishermen and distillers. From the wild glens of the Cairngorms, the bountiful waters of…
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Paperback | Pub: 07 Oct 2021£14.99The 21st century’s own Gin Craze continues unabated, with exciting new crafted gins launched on a regular basis. Most recently, we have seen growing interest in Pink Gins and the development of a range of flavoured gins, not to mention the…
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Paperback | Pub: 07 Oct 2021£12.99Jeda is a girl on the cusp of adulthood, living in Edinburgh; with a white father and a black mother, she feels self-conscious and out of place. Her feelings of alienation allow the stories of the shapeshifting Shadowman, who embodies all that is…
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Paperback | Pub: 07 Oct 2021£14.99Brother and sister Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn enjoyed a rare bond: they were intimate companions and theirs was one of the most significant musical relationships of the 19th century. They shared and commented on each other’s compositions, each…
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Paperback | Pub: 07 Oct 2021£4.99In today’s world of ready meals and snacking, the value of healthy eating has never been more important. Seafood is one of the healthiest things you can put on your plate: fish is good for the heart, improves circulation, keeps your joints…
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Hardback | Pub: 21 Oct 2021£35.00This authoritative, entertaining and eminently browsable reference book, arranged in easily accessible A-Z format, is an absorbing and imaginative feast of Scottish lore, language, history and culture, from the mythical origins of the Scots in…
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Hardback | Pub: 04 Nov 2021£30.00Newcastle has a long and distinguished history through two millennia: a Roman fortress at the eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall; an important centre of monasticism; a ‘royal’ bulwark against attacks and invasion from Scotland; and the…
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
From 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£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: 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…
