Ownership and access in the work of John Muir, John Buchan and Andrew Greig

Abstract

John Muir left Scotland in 1849 for America and became famous for the concept formulated in his book Our National Parks (1901). Issues of access and ownership in the Highlands were the background to a novel by Andrew Greig published in 1996, The Return of John Macnab, which took its title from John Buchan's novel of 1925, John Macnab. A comparison of the two novels reveals not only their historical differences and similarities in radicalism on these issues, but the problem of expressing a connected relationship with a national landscape (that Muir spent his lifetime seeking) when nature cannot be conceived except through the frames of politics and culture. Post-devolution, are these novels little more than historical curiosities today, given that Scotland now has national parks and the granting of a right to roam in 2003? Part of a historical momentum, these novels also explore key class tensions and landscape values for present readers.