The Companion Guide to the West Highlands of Scotland

Abstract

THE COMPANION GUIDE TO THE WEST HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND. By W. H. Murray. Companion Guides (General Editor, Vincent Cronin). London: Collins, 1969. 415 pages; maps, plates. 365 It is obviously a difficult task in one book to include meaningful descriptions of all the coastlands (and nearer islands) from Kintyre to Durness. The solution adopted here is to divide the areas taken into 28 districts, and to devote most of the available space (346 pages) to district-by-district descriptions. Almost all of these are accompanied by simple black and white maps showing the chief hills, watercourses and coastline, the main settlements and significant routes. This generous provision of maps makes the text easy to follow, but unfortunately the necessary brevity of treatment reduces much ofthe description to the level of amplified itineraries for the motorist and walker. Some background information is given which is up to date so far as modern facilities and developments are concerned, and more technical topics such as geology are referred to simply and clearly. On the other hand, the historical background, which is presumably what many people would be specially interested in, suffers severely from compression. It is, for example, highly elliptical to imply that the 'ancient Sutherland family' (Earls of Sutherland) and the 'new English family of Leveson-Gower' (Marquesses of Stafford) had no connection (p. 337), and wrong to suggest that clearances in Sutherland took place only after Lord Gower (later ist Duke of Suther? land) had married the 2nd Countess of Sutherland in her own right, daughter and heiress of the 18th Earl of Sutherland. The main descriptive text is supplemented by a short introductory chapter (pp. 9-14) five appendixes (pp. 363-81), and a good index (pp. 385-415). The appendixes deal briefly with the National Trust for Scotland, especially its Highland cruises, ski-ing and the Scottish Tourist Board, as well as giving a graded list of hotels and a short bibliography. There are also 43 black and white plates. All in all, this is a good introduction to its area for the modern tourist, though the specialist is bound to quarrel with details and those interested in particular districts will ask for much fuller information than could reasonably be expected of this work. P. T. Wheeler