'A Real Rousing Day'

The 1930's Uist Diaries of Dr James Campbell

book launch date: 21st May 2025

This charming and entertaining book, based on diary entries made by Dr James Campbell who made regular visits to Uist and nearby islands in the 1930s, sheds a nostalgic light on a past era. While Dr Campbell’s primary purpose was to indulge his passion for wildfowling, and his shooting records are of great historic interest, he saw himself increasingly as a conservationist and scientist, collecting information and specimens of wildlife in wild places, including uninhabited or by then sparsely populated islands such as Causamul, Wiay, Pabbay, Boreray and Ensay rarely visited by outsiders.

However, the great value of the diaries and the accompanying period photos extends also to Dr Campbell’s accounts of the contemporary customs of human communities in the islands. The world he inhabited was in many ways a relatively privileged one, staying in hotels and shooting lodges and associating with landowners and their factors, but particularly with keepers, ghillies and boatmen. However his observations of rural life, including crofting and fishing, demonstrate a keen interest in the wider social and economic scene of the time. That human world has also changed out of all recognition with demographic, linguistic, and social changes, as causeways have replaced the vagaries of the North and South Fords, and tourism has brought many more visitors to the Outer Hebrides. This book therefore offers a unique and intriguing window into the past.

Pages: 240

Size: 240 x 170 x 20 mm

soft cover