Isolation Shepherd

By Iain Thomson

In August 1956 a young shepherd, his wife, two-year-old daughter and ten-day-old son sat huddled in a small boat on Loch Monar in Ross-shire as a storm raged around them. They were bound for a tiny, remote cottage at the western end of the loch which was to be their home for the next four years. Isolation Shepherd is the moving story of those years. Set against the awesome splendour of some of Scotland's most spectacular scenery, Iain R. Thomson's classic book provides a sensitive, richly detailed account of the shepherd's life through the seasons and recreates the events that shaped the family's life in Glen Strathfarrar before the area was flooded as part of a huge hydro-electric project.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Birlinn
• Release date: May 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780857900449

Iain Thomson

Iain Thomson was born in Inverness, but was raised and educated near Liverpool. On leaving school in the late 1940s, he returned to Scotland to work on a farm in Aberdeenshire. He is the author of three books, all of them vivid depictions of some of the wildest and most remote parts of the Highlands. He currently lives outside Inverness.

Reviews for Isolation Shepherd

[adb42 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A strangely melancholic read, as Iain R. Thomson tells the story of his life in a remote glen west of Inverness. A way of life lost under the water of the hydroschemes of the mid-20th century.