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Clap Hands for the Singing Molecatcher

ISBN: 9781841585956
Author: Roderick Grant
Imprint: Birlinn
Publication Date: Apr 2007
Format: PB
Price: £7.99
Stock Status: in stock

‘Absolutely fascinating . . . beautifully written’ – BBC

‘I was captivated . . . Grant’s evocative style, with humour never far away, recalls H.E. Bates and the best of his country writing.’ – Sue Baker

‘A detailed, loving and always interesting recollection of an adventurous Scottish childhood, refreshingly honest about the dawn of sexual awareness’ – Angus MacVicar

’Beg, borrow or buy a copy today, I promise that you will be entranced,’ - Nairnshire Telegraph

'Evocative and lively.' - Scots Magazine

’Vividly paints the sights, smells, events and characters of rural Scotland in such a comedic way that it is hard not to laugh out loud,’ - Press & Journal

Clap Hands for the Singing Molecatcher is both hilarious and deeply moving in its splendid account of the writer’s childhood on a remote country estate in Morayshire in the 1940s and 1950s; a place where isolated hill farms, limitless moorland and the rock-strewn banks of wild, tumbling rivers became the backdrop for a variety of adventures and experiences. Laughter, tragedy and dramatic incident thread their way through the life of a growing boy and the lives of the people he observes.

Roderick Grant’s book is not merely one of nostalgic recall. It is a richly evocative memoir of a time and place when horses still drew ploughs and children walked seven miles or more each day to reach their school; and where shepherd and gamekeeper, farmer and labourer, forester, railway worker, teacher, laird and minister, and their families, were all part of a community, close-knit in its isolation from the changing post-war world.


Roderick Grant was born in Forres, Morayshire, in 1941, where he attended the local academy. He has worked as a forestry worker, a journalist, a newspaper editor, a television presenter, a radio broadcaster, a bookshop manager and a postman. He has also published writing in both Britain and the USA, including short stories and numerous books such as A Private Vendetta, The Clutch of Caution and Strathalder: A Highland Estate (available from Birlinn Autumn 2007).

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