'Quite astonishing. And even the Gaelic names are spelt correctly. The book is in many ways unusually frank and the portraits incisive... neither sentimental nor judgemental, but clear-cut and sensible.' - Iain Crichton-Smith
In 1969 John McPhee, a staff writer on The New Yorker. decided to transport himself and his family across the ocean and to live, for a time, on the tiny Hebridean island of his forefathers. His children enrolled at the island school and the family took up residence in a crofthouse, being accepted readily into the local community. Thus John McPhee, an accomplished author of international renown, came to devote some months to the meticulous study of a distinctive society.
The Crofter and the Laird was the extraordinary result, a work of literary genius. This is not a traveller's tale, nor is it a study of the history or topography of an island; it is instead a perfect mirror of the interactions and relationships of a living and coherent community, one which can be examined and understood only because it is so tightly circumscribed.
The work was first published as a series of articles in The New Yorker and then in book form; since publication in 1970, it has never been out of print in America.
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