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Grampian Curiosities

by Robert Smith

ISBN: 9781841583976
Imprint: Birlinn
Publication Date: Sep 2005
Format: Paperback
Price: £8.99
Stock Status: in stock

This book is packed with strange and extraordinary stories. The Queen’s dwarf who jumped out of a pie and the farm with a museum in its buildings and a ruined castle in its garden - just a few of . Then there are the mysterious lums (chimneys) near Tomintoul and the Aberdeen restaurant that came to be known as ‘the Monkey House’. There is the intriguing story of a bird that wrote a book about the Indian Mutiny, and another tale about the Soos (airships) that operated from Buchan during the First Word War. Then there is a little-known poem about how Aberdeen faced bankruptcy. There was a scandal of another kind when the Great Haircut Riot hit the city and out in the country there were eerie happenings on a farm called Bloody Brae. But on a cheerier note you can laugh at Mr Nisbet’s Twisters, or read about the great Salmon Dinners, or gasp at the sight of a giant on Deeside.

All this, and much more besides, makes Grampian Curiosities the ideal companion to the North-east and a source of fascinating information that has never found its way into conventional history books.

Robert Smith began his journalistic career as a copy boy at the age of fifteen, and would go on to be the longest-serving editor of the Evening Express in Aberdeen. On retiring he became a prolific author of local history and walks in the North-East of Scotland. Robert died in 2008 at the age of eighty-four.

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