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North Coast Diaries

by Frank Bardgett

ISBN: 9781841584881
Imprint: Birlinn
Publication Date: May 2006
Format: Paperback
Price: £9.99
Stock Status: in stock

"A scholarly, detailed, clearly-told account...a touching and memorable revelation" - The Scots Magazine

Between 1909 and 1930, Rev. Alexander Youngson MA JP was minister of the established Church of Scotland at Strathy. Although his ministry attained no national significance in the Scotland of his day it took place in circumstances of lasting historical interest. His diaries provide a valuable insight into Strathy’s society, outlining the growing prosperity, as well as continuing tensions and inequality between landed estate owners and small crofters.

His accounts give evidence of a growing grass-roots democracy, existing alongside the deference given to class, wealth and status. Covering the years 1911, 1912, 1915 and 1919, his records also span the time of the First World War and its influence on a Highland community.

Frank Bardgett, himself a former minister of Strathy, has drawn on other sources, such as local weekly newspapers and documents in local and national archives, to expand on the diary entries and recover a portrait of an almost vanished world: a picture of the people, institutions and daily life of crofting townships on the north coast of Sutherland in the early decades of the 20th century.
    

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