New Releases and up-dates

We Have Won The Land
John MacAskill
Foreword by Dr Jim Hunter

The story of the purchase of the North Lochinver Estate made world headlines in February 1993. The activities of the momentous months from June 1992 are recorded in this publication. A vibrant and balanced book, using the words of the main players, this is essential reading for historians, lay people and politicians alike. John MacAskill provides a gripping account of developments in Assynt as events lead up to rejection and finally to the winning of the land by the crofters.

John MacAskill signing at Scotbooks with Alex and Agnes Dickson

John MacAskill with Norma MacLeod of Acair publishing

LION OF SCOTLAND
Neil Robinson

ASSYNT, NOVA SCOTIA AND NEW ZEALAND are divided by a waste of sea, yet united by one extraordinary man -the Reverend Norman McLeod. This is the story of the rebel West Highland minister and his forty-year search for a place where he and his followers could live their lives as they wished.

Emigrating with a group of his congregation to Nova Scotia in 1817, McLeod oversaw his small community as it adapted to the harshness of its new home. Thirty-four years later, at the age of seventy-one, he led 800 of his flock to the other side of the world. At Waipu, on New Zealand's North Island, he founded another settlement in which he was all-powerful until his death in 1866.

Although harsh, overbearing and dictatorial, McLeod was also a man of granite-like integrity, extraordinary charisma and sense of purpose who inspired total devotion and loyalty in those who followed him. This book -written by a descendant of McLeod’s colonists - is a skilful and absorbing account of the ‘lion of Scotland’ and the people he led.