Seasons on Harris: A Year in Scotland's Outer Hebrides [Hardcover]

This is a beautifully written book of the highest production standards; classy dustjacket, rich paper, elegant design. No one could deny Mr Yeadon's affection for his Harris acquaintances and occasionally astute insights into their economic and sociological vulnerability. And he turns a lovely sentence.

I was nearing the end of my own 12-year residence on the island of Harris when David Yeadon asked if he could pop by for an interview in May 2004, in connection with the project.

As an author myself (NO GREAT MISCHIEF IF YOU FALL, etc.), I readily agreed. As a working journalist, though (at present, the Scottish Daily Mail), I'm still disturbed how he went about it. First, he turned up (without prior warning) with his wife. Mrs Yeadon is a clever and very worthwhile woman but the two of them deftly flanked me at my kitchen table as if they were CID and I were helping them with their inquiries. It was distinctly intimidating and things went erapidly downhill.

Readers of this book should know that, in the conduct of interviews (at least by my own experience) David Yeadon interrupts repeatedly, without pity and without mercy. Worse: he contradicts - contradicts ruthlessly, incessantly, in an incredibly grand Oxford common-room sort of way - and within ten minutes I found myself controlling my temper with mounting difficulty, especially as Mrs Yeadon stared at me throughout with the glassy eyes of the in-house psychiatrist at a particularly weighty job interview.

Any decent writer knows that you put an interviewee at ease; you don't interrupt; and, if an answer puzzles you, you ask more questions - you don't cackle insanely and ride into the attack.

By the time they left I felt drained and spent and, as I had been scarcely able to get a line in edgeways, wondered whatever material of profit he might have gathered for his book.

I was rather relieved to find nothing of this interview, or any thumb-nail sketch of Wee-Free-Journalist-At-Bay, made it into Seasons on Harris. Indeed, there is one kind reference to me (in august company too) as an island author. And this new book about Harris has, as I said, its merits. But it is David Yeadon's book, it is coloured throughout by the limits of his knowledge, the profound tints of his prejudice and the MidAtlantic grandeur of her personality, and that particularly lets him down in all matters of religion - the Presbyterian faith to which most Harris people adhere being at once incomprehensible and distinctly offensive to him; while entirely and manifestly blind, as a writer, to the constraints of his prejudice.

He also has a tin ear with a dreadful weakness for writing in cod-phonetic "dialect" - Harris folk simply do not talk like this and no decent travel-writer has done this for many years, as the underlying assumption (my subjects have a quaint regional accent, worrthy of comment; I myself have no regional accent) is as risible as it is false. Mr Yeadon has in fact a splendid, booming English accent, somewhere between Victorian actor-manager and the much-loved Basil Brush.

The weakest section of this book is in fact a chapter describing one journey (by way of light relief) to the "Catholic South" of South Uist and Barra: anyone familiar with the genre of Hebridean travelogue (and I have shelfloads of the stuff) can only laugh, because it is so hopelessly unoriginal. Writers have been slagging off Hebridean Calvinism and exalting Hebridean Catholicism and fondly portraying all sorts of supposed, wondrous social and cultural advantages to the latter since Compton MacKenzie was bouncing in his cot. MacKenzie himself, of course; Sir Walter Scott; John Buchan; Ada Goodrich-Freer; F Fraser Darling; Derek Cooper; Lillian Beckwith - purr-LEASE.

Against that, his self-mocking account of a day out fishing for prawns on the MFV HARMONY is a splendid piece of prose, especially if you knew the 2004 crew whom he portrays perfectly, like my good friend Duncan from Luskentyre.

This is by no means a bad book; David Yeadon, outwith his confrontational interviewing mode, is a most affable man, and it's a jolly read. But the purchaser will not learn nearly as much about the Isle of Harris as he will about the jolly-hockeysticks David Yeadon.

An interesting book, spoiled only by the author's use of totally inappropriate dialect. Harris people do NOT say things like "ye ken" - that is Lowland Scots (as found in "The Broons" and "Oor Wullie"!)

This book is utterly delightful, a far cry from the normal travelogue.
The author (a gifted artist) and his wife, spend a whole year living on the Outer Hebridean Island of Harris.
During this time, which is the seasons referred to in the title, they live with and amongst the people of the island.
Together with them the reader makes the journey; sees the landscape; watches the weather; tastes the food; imbibes the 'spirit' of the place.
The local people come alive with the sympathetic descriptions. Their love for, and pride in their island becomes apparent with each chapter.
Anyone who reads this very special book and does not immediately want to visit Harris will have no heart...