Seton Gordon's Scotland - An Anthology

A century ago, at the time when Seton Gordon was compiling his first book (Birds of the Loch and Mountain which appeared in 1907), naturalists were themselves a rare breed. Hamish Brown, compiler of Seton Gordon's Scotland – An Anthology suggests that 'for the first three decades of the twentieth century Seton Gordon was the only fulltime practising naturalist in Britain'.

Seton Gordon

Gordon had started young – his boyhood hobby becoming first obsession then profession. By the time he headed for Oxford around 1903, he was already an adept photographer and a contributor to various publications. Brown's foreword tells of a correspondent who had been enjoying Gordon's articles for some time and, having arranged a meeting, was surprised to find a teenager and not an elderly, bearded gentleman! But his most creative period was the 1920s and 30s, when he published 16 popular books (with titles such as Afoot In Wild Places and Amid Snowy Wastes) and countless articles on wildlife and landscape. He was a well-known man in his prime (and well-connected, his friends and acquaintances included the Prince of Wales and the Archbishop of Canterbury!), and travelled extensively round Britain (in kilt and bunnet) giving talks and showing his wildlife photography. As Scotland's premier naturalist of the last century, that he is not better known is surprising.

There are many reasons to enjoy his writing – he can be droll, for example when describing an encounter with the Hebridean midge or rather, great swarms of them so tormenting Seton and his wife while on a field trip that they have to take to a boat out onto a loch in order to cook their lunch, and still eat their kippers with a coating of midges. He can be informative – especially in his descriptions of the habits of birds, probably his greatest interest, and eagles in particular (Gordon's only other book currently in print is his study Days With the Golden Eagle). He can also be poetic, without sentimentality, as in a lovely piece on an Autumn day in Skye which was written on the eve of World War II.

The ways of life which Seton Gordon chronicled were already dying away, and with them the lore of the people, a situation which clearly grieved him. The anthology contains some fascinating snapshots of the working lives of Scots up to a century ago: the painstaking harvesting of gugas (young gannets used for food), back-breaking peat digging, the skill of driving the steam train.

Brown created his anthology by reading through all of Gordon's work – some feat, seeing as there are 6000 pages in the books alone – and marking representative and favourite passages. The result is a marvellous book to dip into, with well over a hundred selections ranging from a paragraph or two to a few pages in length. This enthralling collection is an essential purchase for readers with an interest in nature.