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The Bull Calves
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Naomi Mitchison. With an Introduction by Isobel Murray. |
ISBN 9781849210256 |
SERIES The Naomi Mitchison Library |
Paperback 548 pages |
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Published 22 February 2013
UK Price £18.95
US Price $26.95 |
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The Bull Calves was researched and written during the Second World War.
This is very surprising, as Naomi Mitchison was tremendously busy at her home in Carradale, Kintyre, keeping open house for evacuees and refugees, running the farm and driving the tractor, organising the local Labour Party, and writing and producing for the dramatic society - and so on.
She also wrote a diary for Mass Observation, of more than a million words.
But she had to take her time with the novel and plan it more carefully than she usually had time for.
She wanted to give Scotland and the world a message, of the need for peace and working together after a bitter war.
She chose to write about the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745, and set her novel at Gleneagles, on the Highland line, with her characters her own ancestors.
A very personal prefatory poem indicates that the whole operation was very close to her heart, and the ensuing novel is her best historical novel, and still topical today.
Naomi Mitchison [1897-1999] was a literary phenomenon.
Tireless in her writing, unafraid and often highly unconventional in her opinions, she left an extraordinary legacy.
Her novels for adults and children - based on the classical ancient world, and on the immediately contemporary - stressed at different times her deep interest in Scottish and African societies, as well her concerns for the future.
She also wrote poetry and plays, memoirs, a war diary, book reviews, political articles, and many letters.
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© Kennedy & Boyd, an imprint of Zeticula Ltd., Unit 13, 44-46 Morningside Road, Edinburgh, EH10 4BF, Scotland
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