This is the first book I’ve read by H.V. Morton, and it won’t be the last.

I much appreciate the books of Paul Theroux and felt him to be unrivalled as a travel writer, but after reading the present author, I must state that Theroux has met his match.

Scotland is my home country and I no longer live there, so this book is obviously of great interest to me (Absence makes the heart grow fonder.)

But it was first published in 1929, so H.V. Morton’s trip took place many years ago, much earlier than Theroux’s visit as portrayed in his book “Kingdom by the Sea”.

H.V. Morton was an Englishman. It was his first time in Scotland; he informs us that the Highlands of Scotland were discovered centuries after America, the greater area of the Highlands being “an unknown wilderness”.

The author patently did much research into Scottish history, and avails us of the results of this research in the present book. I learnt much from it.

He enjoyed Scotland and loved the Scots.

His writing is wonderfully eloquent, He quotes various poets, and informs us also of others who have written about Scotland.

He recommends we acquire Walter Scott’s ”Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border” which contains “deathless” ballads.

He quotes “The King sits in Dunfermline town, Drinking the blude-red wine”

The author calls the Border a “queer compromise between fairyland and battle-field".

He tells a story about Bruce’s heart which was buried before the high altar of Melrose Abbey.

Edinburgh is obviously regal, plainly a capital. In his view, it is a “he”, not “she”. It is as masculine as London. (I don’t know if I agree.)

He tells us about Canongate (where I used to live). It forms the main eastern length of the Royal Mile. “Here are the ghosts of Edinburgh, here in these old stone courtyards – It is grey, sinister, mediaeval”

You stand in Canongate aware of many things -- “”those ill-fated, sallow Stuarts with their melancholy eyes, of that unhappy, lovely queen, who still stirs men’s hearts, of John Knox with his denunciatory finger”.

“As you go past the dim wynds -- a man with a limp and a fine high brow goes with you. Walter Scott!” And you may see Stevenson “in a black velvet jacket”.

“There are too many ghosts in Old Edinburgh – trying to drag you into dark, uncomfortable places, attempting to lure you all night long with their story”.

He tells us that the “alleged” portraits of 110 Scottish monarchs in Holyrood Palace are “”fascinatingly bad - this is the worst picture gallery in the world”. Morton states that all the earlier portraits and even many of the names are pure fiction.

He informs us that the Esplanade – the wide parade ground before the Castle gates – is legally on the other side of the Atlantic, it having been declared Novia Scotia territory in the reign of Charles I. This decree has never been annulled.

In a small room in the Castle, Mary, Queen of Scots, gave birth to a son.

But the story goes that the infant born to Mary three months after Riccio was murdered died at birth or soon after and “in order to avert a political crisis” a changeling was substituted who later ascended the thrones of England and Scotland as James I and VI.

James was never sure of his legitimacy.

In 1830 a small oak coffin was discovered behind the wainscoting; this coffin contained the bones of an infant wrapped in a richly embroidered silk covering. Two initials were worked on this shroud and one of hem was clearly the letter J. Was this the body of Mary’s infant and the rightful heir to the throne? If so, who was James VI?

It has been suggested that the changeling was in fact the infant son of lady Ryves, the “wet nurse of the royal infant”. Also, it has been commented on that James VI “departs from the facial characteristics of the Stuarts”. If you compare him with any of his ancestors, you will see that he is different.

“But he bears an astonishing resemblance to John, Second Earl of Mar, whose lifelong friend he was, whose mother, the Countess of Mar, took charge of Mary’s child soon after his birth and until his christening. Did the Countess substitute her second child for that of her royal mistress? If so, James VI was the younger brother of John, Earl of Mar.”

Apparently it has historically been proved that if the substitution took place, Mary never knew. Mary believed to her dying day that James VI was her son.

Two paintings, one of James and one of the Earl of Mar, show an almost exact facial resemblance. “The likeness is so startling that the pictures might be of one man.”

H.V. visits the Castle of Roslin, or all that was left of it. There was the legend of the buried millions said to be lying in a vault beneath the courtyard. The only person who knew the hiding-place was a lady of the house of St. Clair, now dead. If, however, a trumpet blown in the upper apartments is heard in the dungeons, she would appear and lead on to the gold.

H.V. visits the Palace of Linlithgow. In a little turret there Margaret, the Queen of James IV, waited day after day for the return of her husband from Flodden. “James IV, twelve Scottish earls, thirteen lords, five eldest sons of peers, fifty chief knights, and 10,000 men fell at Flodden.”

In another part of the palace is the room in which Mary, Queen of Scotas, ws born. When her father, James IV was told that his child was a “lass” he died of a broken heart, at the age of thirty.

H.V. tells us that a real Highlander is quick to take offence and is a fighter. He is a born aristocrat.

He witnesses a wedding in a hotel lounge.

“In Scotland a marriage can be solemnized anywhere. The declaration of a man and a woman that they take one another for husband and wife is a legal marriage. Hundreds of marriages are held in the hotel lounges of Scotland.” Marriages still take place in Gretna Green.

Outside Forres (on the North coast) is a remarkable monolith over 900 years old, supposed to commemmorate a victory of Sweyn, son of Harald, over Malcolm II.

Another stone near at hand marks the place where the witches of Forres were burnt in olden times.

Forres, though poor in 1809, is now (1929) “one of the snuggest towns you will find in the Highlands”.

He states that Inverness annoys and distracts him, He had thought that Edinburgh was the most romantic city in Scotland, but becomes uncertain. Edinburgh is more magnificent, but Inverness is more romantic. It has “a broad, lovely river that flows through the heart of it”.

Inverness is “the watch-tower of the Highlands. The Castle has an incredible view. The doorkeeper of Inverness Castle turned out to be a “Mr Macbeth”.

He had been warned to note the Inverness accent, He was charmed by the accent of the girl in the reception of the hotel and complimented her on it, only to be told that she was English! He failed to find any beautiful accent in the people of Inverness, and fears that the accent of Inverness has killed itself.

He goes to Culloden and tells us the whole story of the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Culloden, of all the battle-fields known to the author, is ”still drenched with the melancholy of its association: it is the only battle-field I know which contains the graves of the fallen, buried in trenches as they died”.

Ben Nevis is the highest and most famous mountain in the British Isles. It is 4,406 feet in height, or 846 feet higher than Snowdon,

“Every healthy man who visits Fort William climbs Ben Nevis.”” What about the healthy women?

So he climbs it too, Suddenly, he is in a “valley of death”, where nothing grows. There is a cloud far below him. He enters a mist and meets two men, teeth chattering with cold, who tell him it’s only another half mile to the top.

The mist turns to sleet, and the sleet turns to snow. He enters a ruin for shelter and hears a dreadful sound, “an evil, damnable sound”” - it is the sough of wind coming up over the crest of Ben Nevis.

The precipice over the edge of Ben Nevis is 1,500 feet deep. On his way down the mountain he sees a “brilliant panorama of mountains” and a rainbow, and then the sun shines.

H.V. goes by sea to Skye in the Stornoway boat.

“Shaggy islanders walk the forecastle --- They lean on long sticks – and talk in Gaelic about the price of sheep”. (How does he know?)

At the Kyle of Lochalsh he changes to the Skye boat, a paddle steamer.

The captain and his officers read the morning newspapers in English and discuss them in Gaelic - “a live, vivid language”. (I’m sure that now in 2021 no-one would be speaking Gaelic!)

He “feels himself hanging between this world and the next, between past and future, in some stange, timeless interlude”.

He arrives at Portree after dark and can feel the nearness of great mountains, but can see nothing in the mist.

In the morning he sees “a tremendous Vesuvius called Glamaig shot up in the air” - I assume he means a mountain.

When he departs the inn and turns to the right, the sight of the ‘Black’ Coolins hits him like a blow in the face! He has travelled the world but never seen anything like the ‘Black’ Coolins standing “grape blue and still, in morning sunshine”.

These mountains are “the essence of all that can be terrible in mountains”. They have “the fearful mystery of high places”, crved into “a million queer, horrible shapes”. They are “”formed of rock unlike any other rock so that they will never look the same for very long, now blue, now grey, now silver --- but always drenched in mystery and terror”.

H.V. believes that Skye is the strangest place in the British Isles. He has been told of “the hauntedness” of Skye.

All Skye names are a mixture of Norse and Gaelic. It was Viking land in remote ages. “The Viking named the hills, the lochs, and the moournful .”

With his poetic descriptions, the author eloquently depicts for us the sense of mystery and awe he feels when subjected to the Coolins.

The Coolins fascinate and thrill H.V. “They are frightful. They are stupendous.”

Theroux was also fascinated by these mountains, which however he spelt “Cuillins”, which is apparently the correct, or at least modern, spelling.

Dunvegan Castle, the oldest inhabited castle in Scotland, is opened twice a week for those who want to see the Fairy Flag. The flag would save the (Macleod) clan in three great dangers, by being waved. It had already been waved successfully twice.

H.V. visits the pass of Glencoe, where he learns about the terrible massacre in 1691, when 38 Macdonalds were murdered. When an inquiry was made about the massacre, it was deemed “the most foul and barbaric deed in the history of clan murder”.

Rob Roy was the Robin Hood of Scotland and he dies “as recently as 1734”, which in my view is not recent. He is associated with the Trossachs and Loch Lomond. I would have appreciated more information about Rob Roy than was given.

H.V. visits Glasgow, “the greatest, closely-knit community in Great Britain”. “She is the least suburban of all great cities.”

He tells us that Edinburgh is Scottish, while Glasgow is cosmopolitan.

There’s a section about food, mostly haggis and Scotch broth.

There is much about Robbie Burns, whom he calls the most attractive and in some ways pathetic figure in Scotland. He was “the Pan of Scotland”.

To sum up, I would go so far as to call H.V. Morton a brilliant writer; his descriptions are elegant and poetical and steeped with absorbing historical information. If his book has a downside, it may be that he assumes that the reader knows more Scottish history than he or she in fact does.

Also, it is an obvious drawback that the author’s visit took place so long ago; many things will now have changed, though not the history, of course. ( )

HV Morton's In Search of Scotland is one great, near century old, travelogue.

Part history, part experience, part travel diary it gives you a wonderful sense of the atmosphere of the places he visited on his tour of Scotland in 1929. These parts of the book are seamlessly woven together in a compelling and rich narrative that draws you into how things were in days past.

Included are maps of his route and several plates of his photographs recording especially notable places and views such as the Galashiels Memorial.

If the opportunity arose I would certainly travel to Scotland and follow in his footsteps with this book in hand and compare today to how things were nearly a century ago. ( )

I picked up "In Search of England" about 20 years ago from a little shop near the Lake District. Knowing nothing about the book, just being a bit of an Anglophile, I figured this is something for me. Since that time, I have always kept an eye out for more books by Mr. Morton. His writing is just so engaging and endearing, while being delightfully non-PC. His writing, and this book is one of the better ones of his that I have read, certainly make me miss an era that I wasn't even alive to enjoy. ( )

Beautiful sepia photos.