Roger Hutchinson (writer)

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Roger Hutchinson (born 1949)[ citation needed ] is a British author and journalist. Hutchinson was born at Farnworth, near Bolton, in Lancashire,[ citation needed ] but lives on Raasay, off the east coast of Skye.

Contents

Education

Hutchinson attended Bretton Hall College in Leeds to study English. [1]

Career

In the late 1960s, around the time he studied English at Bretton Hall College, he founded and edited 'Sad Traffic', published from a small office in Barnsley, which ran for five issues before morphing into Yorkshire's alternative newspaper, Styng (Sad Traffic Yorkshire News & Gossip). [1] [2]

He then moved to London and edited OZ , International Times and the magazine Time Out . [1] [2] [3]

In the late 1970s Hutchinson moved to Skye to become a journalist on the West Highland Free Press . [1] Since 1999 he has lived on Raasay. [1]

He has also served as editor of the Stornoway Gazette .[ citation needed ]

Books

As of 2017, Hutchinson has written 15 non-fiction books. [2]

Polly, The True Story Behind Whisky Galore (1990) was about the SS Politician, the ship which was wrecked on the Outer Hebrides with a cargo of whisky which inspired the book and film Whisky Galore . [4]

Hutchinson wrote The Real Story of England's 1966 World Cup Triumph ...it is now! in 1995. [5] This book follows the career of Sir Alf Ramsey from his early days in Dagenham through to the 1966 victory.

His book The Soap Man: Lewis, Harris and Lord Leverhulme (2003), was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. [6]

Calum's Road (2006), about Raasay crofter Calum MacLeod who hand-built a road to his croft, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize. [1] [7]

In 2012 Hutchinson published The Silent Weaver, the story of the Uist-raised crofter Angus MacPhee who suffered a schizophrenic breakdown during World War II and subsequently spent 50 years in Craig Dunain Hospital near Inverness where he developed skill in weaving grass taken from the hospital grounds. [8]

As of 2018, Hutchinson's most recent book is The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker: The story of Britain through its Census, since 1801 (2017). [9]

Related Research Articles

Raasay or the Isle of Raasay is an island between the Isle of Skye and the mainland of Scotland. It is separated from Skye by the Sound of Raasay and from Applecross by the Inner Sound. It is famous for being the birthplace of Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, an important figure in the Scottish Renaissance.

Eriskay, from the Old Norse for "Eric's Isle", is an island and community council area of the Outer Hebrides in northern Scotland with a population of 143, as of the 2011 census. It lies between South Uist and Barra and is connected to South Uist by a causeway which was opened in 2001. In the same year Ceann a' Ghàraidh in Eriskay became the ferry terminal for travelling between South Uist and Barra. The Caledonian MacBrayne vehicular ferry travels between Eriskay and Ardmore in Barra. The crossing takes around 40 minutes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Rona</span>

Rona, sometimes called South Rona to distinguish it from North Rona, is an inhabited island in the Inner Hebrides. It lies between the Sound of Raasay and the Inner Sound just north of the neighbouring island of Raasay and east of the Trotternish peninsula of Skye. It has a total area of 930 hectares (3.6 sq mi) and a population of 3.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drambuie</span> Sweet, golden coloured liqueur made from Scotch whisky

Drambuie is a golden-coloured, 40% ABV liqueur made from Scotch whisky, heather honey, herbs and spices. The brand was owned by the MacKinnon family for 100 years, and was bought by William Grant & Sons in 2014.

<i>Whisky Galore</i> (novel) 1947 novel by Compton Mackenzie

Whisky Galore is a novel written by the Scottish author Compton Mackenzie. It was published in 1947. It was adapted for the cinema under the title Whisky Galore!. The book has sold several million copies and has been reprinted several times.

Sir Iain Andrew Noble, 3rd Baronet, was a businessman, landowner on the Isle of Skye and a noted Scottish Gaelic language activist.

SS <i>Politician</i> Cargo ship that operated between 1923 and 1941

SS Politician was a cargo ship that ran aground off the coast of the Hebridean island of Eriskay in 1941. Her cargo included 22,000 cases of malt whisky and £3 million worth of Jamaican banknotes. Much of the whisky was recovered by islanders from across the Hebrides, contrary to marine salvage laws. Because no duty had been paid on the whisky, members of HM Customs and Excise pursued and prosecuted those who had removed the cargo.

A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) is a travel narrative by Samuel Johnson about an eighty-three-day journey through Scotland, in particular the islands of the Hebrides, in the late summer and autumn of 1773. The sixty-three-year-old Johnson was accompanied by his thirty-two-year-old friend of many years James Boswell, who was also keeping a record of the trip, published in 1785 as A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The two narratives are often published as a single volume, which is beneficial for comparing two perspectives of the same events, although they are very different in approach---Johnson focused on Scotland, and Boswell focused on Johnson. In that biography, Boswell gave the itinerary of the trip as beginning at Edinburgh after landing at Berwick upon Tweed, then to St Andrews, Aberdeen, Inverness, and Fort Augustus. From there they went on to the islands of the Hebrides: Skye, Raasay, Coll, Mull, Inch Kenneth, and Iona. Returning to the mainland in Argyll they visited Inverary, Loch Lomond, Dumbarton, Glasgow, Loudoun, Auchinleck in Ayrshire, and Hamilton, and then finished the journey by returning to Edinburgh. Boswell summarised the trip as, "[Johnson] thus saw the four Universities of Scotland, its three principal cities, and as much of the Highland and insular life as was sufficient for his philosophical contemplation."

The Sabhal Mòr Lectures are a series of annual televised lectures held at the college Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Skye, Scotland. The lectures are held in English, but focus on topics related to the Scottish Gaelic language, often with emphasis on related economic or cultural issues. The invited lecturers are sometimes very prominent personalities, and a number of the lectures have been seen as landmarks in the development of Scottish Gaelic policy. The lectures are sponsored and broadcast by STV. Notable speakers over the years have included Mary Robinson, Gordon Brown, Donald Dewar and Jack McConnell.

<i>Whisky Galore!</i> (1949 film) 1949 film by Alexander Mackendrick

Whisky Galore! is a 1949 British comedy film produced by Ealing Studios, starring Basil Radford, Bruce Seton, Joan Greenwood and Gordon Jackson. It was the directorial debut of Alexander Mackendrick; the screenplay was by Compton Mackenzie, an adaptation of his 1947 novel Whisky Galore, and Angus MacPhail. The story—based on a true event—concerns a shipwreck off a fictional Scottish island, the inhabitants of which have run out of whisky because of wartime rationing. The islanders find out the ship is carrying 50,000 cases of whisky, some of which they salvage, against the opposition of the local Customs and Excise men.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calum MacLeod (of Raasay)</span>

Malcolm Macleod, BEM was a crofter who notably built Calum's Road on the Island of Raasay, Scotland. He was Local Assistant Keeper of Rona Lighthouse and the part-time postman for the north end of Raasay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jameson Clark</span>

Jameson Clark was a Scottish character actor who appeared in 22 films and made many appearances on television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Camastianavaig</span> Human settlement in Scotland

Camustianavaig is a crofting township on the island of Skye in Scotland. It is located on the shores of the Sound of Raasay, 5 kilometres southeast of Portree. The Lòn Bàn watercourse flows from Loch Fada to "An Eas Mhòr" below which it is named "Allt Ósglan" and discharges into the sea at Camas Tianabhaig. The stream forms the boundary between the township and Conordan to the south. Ósglan itself is the land on the right bank of Allt Ósglan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isle of Skye</span> Island of the Inner Hebrides, Scotland

The Isle of Skye, or simply Skye, is the largest and northernmost of the major islands in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The island's peninsulas radiate from a mountainous hub dominated by the Cuillin, the rocky slopes of which provide some of the most dramatic mountain scenery in the country. Although Sgitheanach has been suggested to describe a winged shape, no definitive agreement exists as to the name's origins.

Roderick Macdonald, MD, FRCS (1840–1894) was a Scottish doctor and a Crofters Party politician. As a coroner he presided over the inquest of one of the victims in the Whitechapel murders.

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Eilean Fladday is a previously populated tidal island off Raasay, near the Isle of Skye, Scotland.

Calum is a given name. It is a variation of the name Callum, which is a Scottish Gaelic name that commemorates the Latin name Columba, meaning "dove".

Events from the year 1974 in Scotland.

Events from the year 1884 in Scotland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isle of Raasay distillery</span> Scotch whisky distillery

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Two men, one road and a most unusual journey". The Herald. 13 April 2007. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 "Roger Hutchinson". Your Family History. 1 May 2017. Retrieved 14 January 2018.[ dead link ]
  3. Campbell, Duncan (12 February 2001). "'I've had enough of making stuff up'". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
  4. "Whisky Galore Translates Well". Press and Journal (Aberdeen). 16 April 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
  5. Hutchinson, Roger (1995). The Real Story of England's 1966 World Cup Triumph ...it is now!. Mainstream Publishing. ISBN   1-85158-751-9.
  6. "Saltire picks Scottish shortlists". The Bookseller. 8 November 2004. Archived from the original on 9 November 2007. Retrieved 14 October 2008.
  7. Terris, Adam (16 April 2014). "Scottish fact of the week: Calum's Road". The Scotsman. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
  8. "Spaekalation". The Shetland Times. 17 July 2011. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
  9. Moss, Stephen (17 February 2017). "The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker: The Story of Britain Through Its Census – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 January 2018.