Birlinn: 208 books

I have always thought Gleneagles is one of the greatest places in the world to play golf' - Jack Nicklaus The Ryder Cup is coming home to where it all began; the 40th staging of golf's showpiece event is returning to Gleneagles, Scotland. Tracing the history of the Ryder Cup back to that famous forerunner...

It is the late seventeenth century and still the movement of the planets remains a mystery despite the revolutionary work of Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei and Tycho Brahe almost a hundred years previously. Edmond Halley - dynamic adventurer and astronomer - seeks the help of Isaac Newton in unravelling...

In the 1980s and 1990s, Serie A was known as ‘Il campionato più bello del mondo’ – the most beautiful championship in the world – and had the highest match attendances in Europe. The stadiums were not only full of people, but full of colour, flags, songs and rituals. Italy hosted World Cup...

When Patrick Gillies graduated from the University of Edinburgh’s distinguished school of medicine with honours in 1890, a high profilecareer as a surgeon lay ahead of him. Any city across the world would have welcomed him, and his university mentors, including the famousJoseph Lister, urged him...

The great travellers of the 17th century – Martin, Penant, Johnson et al – used the word ‘curiosity’ to mean many different things. Theylabelled as ‘curiosities’ people, plants, legends, historical facts and geological certainties. This book follows their example in a 21st centuryjourney...

Enter the locker room: this is a history of the Ryder Cup like you have never experienced it before.From the origin matches that preceded the first official trans-Atlantic encounter between Britain and America at Worcester Country Club in 1927, all the way through to the fortieth installment at Gleneagles...

The Celts and All That is a book bursting with blood-curdling battles and dead important details about the ancient Celts. Everything you need to know about human sacrifice and headhunting is all here - plus a recipe for making your own Celtic bog butter! Packed with incredible illustrations of everything...

Margaret Fay Shaw’s life spans a century of change. Orphaned at 11 she left home and school in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia aged 16, crossing to Scotland to spend a year at school near Glasgow. It was there that her love for Scotland was born. After studying music in New York and Paris, she returned...

Through most of eight hundred years, Somerled of Argyll has been variously denounced as an intractable rebel against his rightful king and esteemed as the honoured ancestor of the later medieval Lord of the Isles, but he can be recognised now as a much more complex figure of major prominence in twelfth-century...

This is a fabulous treasury of legend and wonder; tales of monsters who dwell in lakes, of small people who trap humans in earthen mounds where time stands still; of dark, shape- shifting spirits whose cloak of human form is betrayed by the sand and shells which fall from their hair. In the absence...

Two Men at Once' is one of Norman MacCaig best known poems. He was indeed two men at once: Edinburgh, the city where he was bornand lived as a teacher and poet, was his home, but no other place shaped his poetry more than Assynt in Sutherland. It is here that he wouldspend many a summer on family...

Who was Saint Columba? How did this Irish aristocrat become the most important figure in early Scottish Christianity? In seeking answers to these questions this book examines the different roles played by the saint in life and death, tracing his career in Ireland and Scotland before looking at the...

No bicycle repair was ever made easier by turning your bike upside down. White shorts are for other people. A helmet perched on the back of your head is perfect if you ride your bike backwards - These and a host of other handy pointers jostle for attention within this A - Z guide to being a cyclist....

This brand new anthology is comprised of creative prose, non-fiction and poetry that ranges from St. Columba to the present day, all linked by the isle of Iona. Featuring specially commissioned work by Meaghan Delahunt, Jennie Erdal, Sara Lodge, Victoria Mackenzie, Candia McWilliam, Ruth Thomas, and...