Tag Archives: Books

In My Hands Today…

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The Marmalade Diaries: The True Story of an Odd Couple – Ben Aitken

While hunting for a room in London, Ben Aitken came across one for a great price in a lovely part of town.

There had to be a catch. And there was. The catch was an 85-year-old widow who doesn’t suffer fools.

Full of warmth, wit and candor, The Marmalade Diaries tells the story of an unlikely friendship built during an unlikely time.

One of the pair, a grieving aristocrat in her mid-eighties. The other? A millennial snowflake.

What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go right? Out of the most inauspicious of soils comes a book about grief, family, friendship, loneliness, life, love, lockdown and marmalade.

In My Hands Today…

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The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way – Bill Bryson

How did English, ‘treated for centuries as the inadequate and second-rate tongue of peasants’ become the undisputed global language?

How did words like shampoo, sofa and rowdy (and others drawn from over fifty languages) find their way into our dictionary?

In this revealing and often hilarious book, Bill Bryson examines the mother tongue and explores the countless varieties of English and the perils of marketing brands with names like Pschitt and Super Piss.

With entertaining sections on the oddities of swearing and spelling, spoonerisms and Scrabble, and a consideration of what we mean by ‘good English’, Mother Tongue is one of the most stimulating books yet written on this endlessly engrossing subject.

Bill Bryson’s classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world’s language.

In My Hands Today…

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The Way of the Hermit: My 40 Years in the Scottish Wilderness – Ken Smith, Will Millard

Could you leave behind the bustle of modern society and spend your days immersed in nature? In The Way of the Hermit, seventy-four-year-old Ken Smith recounts a life he has chosen to spend alone with the wilderness.

Ken Smith has spent the past four decades in the Scottish Highlands. He lives alone, with no electricity or running water. His home is a log cabin nestled near Loch Treig, known as ‘the lonely loch’, where he lives off the he fishes for his supper, chops his own wood, and even brews his own tipple. He is, in the truest sense of the word, a hermit.

For the first time, Ken shares the story of his life. From his working-class origins in Derbyshire, to the formative years he spent travelling in the Yukon and finally how he came to be the Hermit of Loch Treig. Looking back through decades of diary entries, Ken reflects upon the reasons he turned his back on society, the vulnerability of old age and the awe and wonder of a life lived in nature. The Way of the Hermit is a humorous, transcendent and life-affirming memoir.

In My Hands Today…

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In the Hide: How The Natural World Saved My Life – Gordon Buchanan

Our estate, Bellsmyre, was built on land claimed from fields – we were at the foot of those rolling Kilpatrick hills, but over the roof of the school you could see more green fields and woods. There was a physical barrier formed by the rest of the estate and the school, but I felt grateful to be on the edge of all that countryside. Even at a very young age, there was a magnetic pull towards what I thought that wild was, or could be. ‘One day, I’m going to walk to those hills and woods,’ I’d think to myself.

Soon, it would become a sanctuary.

Gordon Buchanan is probably the best known natural history cameraman the BBC has ever produced. From wild ‘snow wolf’ packs in Ellesmere and polar bears in Svalbard to leopards in Mumbai and equine therapy in Mongolia, he has filmed in the world’s most far-reaching places for over 30 years. His dedication to his craft means he often spends weeks inside a cramped camera hide, tolerating extreme sleep deprivation and poor living conditions, all in search of that one extraordinary shot.

But dangerous animals were not the only thing he was hiding from.

In the Hide is Gordon’s emotionally honest and raw account of a brutal childhood in Glasgow and Mull, and the escape and solace he found – and continues to find – in the natural world around him. An intimate and inspiring account of resilience in the face of hardship, Gordon shares the story of his lifelong love for nature like never before.

In My Hands Today…

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Ingrained: An Uplifting Memoir about Woodworking and Craftsmanship – Callum Robinson

The eldest son of a master woodworker, Callum Robinson spent his childhood surrounded by wood and trees, absorbing lessons in his father’s workshop. In time he became his father’s apprentice, helping to create exquisite bespoke objects. But eventually the need to find his own path—to chase ever bigger and more commercial projects and establish a workshop of his own—drew him away. Faced with the end of his business, his team, and everything he had worked so hard to build, he was forced to question what mattered most.

In beautifully wrought prose, Callum tells the story of returning to the workshop and to the wood, to handcrafting furniture for people who will love it and then pass it on to the next generation—an antidote to a culture where everything seems so easily disposable. As he does so, he brings us closer to nature and the physical act of creation—and we begin to understand how he has been shaped, as both a craftsman and a son.

Blending memoir and nature writing at its finest, Ingrained is an uplifting meditation on the challenges of working with your hands in our modern age, on community, consumerism, and the beauty of the natural world—one that asks us to see our local trees, and our own wooden objects, in a new and revelatory light.