The Hills is Lonely: Tales from the Hebrides
About this ebook
Neither reason applies to Lillian Beckwith, in these classic stories based on her convalescence on an isolated Hebridean island where 'even the sheeps on the hills is lonely'. On the island of Bruach she observes, muses at and joins the native crofters in their unique rhythm of life; where friends fistfight in the evening and discuss bruises the next morning; where the taxi driver is also the lorry driver, coal merchant and undertaker; where the locals don't remove their hats during a funeral so their heads won't get cold; and where the post office's 'opening hours' fit around the daily milking of cows and not the other way round.
In a series of vividly drawn sketches, taking in birth, death, marriage and the seasons of life, Lillian Beckwith's writing is shot through with warm, cosy affection and droll wit.
About the author
Lillian Comber (1916-2004) wrote fiction and non-fiction for both adults and children under the pseudonym Lillian Beckwith. She is best known for her series of comic novels based on her time living on a croft in the Scottish Hebrides.
Beckwith was born in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, in 1916, where her father ran a grocery shop. The shop provided the background for her memoir About My Father's Business, a child's eye view of a 1920s family. She moved to the Isle of Skye with her husband in 1942, and began writing fiction after moving to the Isle of Man with her family twenty years later. She also completed a cookery book, Lilllian Beckwith's Hebridean Kitchen.