Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #182832 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 255 pages

Redmond O'Hanlon, Times Literary Supplement 18.2.2000
"Ian Mitchell has written a bracingly acerbic and enjoyable book, full of barbed surprises, and if even half his accusations are true, every staff member of the hallowed organisations he attacks should read it. And mend their ways."

Michael Wigan The Field August 2000
"After this book the politics of land use and land ownership in western Scotland will never be the same again. It exposes the chasm between local people and the RSPB in a way which cannot be ignored by reformists in the Scottish parliament. Mitchell identifies the point never adequately answered: why should local communities in unchanging places be bound hand and foot by new environmental regulations curbing routine behaviour when it was their traditional management that created these environments in the first place? Mitchell's sharp pen has caused a furore in Scotland."

Peter Marren, British Wildlife April 2000
"Ian Mitchell makes some telling points and I confess I found his book deliciously readable."

Customer Reviews

An illuminating travelogue
I bought this book after a visit to Islay, not sure whether I would read it, the subject matter not being within my normal radar. In the event, it became a pleasurable and informative read. Ian Mitchell's sailing tour around the islands off the Scottish west coast provides a hook for his in-depth investigation of modern issues of land use and ownership in these outlying and sparesely populated members of the British Isles. Many valid points are made, often with an incisive dissection of the views of some of the folk he meets.
By talking to people on both sides of the land issue, Mitchell shows how the lairds of old have been replaced by a new type of landowner, one who matches their predecessors in their ability to stifle the economic development of the islands in pursuit of their own ends. Venting most of his wrath on the RSPB, Mitchell calls into question the real motives behind the cuddly, popular charities and quangos that deal in nature conservancy. He points out how local people are kept under the control of bodies almost invariably headed by people from lands hundreds of miles away. However, it is to Mitchell's credet that the book is not solely a polemic. His explorations bring a multitude of people, places and situations to these pages, exemplified by his story of how one man was able to achieve a repair to a marine engine that an international corporation that built it was unable to perform.

A diatribe with a shaky grasp of its subject
This book is the fruit of three months sailing around the Hebrides with a bilious pen and a chip on the shoulder. These could have been the ingredients for an amusingly barbed look at the targets, echoing that of the famous earlier journey to the region by Samuel Johnson. The targets on this occasion are principally the RSPB and other conservation organisations which, as powers in the land, may well deserve the odd lampoon. Alas, the book is devoid of the humor this would require.

The book makes a number of allegations which are at best matters of opinion, such as the motives of the crofters who bought (partly with state aid) their own island from the previous absentee owner; and at worst founded on ignorance of the subject with which it claims to deal. For example, in a long passage on corncrakes, a type of bird the RSPB is attempting to conserve in the Hebrides, there seems no awareness at all that "threatened species" is a technical term in conservation biology. It has a precise and complex definition, devised by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a body charged with, among other things, categorising levels of conservation risk in a scientific manner. It does not (necessarily) mean "in danger of extinction" - which is the presumption of the discussion - or even "rare". The RSPB description of corncrakes, specifically, as "threatened" is taken from the IUCN official (and internationally recognised) publication on bird conservation and has not been, as strongly implied, invented by the RSPB in order to obtain funding under false pretences.

Further points could be rebutted in detail but would be wearisome so to do; most are based on the implication that the funders of the RSPB are ignorant of facts found in any mainstream book on birds above the field-guide level.

Particularly disturbing to this reader was the merciless and extended ridicule of a insecure young RSPB employee, who is named, for being young and insecure alone in the author's presence. There was no need for this whatever for the purposes of the argument.

Any value this book might have had as a serious contibution to the land use debate in the Highlands and Islands is fatally undermined by ignorance of elementary facts on subjects with which it claims to deal, combined with an unnerving streak of uncharitability.

A travelogue into obsession.
Ian Mitchells travelogue "Isles of the West" is a well written and fascinating insight into contemporary life in the Outer & Inner Hebrides.

He raises pertinant and topical questions about land ownership and nature conservation in 20th Century Scotland. However, his interview style is at best blunt and at times threatening to the poor souls who he accosts in his search for the truth about nature conservation organisations and their activities in the Scottish Highlands. This single minded quest for his version of the truth does eventually get a little wearying, as does his unrelenting free loading from every local and traveller he meets.

Its a pity because the writing style is readable (excessive superaltives apart)and the subject matter topical and relevant.