Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #231885 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

slightly distasteful
I enjoyed Isles of the West but, at the risk of sounding paranoid, there seems to be a strong anti-English undercurrent in the book. Count the number of times he holds the English accents of his victims up for ridicule. A shame really as the book has a noble purpose and is well-written.

Conservation v locals
For anyone interested in the conflicting priorities of conservation versus simply earning a living from the land, this is a fascinating read. An antidote to the polished PR of the conservation bodies (RSPB, NTS etc etc), Ian Mitchell gives the other side of the story when he sails around the Western Isles of Scotland speaking to crofters, landowners and conservation workers. If you believe the RSPB can do no wrong, this book will not be comfortable reading.

Thoroughly readable, Mitchell's book gets across serious points about lives in remote islands in a suberb way. Read it!

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.