The Highland Clearances
Rob Gibson Interview
Join us as Rob Gibson, author of The Highland Clearances Trail takes part in our series of quick-fire Q&As!
What is a quick-fire Q&A?
We have our interviewee pick a number at random (between 1-42) and we ask them the general question listed next to it. Shortly after we switch to asking book-specific questions (1-22), to give you a brief insight into our wonderful writers and their books.
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Have you always wanted to be an author?
I always wanted to record things that I'd seen. And like many young people, I probably wrote some poetry as well. But eventually, it became more like press releases than writing books to start off with.
What are your three favourite books?
I was thinking about that last night. The first one I would say is Andrew Greig's The Return of John MacNab, which although written about the ’90s is reminiscent of the kind of adventures that we had in the 1970s.
The second one is much older than that. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, which was the first in a very long series, but it was the best one because it was the one that told a story about the period of her cousin Salvador Allende being overthrown by the right-wing Putsch. I think it's a really good family story.
And my third favourite… Kapka Kassabova has written several books now and To The Lake, which is the second last one, is a fascinating story about South Macedonia and the whole mess that politics has made with the multicultural nature of people who live around the lake where her granny came from.
What's the most difficult thing about being an author?
I think the most difficult thing is getting started, putting pen to paper. And secondly, having done the research in a fashion that allows you to smoothly develop a particular theme. At the present time, I can tell you that I’m working on an essay that draws on a lot of different sources and I’m finding getting started okay but developing it is more difficult. When you're writing a full-length book, it does take a long time, and it takes a lot of research. So, the most difficult thing is just to keep at it and work steadily.
Where is your happy place?
Probably the Isle of Arran, with which I have family connections. I could name a lot of happy places between the Basque Country, Brittany, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and so on. But at the same time, specifically, I would say that, I've still got friends there and relations, so it has been a part of my life since the very beginning. And I think it's one of these places that I go back to, and very much enjoy being in, that I feel good being in.
I was fortunate as an MSP for Highlands and Islands, to visit many of the islands, from Shetland to Orkney, and down the Western Isles and so on. But my colleague dealt with Argyll islands, first of all, and I didn't get to Islay till near the end of my tenure because I was dealing with land reform things. I have a cousin who was manager at 1970 in Islay and hadn't seen her for 40-odd years.
What's the main message you would like people to take from the book?
The main message is that the Clearances are not in the past, the Clearances have been ongoing for a very long while and are very much ongoing today, if the powers that be cannot reign in the rich climate refugees and the people who want to offset carbon, which is absolutely foolish. So, I think basically, the message of the book is: go and see the places that these things happened and recognise that some of them are actually happening today. And add to the fantastic store of writing there is about the Clearances by reading my book as a guide.
What emotional reaction do you expect people to have to the book?
Mostly it's been very positive. And also one of sometimes close to anger about things that happened in our country. It is better than many countries in the world about the dispossession of people, but the repossession of the land and so on awakens a potentially positive outlook. And so the emotions form the full range, I would say, of what people experience. But to start off with, it’s probably to find out about something they’d wanted to know, and hadn't found elsewhere.
Why did you choose the cover you did?
Well, we chose the cover because it shows a house that's been lived in, in an apparently wild landscape. And that wild landscape is really a landscape that's been lived in for a long while. But because of large land ownership, it's likely that people were forced to leave where they were. And so it's to challenge those people who talk about rewilding, because actually, it's about repeopling. It’s not wild land, it’s Clearances country.
If you were to summarise the book in five words, what would they be?
The first one would be that it's a record. It's a far from complete record, but it's an indicator of places to go and it tells stories. Some of which are not widely known.
Fourthly, it allows people to plan their journey to suit the speed they go at. And finally, it adds to our understanding of our country's past, and how it affects our present.
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