Love of Country

"[An] excellent book... [Bunting's] depth of engagement gives authenticity to the writings and substance to the arguments... Almost the perfect marriage of physical travelogue to the inner landscape of political ideas and cultural reflections that makes this such a super read. I cannot think of a more intellectually challenging or rewarding travel book in recent years... Love of Country is in every way a richer, more mature work than Bunting's award-winning 2009 memoir, The Plot. I expect it to bring her prizes and fame -- Mark Cocker * New Statesman * [Bunting's] crisp and luminous prose is the ideal medium to capture the ambiguities and dichotomies of the landscape; between ever-shifting sea and unfathomably old rock... Bunting has a keen eye for a story... [and her] great achievement with this book is to weave these elements together rather than concentrate on particular examples... When writing about the natural world - particularly the ocean - her prose reaches its own kind of lyrical epiphany. It seems to me that if the ""new nature writing"" [...] is to be something more than Fotherington-Thomas from the Molesworth books swooning over tormentil and machairs, then it requires Bunting's engagement with questions of politics, religion history, culture and our emotional responses... [A] splendid, precise and gracious book -- Stuart Kelly * Scotland on Sunday * Rich in detail, richer in writing: the elegiac Love of Country is one of the year's best, taking Madeleine Bunting through her old Hebridean haunts * Wanderlust magazine * A heroic journey that takes us as far into the regions of the heart as into the islands of the north-west -- Richard Holloway Madeleine Bunting's pilgrimages to the farthest edge of Britain are revelations of place, language and perspective - uncovering a world rich in story; a world where the ambitious have often foundered, but where the quietly observant visitor can discover self-sufficiency, in the people, their unforgiving land - and in themselves -- Ted Nield Madeleine Bunting's thoughtful, question-asking journey through the Hebrides makes Love of Country an indispensable guide to the past and present of one of the most inspiring landscapes in Europe -- Ian Jack Madeleine Bunting writes with both heart and brain at full throttle, weaving together history, geography, literature as she travels the islands she has loved all her life. Love of Country is personal, erudite and quirky - through the history of the Hebrides she has hit on an original and timely exploration of what home means, of what Britain was, and what it has become. -- Lucy Kellaway Bunting has expertly combined history, literature and travel in a book that certainly taught me much that I was unaware of about these islands, which lie so close to the Scottish mainland but have a history and identity all of their own -- Russell Leadbetter * National (Glasgow) * In the course of this lively, insightful, highly readable travelogue, [Bunting] blends history, geography, literature and nature writing... A modern pilgrim, one of the overriding interests is politics and especially hot future Britishness must be open to a sense of multiple identities -- Brian Maye * Irish Times * Exquisitely-written * New European * Madeleine Bunting writes evocatively about the Hebrides... The best thing about it is that it made me want to revisit the islands I know, as well as visit the ones I haven't been to yet. The book has a lovely balance of autobiography, literary references, history, politics, religion and culture -- Travel book gift ideas * Guardian *"