These Fragments

This is an unusual book about an ancient landscape. Nicholas Goodison walks at Ardtornish on the west coast of Scotland, which he knows and loves. The sights that he records are not the ancient hills, rivers and lochs, the majestic seascape or the everchanging light, but the man-made ephemera that he sees along the paths. They tell a story of agriculture, industry, transport, architecture, recreation and sport; a story too of successive owners, of farm and estate workers, contractors, visitors and holiday-makers. But they tell also a story of decay, as water, wind and weather eat them away, a foretaste of the brevity of man's tenure of a land of unbelievable age. An art historian, the author has an eye for beauty and proportion, and finds it in unlikely objects.