A Walk to the Western Isles: After Boswell and Johnson [Idioma Inglés] - Softcover

This travel book retraces Samuel Johnson and James Boswell's journey through Scotland and its Western Isles in the autumn of 1773. The book tells in some part the history of Scotland in the 18th century and today, of the people of the Highlands and islands then and now, their history, their whisky distilleries, the Loch Ness monster, their literature and songs, their food and hospitality, their lochs and harbours and sea-sounds - all observed via a stream of anecdotes. Johnson's book "A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland" and Boswell's book "Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson" are compared throughout.

In August 1773, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell undertook a famous trip to the Highlands and the inner Hebrides, an expedition which sowed the seeds for Boswell's later 'Life of Johnson'. In the course of their three months in Scotland they had many curious adventures, argued, talked and reflected. Afterwards, each wrote his own bestselling book of the journey, twin accounts which became classics of travel writing.

Writer and broadcaster Frank Delaney set off to trace their footsteps because 'Dr Johnson had irritated me for years.' Slowly, however, Delaney's irritation gave way to a feeling of deprivation – at his own lack of knowledge of such a towering figure as Johnson, a writer whose eminence has been unchallenged for two hundred years.

With humour, a sense of enthusiastic discovery and his own 'rattle-bag mind', Delaney retraces 'the Scottish jaunt'. The famous pair met lairds and Jacobites and farmers and clergymen and eccentric ladies, and everywhere Boswell recorded the range and brilliance of Johnson's celebrated conversation. Many of the places in which they stayed remain intact; Boswell and Johnson might have passed by last year. In this delightful pursuit, Delaney draws close both to the travellers and to the sites they visited – all the time seeing 'literature's most famous double-act' through fresh eyes. The result is a stimulating and immensely enjoyable account that will inspire many others to go 'after Boswell and Johnson.'

"Entertaining, ironical, witty, high-spirited and appreciative"
JOHN HILLABY

"I commend Delaney's lively account to anyone who loves reading about Boswell and Johnson's glorious expedition"
PAUL JOHNSON, 'Daily Mail'

"Elegant and entertaining ... the next best thing to the journey itself"
IAN BELL, 'Sunday Times'