Stonemasons, quarriers, seamen, steam laundry workers, crofters, calico packers, power loom weavers, tinsmiths, gamekeepers, carters, shepherds, coachmen, navvies, domestic servants. These are some of the working people whose lives are uncovered by historian James Hunter when he sets out to explore his own and his wife Evelyn's family background. It is a quest that spans three centuries and much of Scotland.

Many of the lives encountered bring into stark relief the hardship of daily life in times gone by – the women who raise ten or more children; the family that lives in single rooms in a succession of run-down Glasgow tenements; the mother who dies of infection following childbirth; the destitute widow who gets pennies by way of poor relief; and the boy who seeks refuge in an orphanage after being made homeless by his stepmother. Stories of hardship and adversity, yes. But stories, too, of how ordinary women, men and children persevered and got by. The cumulative result is a remarkable tribute to people of a sort who seldom make it – certainly not by name – into standard history books.



James Hunter is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Highlands and Islands. He has written extensively about the north of Scotland and about the region's worldwide diaspora. In the course of a varied career Hunter has been, among other things, director of the Scottish Crofters Union, chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise and an award-winning journalist. His book Set Adrift upon the World (Birlinn 2016) was Saltire History Book of the Year in 2016. He lives in Glasgow.