STORM'S EDGE: Life, Death and Magic in the Islands of Orkney

From the winner of the 2018 Wolfson Prize, a new history of the Orkney Islands that delves deep into island politics, folk beliefs and community memory on the geographical edge of Britain. Peter Marshall was born in Orkney. His ancestors were farmers and farm labourers on the northern island of Sanday where, in 1624, one of them was murdered by a witch. In an expansive and enthralling historical account, Marshall looks afresh at a small group of islands that has been treated as a mere footnote, remote and peripheral, and in doing so invites us to think differently about key events of British history. Chapters cover the area between Norway and Scotland, the islands of St Magnus, mutation of religion, devilry and witchcraft, revolution, the Earldom and the Kingdom, sin and selkies and arcs of empire. With Orkney as our point of departure, Marshall traverses three dramatic centuries of religious, political and economic upheaval: a time when what we think of as modern Scotland, and then modern Britain, was being forged and tested. A magisterial history, where Britain is a nation composed of many different islands, this book offers a radical alternative, encouraging us to reorientate the map and travel through landscapes of forgotten history. With map of the islands in parishes from North Ronaldsay in the north to John O'Groats, and across firths and the Scapa Flow. 550 magnificent pages with many illustrations and 16 pages of colour photos.