Journalistic Recollections
Voices of Scottlsh Journalists, personal recollections by Scottish Journalists, compiled and edited by the Trust’s research worker, Dr Ian MacDougal, was co-published with Birlinn Ltd in November 2013 and is available in print and in e-book format for £25 direct from Birlinn.
Twenty-two journalists from throughout Scotland were interviewed, including four women: the earliest started work in 1930 on the Perthshire Constitutional and together their recollections cover most of the twentieth century. Among the papers where the journalists worked are dailies such the Scotsman, the Glasgow Herald, the Aberdeen Press and Journal, the Dundee Courier, the Times, the Guardian, the Daily Express, the Scottish Daily Mail, the Daily Record, the Daily Herald and the Daily Worker. The Sundays represented were the Sunday Express, the Sunday Post, the Sunday Mail and the Sunday Sun, and local weekly papers from the John O’Groat Journal to the Dumfries and Galloway Standard. There are descriptions of what it was like to work on such papers as well as on hours, wages, working conditions, colleagues and on various events, garnished with amusing anecdotes
Bondagers
Bondagers (Tuckwell Press, 2001) presented the recollections of eight women who had worked as bondagers on the farms of south-east Scotland. It has quickly sold out but it is hoped that a reprint will become available before long.
Oh! Ye had to be careful
Oh! Ye had to be careful (Tuckwell Press, 2000) is the edited recollections of eleven veteran workers employed between the 1930s and the 1950s at the former Roslin gunpowder mill and bomb factory in Midlothian, which had flourished for 150 years before its closure in 1954.
Onion Johnnies
Onion Johnnies (Tuckwell Press, 2002) contains the recollections of nine French Onion Johnnies (one of them a woman) who worked in Scotland. Reprinted as ONION JOHNNIES Recollections of Seasonal French Onion Sellers in Scotland (Birlinn Ltd, 2023)
Voices of Leith Dockers
Voices of Leith Dockers: Personal Recollections of Working Lives was published for the Trust by Mercat Press in 2001. It consists of edited interviews with seven veterans.
A reviewer in the journal Contemporary British History wrote,”Historians should be grateful for projects that preserve the past in this way. But this book deserves a wider audience, for it depicts the world of hard manual labour, practical skills, closed shops and tough but hard-won trade-union power. It is a world that we have lost but should not forget if we want to understand the regional and class divisions that continue to fracture British society.”
Miners’ Association Minutes 1894-1918
Mid and East Lothian Miners’ Association Minutes, 1894-1918 were published by the Trust in 2004 in association with the Scottish History Society. They are among the earliest known surviving minutes of any miners’ union in Scotland and the first of any trade union to be published in full.
Lewis in the Passing
Calum Ferguson’s Lewis in the Passing: Twentieth Century Autobiographical Sketches was published by Birlinn in 2007. After retiring from a distinguished career as a teacher and then with the BBC. Calum Ferguson, between 1989 and 2003, conducted interviews with twenty-one people who have spent most of their lives on Lewis, all born before the second world war. Some of the interviews were in Gaelic for which there are parallel translations.
Through the Mill
Through the Mill: personal recollections by veteran men and women papermill workers in Penicuik and Auchendinny. Compiled and edited by Ian MacDougall and published by the Trust in 2009.
In their own recorded words, veteran men and women papermill workers of Penicuik and Auchendinny speak of what it was like to work in one or other of the three papermills there, the last of which closed in 2004.
Voices of Scottish Librarians
This collection, based on interviews with 14 librarians and other library staff working in Scotland in the twentieth century, tells the stories of their working lives, explaining how libraries developed from the difficulties of the inter-war period and the austerity following the Second World War to become a well-used and important feature of local communities, committed to delivering an expanding range of public services.. Charting the evolution of librarianship, the book reveals how our libraries have served society for generations and confirms Andrew Carnegie’s belief that public libraries are one of the most potent agencies for good.
https://www.birlinn.co.uk/Voices-of-Scottish-Librarians
Border Mills
The Trust’s latest publication edited from the late Ian MacDougall’s interviews with Peeblesshire Textile Workers has just been published. To buy your copy please go to:
https://shop.nms.ac.uk/collections/books-scotland/products/border-mills-lives-of-peeblesshire-textile-workers