The Silver Darlings (Aberdeen)

Neil Gunn’s The Silver Darlings is an epic adventure story, and one of the best loved Scottish novels of the 20th Century. Set in the early days of the herring fisheries around the Scottish coast, it combines human emotion with stormy dangerous seas in the story of a boy growing to manhood, of a man and woman finding love in the face of tragedy, and of a community recovering from the Highland Clearances to forge a new way of life from the forbidding, unpredictable ocean.

This spectacular tale is brought to the stage by the team who brought you Sunset Song, along with award winning playwright Peter Arnott, promising a unique and exciting rendition of a Scottish classic to celebrate the year of homecoming.

Bid to save Shore Cottages

 Building preservation charity The Landmark Trust is appealing for funds to restore The Shore Cottages at Berriedale. Without intervention soon these reminders of a past way of Caithness life will be lost forever.

 The cottages were built around 1800 by Sir John Sinclair to house crofters moved from the Highlands during the clearances. Just like the characters in Neil M Gunn’s The Silver Darlings, fishing provided an alternative livelihood and along the coast men set sail in boats known as ‘fifies’, while the women gutted fish at troughs on the shore. These fisher families’ homes now stand derelict with water pouring through their roofs and the weather driving in through the glassless windows.

For further information on the appeal please click here.