Nairn in Darkness and Light

'Thomson has a Proust-like memory for detail and everything seems to fit the place and time' - Financial Times

The effect might echo Proust, or Alain-Fournier; the tone is completely distinctive

Long matured, an exceptional malt of the mind... David Thomson's book is one that can be returned to time and time again to refresh with its vision and the brilliance of its writing

His writing combines a feel for the "this-worldness" of his characters' lives with an understanding of the "otherworldness" they keep a place for in their consciousness. Which is a way of saying that the stylistic achievement depends upon a deep imaginative sympathy

A brilliantly original mix of love story, memoir and history

David Thomson was born in India in 1914 to Scottish parents, but grew up in Scotland and Derbyshire. He is the author of The People of the Sea, In Camden Town and Woodbrook. He developed a career in writing and at the BBC. He died in 1988.

Set in the 1920s, this marvellously sensitive autobiography recreates the varied community of Nairn, with its fishermen and townsfolk, its crofters and its prosperous upper-middle-classes. Nairn has witnessed many of the triumphs and tragedies of Scottish history, and these are recalled with intuitive understanding. But it is also the scene of David Thomson's formative years when he suffered an eye injury which nearly blinded him and shaped his whole future. 
 
Winner of the McVitie's Prize and the first NCR Book Award For Non-Fiction

David Thomson

A brilliantly original mix of love-story, memoir and history

It remains with one long after the story is told, a haunting sadness, a memory and a dream

Woodbrook is a rare house that gives its name to a small, rural area in Ireland, not far from the old port of Sligo. It has been owned since the seventeenth century by the Anglo-Irish Kirkwoods. In 1932, David Thomson, aged eighteen, went there are a tutor. He stayed for ten years. 
 
This memoir, acknowledged as a masterpiece, grew out of two great loves - for Woodbrook and for Phoebe, his pupil. In it he builds up a delicate, lyrical picture of a gentle pre-war society, of Irish history and troubled Anglo-Irish relations, and of a delightful family. Above all, his story reverberates with the enchantment of falling in love and with the desolation of bereavement.

David Thomson

Praise for Woodbrook

A brilliantly original mix of love-story, memoir and history

It remains with one long after the story is told, a haunting sadness, a memory and a dream

Books by David Thomson

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