Life in the Hills

A collection of memoirs about an English woman and her family giving up city life for the Scottish Highlands in the 1950s.

Katharine Stewart, who died in 2013, was one of Scotland’s best-loved writers on rural life in the Highlands. A Croft in the Hills, her first book, tells the story of how a couple and their young daughter, fresh from city life, took over a remote hill croft near Loch Ness and made a living from it. Full of warm personal insights, good humor and a love of living things, it has become a classic and has rarely been out of print since it was first published in 1960.

This omnibus gathers A Croft in the Hills together with some of Katharine’s later books: A Garden in the Hills, describing a year in the life of her Highland garden; A School in the Hills, a history of the school at Abriachan that eventually became the Stewarts’ family home; and The Post in the Hills, which tells the story of the postal service in the Highlands, from the point of view of Katharine’s later role as postmistress of the smallest post office in Scotland, run from the porch of her Abriachan schoolhouse.

Each of these books glows with what Neil Gunn described as “its unusual quality, its brightness and its wisdom.” The omnibus brings the grace, charm, and wisdom of Stewart’s writing to a new generation of readers.

Praise for Katharine Stewart

“Stewart’s memories are, as she says herself a tale of other times, almost a glimpse of legend . . . Evocative and charming.” —Scottish Book Collector on A Croft in the Hills