This image is the cover for the book Childhood in Scotland, Canongate Classics

Childhood in Scotland, Canongate Classics

This coming of age memoir offers an intimate portrait of 1920 life in a Scottish castle—“like stepping through the looking glass into another world” (Glasgow World, UK).

“When I was a little girl, the ghosts were more real to me than the people…” So begins Christian Miller’s fascinating autobiography of girlhood in 1920s Scotland. Privileged and yet in many ways deprived, Miller grew up the younger daughter and “substitute boy” of her upper-class parents. With perceptive portraits of daily life at her family’s castle in the Scottish highlands, Miller offers readers a rare and personal insight into the last relics of feudal life.

A Childhood in Scotland describes girlhood in a world where shooting came second only to religion, where questions were frowned upon, and reading seen as a waste of time. This edition of A Childhood in Scotland features an informative introduction by Dorothy Porter.

“The book’s fascination lies in its re-creation of life in a big house of the period. This is a book one can live in.”—Daily Telegraph, UK

Christian Miller, Dorothy Porter

Christian Miller, the youngest of a family of six, was born in 1920. Brought up on her father's estate in the highlands of Scotland, she was educated by governesses. After the death of her father, the estate was inherited by her elder brother, and the rest of the family moved to London, where – at eighteen – she became a debutante. During the Second World War, having started as an aircraft fitter working on heavy bombers, she became a technical adviser in the Ministry of Production. She married during the war and had two daughters, and it was not until the 1960s that she started writing, beginning with short stories, which were widely translated. A Childhood in Scotland (1981) first appeared in The New Yorker, and received a Scottish Arts Council Book Award in 1982.

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