A Walk to the Western Isles: After Boswell and Johnson - Softcover

In August 1773, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell undertook a famous trip to the Highlands and the inner Hebrides, an expedition which sowed the seeds for Boswell's later 'Life of Johnson'. In the course of their three months in Scotland they had many curious adventures, argued, talked and reflected. Afterwards, each wrote his own bestselling book of the journey, twin accounts which became classics of travel writing.

Writer and broadcaster Frank Delaney set off to trace their footsteps because 'Dr Johnson had irritated me for years.' Slowly, however, Delaney's irritation gave way to a feeling of deprivation – at his own lack of knowledge of such a towering figure as Johnson, a writer whose eminence has been unchallenged for two hundred years.

With humour, a sense of enthusiastic discovery and his own 'rattle-bag mind', Delaney retraces 'the Scottish jaunt'. The famous pair met lairds and Jacobites and farmers and clergymen and eccentric ladies, and everywhere Boswell recorded the range and brilliance of Johnson's celebrated conversation. Many of the places in which they stayed remain intact; Boswell and Johnson might have passed by last year. In this delightful pursuit, Delaney draws close both to the travellers and to the sites they visited – all the time seeing 'literature's most famous double-act' through fresh eyes. The result is a stimulating and immensely enjoyable account that will inspire many others to go 'after Boswell and Johnson.'

"Entertaining, ironical, witty, high-spirited and appreciative"
JOHN HILLABY

"I commend Delaney's lively account to anyone who loves reading about Boswell and Johnson's glorious expedition"
PAUL JOHNSON, 'Daily Mail'

"Elegant and entertaining ... the next best thing to the journey itself"
IAN BELL, 'Sunday Times'

Novelist, broadcaster and freelance journalist Frank Delaney was born in the south of Ireland in 1942. His radio programmes have included ‘Bookshelf’ and the language series ‘Word of Mouth’ on Radio 4. He regularly appears on TV, having made arts and history documentaries for the BBC, including ‘The Celts’, and features in the ‘Book Show’ on Sky News.