Book description
‘When I had first come to the Hebrides Morag, my landlady, had advised
me always to “take a rope - in case,” . . . Over and over I had proved
its usefulness. I might need it to catch a calf or a sheep; to carry a
bundle of hay to the cow or a can of paraffin from the grocer; to tie a
bundle of driftwood I had collected, or a sack of peat; to secure a
boat; make a temporary repair to a sagging fence or a halter for a horse
. . . Excepting when they were going on holiday or to church, the Bruach
crofters were rarely without a length of rope, either coiled around an
arm or protruding from a pocket.’
The fourth of Lillian Beckwith’s books on her life on Bruach, A Rope
- In Case
is packed with hilarious stories and delightful characters. Yet it is
never sentimental - always observant.
‘Hugely enjoyable fourth book of Hebridean humour and characters’
Manchester Evening News
Lillian Comber wrote fiction and non-fiction for both adults and
children under the pseudonym Lillian Beckwith. She is best known for her
series of comic novels based on her time living on a croft in the
Scottish Hebrides.
Beckwith was born in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, in 1916, where her
father ran a grocery shop. The shop provided the background for her
memoir About My Father's Business
, a child’s eye view of a 1920s family. She moved to the Isle of Skye
with her husband in 1942, and began writing fiction after moving to the
Isle of Man with her family twenty years later. She also completed a
cookery book, Secrets from a Crofter’s Kitchen
(Arrow, 1976).
Since her death, Beckwith’s novel A Shine of Rainbows
has been made into a film starring Aidan Quinn and Connie Nielsen,
which in 2009 won ‘Best Feature’ awards at the Heartland and Chicago
Children’s Film Festivals.
