A Rope - In Case

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.