Portrait of a Parish, D. Fraser: Hardback: 2nd Edition, 1979: Scottish History

This is the story of St Cyrus, a little windswept parish that slopes down to the cliffs and the sea beyond. Once it had a laird who dabbled in cannibalism. But there have been cannibals elsewhere. It once had a protestant martyr too, who died on the scaffold in Edinburgh. But martyrs were by no means uncommon along the east coast, although he was more thrawn than most. Both were slightly overshadowed by a middle-aged lawyer who went down to the lonely kirkyard at the foot of the cliffs and blew out his brains for love.

You might as, of course, why anyone would write a book about such ordinary places as St Cyrus. There are no gleaming modern factories, no step-and-repeat houses, no roads thronged with cars head to tail, no hurry, no bustle, no population explosion. And yet oddly enough there are folk who say that, once you get there, there is more to be seen in St Cyrus than on the moon or Mars. Some even assert it is more exciting than the average South Sea island, though the sand and the sea are undoubtably colder. You just can't believe all the things people say about St Cyrus.