Book review of 'Insurrection: Scotland's famine winter' in The Herald

Description

Rosemary Goring reviews James Hunter's 'Insurrection': ‘Hunter’s pacily written history turns a telescope on the society and culture, and the economic and political predicament of the [Scottish north]. The facts he produces, and the testimonies from court records, newspapers, first-hand accounts, diaries and letters, make absorbing reading … Is it a coincidence that Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto was written in the same year as the potatoes went away? … Insurrection takes that manifesto’s generalisations and theories and puts a face to them. They stare out from this book – thousands upon thousands of them – gaunt and helpless with hunger.’