Upland by Ian Crofton review: 'a book to savour'

This evocative account of a life spent in the hills is enriched by wide-ranging literary references, writes Allan Massie

Rich in memories and beautifully written, Ian Crofton’s account of a lifetime walking the hills and mountains of Scotland, England and Wales makes for a delightful book, and one of its peculiar pleasures is that the author derives as much enjoyment from small, friendly hills as he does from the grander mountains. That said, the last chapter's evocation of the Cairngorms is splendidly rich and full of good stories, even though, surprisingly, there is no mention of Nan Shepherd, one of the finest writers on that subject. This is unusual, for in general so much of the book is enriched by Crofton’s wide-ranging literary references.

Raised in Edinburgh, Crofton’s first introduction to hill-going was in the Pentlands, which as a boy he walked with his father. When he later left home and headed off to work in London, his father tried to dissuade him, saying there were no hills worth the name there. Well, indeed, he found no great heights, no nerve-challenging walks, but much pleasure in the Chilterns and the Downs of Kent, Sussex and Oxfordshire.

Turnhouse Hill in the Pentland Hills Regional Park near Edinburgh | Roger Cox / The Scotsman

In boyhood, the Pentlands provided an escape from "the drudgery, harsh discipline and lovelessness of school"; half a century later, the Chilterns provided relief from the misery of lockdown during the pandemic.

Hills comfort and enrich the walker. Moreover, wherever Crofton goes he delights in history and poetry, knows too how much that is good may be found in imagination and nostalgia. Quoting lovely verses from Housman's A Shropshire Lad, he remarks that the poet wrote these lines in London and scarcely knew the country he evoked. No matter, beauty lives in imagined memories.

There are of course chapters on the Highlands and they too are good. If I prefer those dealing with hills rather than mountains, I am aware that is not a preference likely to be shared by most of the readers of this book. Still, I prefer the Borders to the Highlands and, in my calf-country of Aberdeenshire have more delight in the Don and its valley than in the Dee.

Memory suggests that I don't need all my fingers to count the Munros I have climbed. This may suggest that I am not the sort of reader for whom this book was written. Yet all pleasure in hills and mountains is offered by memory and imagination as much a by physical experience. Indeed, delight in mountains is a luxury of civilization. The 14th century poet Petrarch is said to have been the first mediaeval man to have climbed a mountain for pleasure - or perhaps for the view, while Dr Johnson thought mountains "horrid".

Ian Crofton | Contributed

Writing about that remarkable Scottish minister, Crawford Tait Ramage, who wandered all over southern Italy recording Roman relics, Norman Douglas said that the author of a good travel book should have a mind worth exploring; well, Ian Crofton has that. He offers a fund of historical as well as topographical knowledge, and his judgements and observations are almost all pleasingly to the point. Any reader will get knowledge as well as pleasure from his book.

Of course it isn't perfect, and is not without fashionable prejudices, mentioning the profits of slavery, deploring landlordism, and so judging the past from the perspective of the present. For my part, I find enough to deplore in our own times: the covering of the hills with plantations of Sitka spruce, for example. But enough carping. This is a book to savour, and one that I'm sure readers will return to again and again.

Upland: A Journey through Time and the Hills, by Ian Crofton, Birlinn, £18.99