Beatrix Potter’s Scotland (book)

Beatrix Potter’s Scotland  - by Lynne McGeachie: 'You’d never guess it to look at her, but beneath Mrs Tiggy-Winkle’s petticoats, cap and prickly exterior, lies a Scotswoman. And while Peter Rabbit may appear the epitome of a middle-English bunny, he too comes from a Scottish home, while the garden for whose radishes he has a near fatal attraction is as Caledonian as Balmoral. This, and much more, is revealed in a fascinating new book called Beatrix Potter’s Scotland, by Lynne McGeachie. For three months every year, from July to October, until Beatrix was 16, her family rented Dalguise House, a large villa with its own grounds, near Dunkeld. Here the child indulged her passion for animals and plants, and spent happy solitary hours drawing and painting. Potter is now famous for her depiction of woodland creatures, but what McGeachie shows is that many of her characters have their roots in Perthshire soil, sometimes literally. Concise, elegant and intriguing, this sliver of literary history shows, perhaps for the first time, the full extent of the place Scotland played in shaping the imagination of Beatrix Potter. This world-famous author may be indelibly associated with the Lake District, but her earliest inspiration came from Perthshire....' (from Rosemary Goring's review in HeraldScotland).

Paperback 128 pages.