Memoirs of a Spacewoman by Naomi Mitchison

We are just catching up to this wise, complex, lucid mind that has for ninety-seven years been a generation or two ahead of her time.' 'One of the great subversive thinkers and peaceable transgressors of the twentieth century. 'She writes enviably, with the kind of casual precision which. 'Mitchison breathes life into such perennial themes as courage, forgiveness, the search for meaning, and self-sacrifice.' 'No one knows better how to spin a fairy tale than Naomi Mitchison.'

She served on Argyll County Council and was a member of the Highlands and Islands Advisory Panel from 1947 to 1965, and the Highlands and Islands Advisory Consultative Council from 1966 to 1974. Mitchison lived in Kintyre for many years and was an active small farmer. Her books include historical fiction, science fiction, poetry, autobiography, and nonfiction, the most popular of which are The Corn King and the Spring Queen, The Conquered, and Memoirs of a Spacewoman. In the 1960s she was adopted as adviser and mother of the Bakgatla tribe in Botswana.

She was born in and lived in Scotland and traveled widely throughout the world. Naomi Mitchison, author of over 70 books, died in 1999 at the age of 101. She is the author of Mitchison's Ghosts (Humming Earth, 2008), on supernatural and mythical elements in the writing of Naomi Mitchison, and is working on a collected edition of Mitchison's essays and journalism to be published in several volumes by Kennedy & Boyd.

Moira Burgess is a novelist, short story writer and literary historian who lives in Glasgow, but was brought up in Kintyre, the setting of The Big House. Why should there be any difference between them now? Su from the Big House and Winkie the fisherman's son have the same ancestry and their time-travel adventures show that their respective positions have changed back and forth over the years. On another level it is an examination of the social relationships in such a village at the time (it was first published in 1950), and this too is rooted in Mitchison's Carradale life. On one level it is a charming and absorbing fantasy novel with a fairy hill, a Brounie and an enchanted piper all drawn from Celtic myth and legend, set in a West Highland village which is clearly Carradale in Kintyre, Naomi Mitchison's home for many years. The Big House is a children's book with much to say to adult readers.

Memoirs of a Spacewoman by Naomi Mitchison