Robin A Crawford

We're delighted to announce that we'll be publishing 'predominant nature writer' Jim Crumley's latest book, Symphonic: Harmony in Nature and Why It Matters ✨

Read more here:

saraband.net/2025/09/17/s...

#Booksky
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Thank you to Frazer and everyone who came along to the reading last night. It was a lovely evening. I particularly liked the cross, small schoolboy who came in during the talk to say to his mum in the audience ”You’ve got the key of the house!”

Event at the Birnam Reader Bookshop, 7:30 pm on Thursday 11th September. Station Rd, Birnam, Dunkeld PH8 0DS

A tryst/a ceilidh. “On the bridge over the Inchewan Burn that separates Little Dunkeld from Birnam a plaque marks the traditional boundary of the Highland Gaelic and Lowland Scots languages: allt/burn, Uisge Tatha/River Tay.“ Be braw to meet you at The Birnam Reader Bookshop next Thursday. #BookSky

Thank you to readers, supporters, browsers and friends who came on Thursday evening and made the evening so special not least my bookselling colleagues. Extremely touched.

Audience at event in Toppings bookshop, St Andrews, Scotland for launch of ‘The Sound of Many Waters’ raise their hands to map the river Tay and its main tributaries.

Waving not drowning. “Hold up your hand… if the Tay is the index finger, imagine your thumb as the Isla, flowing in from the east, your middle finger the rivers Garry and Tummel from the north, and from the west the ring finger represents the Braan and the Almond, your pinkie the Earn.” #booksky

Robin A. Crawford on The Sound of Many Waters: A Journey alog the River Tay at Topping & Company Booksellers of St Andrews

Having introduced so many authors as a bookseller I’m looking forward to the official launch of my own book #TheSoundOfManyWaters in the bookshop on Thursday. Do join me if you can. 7:30pm

www.toppingbooks.co.uk/events/st-an...

The reviewer does not only inform the reader but can inspire further creativity:-
“I am browsing the weekend papers, the ‘Culture’ pages,
reading the reviews…

Thank you @blackwells.bsky.social #Edinburgh for your -double- support of #TheSoundOfManyWaters much appreciated. My dad and I used to love discovering wonderful books in all the neuks of the old James Thin’s and it was a real pleasure revisit the South Bridge bookshop with my own son today.

Reviews for ‘The Sound of Many Waters’

Travel through time and space along Scotland's longest river Robin A Crawford's account of walking the Tay from source to sea is like having a local show you around their home river. In 2019, the historian and long-distance kayaker David Gange wrote a book…

The Sound of Many Waters by Robin A Crawford review: 'Puts the Tay at the heart of Scotland's story' Robin A Crawford’s account of walking the Tay from source to sea is an engaging journey through both time and space, writes Roger Cox

Thank you to Roger Cox for his kind and understanding review of #TheSoundofManyWaters in @scotsman.com on Saturday. Thank you for getting it! Extremely touched for my book to be mentioned in the exalted company of #DavidGange and @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social

www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/ou...

In Conversation with Robin Crawford | Events at Waterstones Bookshops | Waterstones Events at Waterstones get you closer to the books and authors you admire most. Find information and tickets about In Conversation with Robin Crawford today.

Do please join me at @waterstones.bsky.social #Dundee on 21st August. “Under Waterstones on Commercial Street… a tide line five feet from the floor encircles the basement offices and storerooms, marking a Tay flood 15 years ago.” Wellies optional.

www.waterstones.com/events/in-co...

…have your heartstrings tugged by the emotional stories of peoples sufferings, soar with the reading of the beautiful poem but when the anti-semitic chants start that is when you leave.

…you had not considered or challenges one you thought you were firm on, ponder on those who make a counter-argument to your pre-conceived ideas, forebear the trite, the trendy, the populist, greet with a wry smile the old saws rehashed from the demos of your youth- “hello pal, awright?”-…

…you most agree with, clap (or if one hand is holding a placard you shoogle it up and down) to show your approval of pertinent points, nod if someone makes a good argument for a view you had not considered or challenges one you thought you were firm on, ponder on those who make a counter-argument…

Of course by attending such a demo you are at the mercy of your fellow demonstrators. Yes, you are anti-Trump but we are each against him in our own individual ways. You admire the banners: that’s a good one, yes, very funny, ouch, naw that’s just rude, that apostrophe! You cheer the speakers that…

From the introduction

Roaster definition from Trump’s 2018 Scotland trip

The source of the placard from my book ‘Cauld Blasts and Clishmaclavers’

Went to the Anti-Trump demo in Aberdeen last Saturday

I Burn But Am Not Consumed: Menie, a portrait of a Scottish Coastal Community in Conflict by Alicia Bruce I Burn But I Am Not Consumed brings together photographs and an archive collated by photographer Alicia Bruce and the residents of Menie, Scotland. The project documents sixteen years of Donald Trump’...

@aliciabruce.bsky.social taking portraits of all of today’s placard and banner makers- continuing her work photographic reportage of Trumps impact on Aberdeenshire started in her brilliant book I Burn But Am Not Consumed. Available here: www.toppingbooks.co.uk/books/alicia...

@ukstoptrump.bsky.social in Aberdeen

Thank you to booksellers Euan, Nick and Richard @waterstones.bsky.social #Perth for your kind welcome and continued warm support of ‘The Sound of Many Waters’, very much appreciated.

Mornings - with Connie McLaughlin - BBC Sounds Connie McLaughlin gets to the heart of the stories making the news.

Thank you to #BBCScotland and Connie for inviting me on today to talk about the river Tay and ‘The Sound of Many Waters’.
You can listen here, begins at 10:13 -

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Publication day!

A river book has many sources. It begins in clouds blown in from far out on the ocean, deposited on mountain top as snow, in sheets of rain on bleak moors, rises up from deep underground caverns. Twists of circumstance, of fate direct its journey. Such vagaries shape its words…

Flotsam by Robin Crawford In this new essay for The Clearing, the author Robin Crawford considers what's left behind by the river Tay: in nature and human history.

Thank you to Jon at @littletollerbooks.bsky.social for publishing this:

www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...

What We’re Reading

My dear bookshop colleagues have started updating our ‘What We’re Reading ‘ blackboard today…

The Sound of Many Waters: A Journey Along the River Tay by Robin A. Crawford With the widest catchment area of any river in Britain, the Tay drains much of the lower Highlands of Scotland. A vast network of lochs and smaller bodies of water feed the rivers Isla, Garry, Tummel,...

Exclusive Toppings fish/ladder stamped signed 1st editions here: www.toppingbooks.co.uk/books/robin-...

Landing in bookshops now. Thank you to my colleagues at Topping & Company in StAndrews and Edinburgh for making it special.

Procida ferry

‘The Buried City’ by Gabriel Zuchtriegel, @hodderbooks.bsky.social Italo Calvino ‘The Narrative of Trajan’s Column’, Letters of Pliny the Younger, Seneca ‘On the shortness of life’. @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social

Topping up my holiday reading with Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante from @pushkinpress.com bought at Nutrimenti bookshop, island of Procida in the Bay of Naples.

The Sound of Many Waters 5 Macbeth’s oak, Birnam MacBeth was king of Scotland from 1040-1057. This ancient tree on the banks of the Tay at Birnam is associated with him. If not planted when the real MacBeth was king, i…

Birnam wood, Glamis, Dunsinane all lie within the River Tay’s catchment. Read more here:

robinacrawford.com/2025/06/05/t...

The Sound of Many Waters 5 Macbeth’s oak, Birnam MacBeth was king of Scotland from 1040-1057. This ancient tree on the banks of the Tay at Birnam is associated with him. If not planted when the real MacBeth was king, i…

Birnam, Glamis, Dunsinane- all lie within the rivet Tay’s catchment. Read more here.

robinacrawford.com/2025/06/05/t...

The Sound of Many Waters 3 Frederick Warne & Co., Penguin Books. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Beatrix Potter based ‘Mrs Tiggywinkle’ on Kitty MacDonald, a washerwoman from Inver on the Tay. One of the many sounds along the river…

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Beatrix Potter based ‘Mrs Tiggywinkle’ on Kitty MacDonald, a washerwoman from Inver on the Tay. Read more here:
robinacrawford.com/2025/05/30/t...