The literary legacy of Nan Shepherd - Erland Clouston

Our speaker Erland Clouston, former journalist and respected Edinburgh hotelier, was warmly welcomed by President Rodger. The title of Erlands’s talk was ‘Nan Shepherd, From Flaneur to Fiver’. Erlend is one of Nan’s literary executors and was also a family friend of the acclaimed Scottish Modernist writer, knowing her for the last 35 years of her life and the first 35 of his. At the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August last year, he said that “Nan introduced me to beer, similes, Raymond Chandler – and the secret of her hillwalking success”.

Erland, who we quickly ascertained was a larger-than-life raconteur, used a mix of music, images, video, voice excerpts, objects and personal movement to illustrate the life and times of his subject.

Nan Shepherd’s ‘The Living Mountain’, although completed in 1947, was not published until Nan was 88 and, even then, the cost of publication by Aberdeen University was borne by Nan herself. It became a must read for mountaineers and hill walkers and it was from this exposure that two members of the team tasked with deciding who should appear on new banknote issues successfully nominated Nan to feature on the RBS £5 note. Today the book has been translated into numerous languages including, most recently, Chinese.

Erland’s talk covered a plethora of events, people, old v new comparisons, scandals, times of male dominance, feelings of isolation, aspects of emotion, even the art of slow walking in contrast to life being lived at a faster and faster pace. His fast-moving presentation of Nan Shepherd will surely have stimulated a good number of our members to find out more and maybe to read one of her books.

In his Vote of Thanks to our speaker, Ronnie MacLachlan, used words which surely expressed the collective view of the audience – Wonderful; Entertaining; Fascinating; Riveting….