Red Rag to a Bull

Overview

Author Jamie Blackett arrives home from the Army to take over a small family estate on the Solway Firth in Dumfries and Galloway and finds a rapidly changing countryside. In a humorous and occasionally moving tale he describes how he grapples with the intricacies of farming, conservation, and estate management and tells the story of founding a pack of foxhounds and a herd of pedigree beef cattle. Part childhood memoir, part biopic of rural life, readers are transported to a remote and beautiful part of Scotland and acquainted with its wildlife, its people, and its peccadilloes. One minute he is unblocking his septic tank, the next minute he is watching Glenn Close film a sex scene in his bedroom. Set over the first two decades of the 21st century through the Scottish independence referendum, Brexit, and the hunting ban, the result is a tour d'horizon of the challenges threatening a vulnerable way of life and an emerging rural philosophy about the directions Scotland, farming, and the countryside might take in the brave new world of Brexit.

Author Biography

Jamie Blackett was educated at Ludgrove, Eton, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and later Warwick Business School (MBA). After working in South Africa he joined the Coldstream Guards, serving in Northern Ireland, the First Gulf War, Hong Kong, the Falkland Islands, Zimbabwe, and Germany. He returned to his roots in Galloway where he is now a farmer, forester, bed and breakfast and holiday cottage host, gardener and odd job man, and occasional freelance journalist writing on farming and the countryside. He is the author of The Enigma of Kidson.