WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING...DON'T!
THE ADVENTURES OF AN INTREPID SKYEMAN
BYRUARAIDH HILLEARY
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ISLE OF SKYE: SKIRINISH PUBLISHING
2016
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DESCRIPTION: 1ST EDITION, 8vo format (24 cm), 196pp, Original hardback, with jacket. Many black and white illustrations. Signed by the author.
CONDITION: FINE. A new book, signed by the nonogenarian author to the title page "Best Wishes, Ruaraidh".
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Adventurer, sailor, skier, entrepreneur and former member of the Territorial SAS, Ruaraidh Hilleary has led an exciting life. His Memoirs cover his idyllic childhood in the Isle of Skye in the 1930s, schooldays at Eton during the war, followed by postings with the Scots Guards that included Trieste and the bombed ruins of Cologne. He has canoed the Zambezi river, nearly fallen into a crevasse in the Swiss Alps and experienced the Cresta Run and the bobsleigh in St Moritz, without brakes.
His professional life has been equally intrepid. Ruaraidh sold cutlery in Zimbabwe, insurance in London, smoked salmon in Paris, cashmere in Spain and even Highland Wine in Scotland. He also owned and ran a caravan park near Lossiemouth in the 1970s and has helped develop a fish farm with the Jethro Tull rock star Ian Anderson and a wind farm in partnership with the Edinbane crofters, both in Skye, where he now lives. Ruaraidh’s book documents a life filled with challenges, risks, much laughter and some sadness. Now a well-known, much-loved Skye figure, a father, grandfather and great-grandfather, ‘Whatever you are doing, don’t!’ contains fascinating insights into Scotland’s recent history, as well as reflections on 90 years of a life, in which every minute was lived to the full.
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