Red Rag to a Bull

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 the return of the native to grapple with the intricacies of farming, conservation and estate management, telling 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 customs. One minute he is unblocking his septic tank, and the next he is watching Glenn Close film a sex scene in his bedroom. The book follows in the tradition of countryside classics by John Lister-Kaye, James Herriott and James Rebanks. Set over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, through the Scottish independence referendum, Brexit and the hunting ban, the result is an enlightened review of the challenges threatening a vulnerable way of life and an emerging philosophy about the directions Scotland, farming and the countryside might take in the brave new world of Brexit.

Jamie Blackett was born in 1964 and 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. Jamie's first book, The Enigma of Kidson, (9781846892653) was published by Quiller Publishing in 2017. Jamie is married with two children.