Great Aberdonians: Ian Macpherson (1905-1944): Novelist and memoirist

Dr Tim Baker

When remembered at all, Ian Macpherson is usually discussed in relation to his better-known and like-minded contemporaries Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Nan Shepherd. His works, however – ranging from the pastoral coming-of-age novel Shepherds’ Calendar (1931) to the astonishingly prescient adventure Wild Harbour (1936), as well as his uproarious memoir of life as an Aberdeen fruit merchant Happy Hawkers (1937, co-written with his wife Elizabeth) – display an unusual sensitivity to the relationship between people and the land, and deserve rediscovery.