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: 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. He is a Deputy Lieutenant for Dumfriesshire and a member of the Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland Royal Company of Archers. He is married with two children.

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9781846892882

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Reviews

Blackett has written an entertaining and engaging book on a subject that will resonate strongly with those who live and work in rural Britain. -- Simon Doughty * Guards Magazine * This book should be compulsory reading for all those townies who long to live in the country after a week in a holiday cottage... Wildlife, hunting and much hilarity pack this volume, perhaps best described as James Herriot meets the Irish RM. -- BASC * Shooting and Conservation Magazine * This book is a reflection, by turns poetic and gritty, on two decades of life at what Jamie Blackett calls 'the silage-pit face'... He has to cope with the Scottish Government, unsafe trees and the implementation of the hunting ban. He's literally living the dream, given that dreams are generally odd, disconcerting and irrational, as well as, in recollection, at times very funny... Thoughts that the countryside will mount a civil-disobedience campaign that will leave supermarket shelves empty and make the politicians pay it proper respect are abandoned in favour of muddling on taking 'comfort from the natural world'. Couched in the gentlest of language, this book holds a cri de coeur. -- Clive Aslet * Country Life * In this wonderful, humorous book, beautifully observed and written book, Blackett tells us something of the tribulations of a farmer in these benighted times. -- James Stevens Curl * The Jackdaw * Blackett has written an entertaining and engaging book on a subject that will resonate strongly with those who live and work in rural Britain. If rural Britain is the Bull in the book's title, who is the Red Rag? Well it's the usual roundup of watermelons, whom Jamie refers to as the Axis: the liberal metropolitan elite, the media, Defra, the SNP, the animal rights lobby, the bureaucratic jobsworths, and all those MPs representing urban constituencies. But apart from the occasional rant against the Axis, this book has real merit as a piece of social history. You learn a lot and you can only admire Jamie as he describes, with good humour, his family's tireless work to make ends meet in his Dumfrieeshire estate. An enjoyable book that does so much to educate. -- Paul de Zulueta * Guards Magazine * What a brilliant, enlightening and amusing book, about the real countryside. Jamie Blackett presents the reader with the realities of rural life, hitting nails on the head left, right and centre - and only missing twice. Those with mud on their boots and the countryside in their hearts will love it... Red Rag to a Bull has messages for everybody concerned with rural Britain today. It should be read by politicians, bureaucrats, ramblers, wildlife-lovers, townies, blow-ins and bumpkins like me. What a read! -- Robin Page

Blackett has written an entertaining and engaging book on a subject that will resonate strongly with those who live and work in rural Britain. If rural Britain is the Bull in the book's title, who is the Red Rag? Well it's the usual roundup of watermelons, whom Jamie refers to as the Axis: the liberal metropolitan elite, the media, Defra, the SNP, the animal rights lobby, the bureaucratic jobsworths, and all those MPs representing urban constituencies. But apart from the occasional rant against the Axis, this book has real merit as a piece of social history. You learn a lot and you can only admire Jamie as he describes, with good humour, his family's tireless work to make ends meet in his Dumfrieeshire estate. An enjoyable book that does so much to educate. -- Paul de Zulueta * Guards Magazine * What a brilliant, enlightening and amusing book, about the real countryside. Jamie Blackett presents the reader with the realities of rural life, hitting nails on the head left, right and centre - and only missing twice. Those with mud on their boots and the countryside in their hearts will love it... Red Rag to a Bull has messages for everybody concerned with rural Britain today. It should be read by politicians, bureaucrats, ramblers, wildlife-lovers, townies, blow-ins and bumpkins like me. What a read! -- Robin Page

Blackett has written an entertaining and engaging book on a subject that will resonate strongly with those who live and work in rural Britain. -- Simon Doughty * Guards Magazine * Blackett has written an entertaining and engaging book on a subject that will resonate strongly with those who live and work in rural Britain. If rural Britain is the Bull in the book's title, who is the Red Rag? Well it's the usual roundup of watermelons, whom Jamie refers to as the Axis: the liberal metropolitan elite, the media, Defra, the SNP, the animal rights lobby, the bureaucratic jobsworths, and all those MPs representing urban constituencies. But apart from the occasional rant against the Axis, this book has real merit as a piece of social history. You learn a lot and you can only admire Jamie as he describes, with good humour, his family's tireless work to make ends meet in his Dumfrieeshire estate. An enjoyable book that does so much to educate. -- Paul de Zulueta * Guards Magazine * What a brilliant, enlightening and amusing book, about the real countryside. Jamie Blackett presents the reader with the realities of rural life, hitting nails on the head left, right and centre - and only missing twice. Those with mud on their boots and the countryside in their hearts will love it... Red Rag to a Bull has messages for everybody concerned with rural Britain today. It should be read by politicians, bureaucrats, ramblers, wildlife-lovers, townies, blow-ins and bumpkins like me. What a read! -- Robin Page

Author Information

Jamie Blackett is a former army officer and a farmer on the beautiful Arbigland peninsula on the Solway Firth in Dumfries and Galloway. He is also an award-winning journalist and a regular columnist for the Daily Telegraph, Country Life and other publications. He appears regularly on television and radio as a commentator on politics and rural issues. His first book, The Enigma of Kidson has been adapted for the stage. Land of Milk and Honey is the sequel to his second book, the much-acclaimed Red Rag to a Bull. In 2020 he won the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust award for journalism and his essay has been published in a short book On Wilding. Jamie is married with two grown-up children.

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