Books
The Hidden Fires
A Cairngorms Journey with Nan Shepherd
Shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature 2023.
Commended in The Great Outdoors Magazine Book of the Year Reader Awards
“This book will sit comfortably and deservedly on the same shelf as Nan Shepherd’s masterpiece.” Alan Massie, The Scotsman
Elemental, fierce and full of wonder, the Cairngorm mountains are the high and rocky heart of Scotland. To know them would take forever, to love them demands a kind of courageous surrender.
In The Hidden Fires, Merryn Glover undertakes that challenge with Nan Shepherd as companion and guiding light. Following in the footsteps and contours of The Living Mountain, she explores the same landscapes and themes as Shepherd’s seminal work. This is a journey separated by time but unified by space and purpose, a conversation between two women across nearly a century that explores how entering the life of a mountain can illuminate our own. An Australian who grew up in the Himalayas, her early experiences of the Scottish hills and weather left her cold. But gradually acclimatising and with an approach like Shepherd’s, that is more mountain wandering than mountaineering, she discovers the spark that sets the hills and herself on fire. Through Glover’s deepening encounter, the wild majesty and iridescence of the Cairngorms is revealed in this beautiful evocation of landscape, place and identity.
‘Only rarely does one read a book whose quality of distinction is immediately apparent from the first page; Merryn Glover’s The Hidden Fires is not just brave, it is remarkable. Her writing comes at you out of the rock; it recalls some splendid cave painting, telling as much of man as of beast and leaving us in awe of each.’ Sir John Lister-Kaye, FRSGS, OBE
Get the Book
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Any bookshop or library can order it in. Just tell them the title, author and publisher.
I recorded the audiobook for The Hidden Fires in 2024 and it is available from all audiobook sources, including Audible and Spotify.
Reviews & features here
Events here
Cairngorms map here
Scots & Gaelic words here
‘In a New Light’ performance with Hamish Napier here
Formats available: Hardback, Paperback, Ebook, Audiobook
First published: 02/03/23
Published: Polygon Books
"Only rarely does one read a book whose quality of distinction is immediately apparent from the first page; Merryn Glover’s The Hidden Fires is not just brave, it is remarkable. Her writing comes at you out of the rock; it recalls some splendid cave painting, telling as much of man as of beast and leaving us in awe of each."
Sir John Lister-Kaye, FRSGS, OBE
"Hidden Fires is a book about homecoming and homemaking, of noticing and belonging. It is a joyous celebration of the process of finding yourself."
Dr Kerri Andrews, author of Wanderers: A History of Women Walking
The Hidden Fires: "A dazzling adventure into mountain, place and time."
Esther Woolfson, author of Between Light and Storm: Our Lives with Other Species
The Hidden Fires: "Glover writes so well about mountains."
David Robinson, The Scotsman
The Hidden Fires: “This book will sit comfortably and deservedly on the same shelf as Nan Shepherd’s masterpiece.”
Alan Massie, The Scotsman
