The childhood memoir of a well-known Sutherland man has been published only a few weeks after his death.
William MacKenzie was the former owner of the Cathedral Café in Dornoch, and latterly lived in Brora.
Suffering from cancer, he sadly didn’t live to see the publication of his book ‘Where’s Home? Glimpses of a boy I used to know’.
Published by local company Carn Bren, the book captures a distant way of life on the Kyle of Sutherland in the 1940s and sparkles with the dry wit and humour for which Mr MacKenzie was well known.
When the young William’s father returned from the war, the family moved from Proncy near Dornoch to a cottage near Invercharron farm in Ardgay.
Although as an adult, Mr MacKenzie spent decades away from Sutherland in the West Midlands, the influences of his childhood remained vivid in his mind with the book recollecting the characters, traditions, culture and farming life which surrounded him.
Mr MacKenzie’s son Scott said although his father didn’t talk a lot about his childhood when he was growing up, he knew that he was influenced by Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie.
He said: “He regularly re-read it and saw parallels with his own childhood. What happened then in Gloucestershire was still happening in Highland decades later.”
Mr MacKenzie said his father only started writing in his sixties when he joined the Dornoch writers’ group.
He first produced his memoirs a few years ago- ‘tapping away with two fingers on an old laptop I had given him,” Mr MacKenzie said. “He self-published it on Amazon and sold quite a few copies.”
Silvia Muras, director of Carn Bren Publishing, Ardgay, takes up the story.
She said: “I bought the first edition of his book and I loved many things about it, particularly his slightly humorous style.
“Last winter, Willie started sending articles based on his memoirs to the quarterly magazine Kyle Chronicle, and gradually the idea of releasing a new edition of ‘Where’s Home?’ took form.”
Ms Muras said her protégé was very blunt about his limitations.
Mr MacKenzie was 80 and for two decades had suffered from cancer which had spread to his hip bones and spine, leaving him practically immobile.
Ms Muras said: “While we were working on the book he used to say ‘time is of the essence’.
“In his words: ‘I am simply on pain killers without prospect of improvement so an excitement like this book is bucking me up no end’.
“His emails were delightful -same style as his book- and it was great fun to work with him.”
“As Willie said himself: ‘I have been leafing through the book and from time to time felt a shiver of surprise that I had actually strung some of these words together.’ ”
The book is available in Dornoch Bookshop and on Carn Bren’s website.
