Books Archive - Stuart Campbell

RLS in Love: The love poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson

RLS in Love makes a powerful argument for recognising Stevenson as a love poet. This unique anthology reveals a restless man constantly struggling with love and lust, invariably attracted to unobtainable or unsuitable partners, including distant relatives, older married women, servants and prostitutes. The poems are organised to reflect the Read more…

By Stuart Campbell, 5 years15 July 2019 ago

The Aeronaut’s Guide to Rapture

Three people in three countries in three different eras. Ursule in 1864 lives the life of a kitchen skivvy in Paris. Dexter in 1965 is an American GI in Vietnam. Dante in 2015 is a Catholic priest in Palermo, Sicily. For Ursule the Prussians are closing in. For Dexter it’s Read more…

By Stuart Campbell, 8 years19 May 2016 ago

John McPake and the Sea Beggars

John McPake, a former teacher, has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Soon after his marriage fell apart he started hearing voices and eventually moved into an Edinburgh hostel for men with enduring mental health problems. An earlier obsession with the works of Breughel develops into a full blown delusion, and he Read more…

By Stuart Campbell, 10 years19 June 2014 ago

Boswell’s Bus Pass

Armed with a bus pass and supported by a relay team of equally eccentric and badly behaved companions Stuart Campbell follows the bus routes that Dr Johnson and Boswell would have used had they delayed their journey to the Western Isles of Scotland by 238 years. The narrative, strikingly illustrated Read more…

By Stuart Campbell, 13 years27 June 2011 ago

Daniel Defoe’s Railway Journey: A Surreal Odyssey Through Modern Britain

Daniel Defoe’s Railway Journey describes the odyssey undertaken by two eccentric pensioners as they travel on every mile of railway track in the UK. Surreal and poignant by turns, Stuart Campbell describes the people they meet and the unwanted adventures that befall them. He is aided and abetted by the Read more…

By Stuart Campbell, 7 years20 June 2017 ago

The Woman Clothed With the Sun

A fictionalised account of the life of Elspeth Buchan the 18th century Scottish cult leader and religious lunatic who persuaded her obsessed followers to leave their families and homes to join her on her doomed pilgrimage. Elspeth promised them an escape from death and the shackles of monogamy. The Buchanites Read more…

By Stuart Campbell, 2 years10 September 2022 ago

The Diehards

Possibly the world's first novel about the fast-growing sport of walking football; a world-wide phenomenon aimed at encouraging men and women over 50 to return to the sport they loved. Stuart currently play in goal for Drumchapel United over 60s and over 70s in the West of Scotland league and Read more…

By Stuart Campbell, 5 years13 July 2019 ago