Halliday Sutherland (1882–1960)

The Arches of the Years was published in 1932, when its author, Halliday Sutherland was 50 years old. It was a best-seller in 1933. Sutherland was a medical doctor and successful author. In his youth he wrote three books in the field of medicine, about birth control and tuberculosis, culminating in the Tuberculin Handbook, published in 1936. In his later years, the 1930s and 40s he wrote several travelogues, about travels to Spain, Ireland, Lapland and the home countries.

The Arches of the Years is a memoir which describes his youth in rural Scotland at the turn of the century: beautiful descriptions of nature and the people with the nostalgic touch of the glance over the shoulder at a world that no longer existed. The writing style of Sutherland reminds of the novels of Hugh Walpole, that popular author of the Edwardian period. Sutherland describes how as a teenager his was lazy at school and his father sent him to relatives in Spain to prepare for his examinations. These descriptions are colourful and full of Spanish caprice as the young Sutherland struggles to learn his first words in Spanish, a lively stay of three months which created a lifelong interest in Spain and successfully prepared him for his examinations, back in Scotland.

The middle section of The Arches of the Years is dedicated to Sutherland's second, longer stay in Spain, as a young man in his mid-twenties. It describes life in Spain at that time, around 1907, and gives very detailed descriptions of the ceremony, rituals and traditions of Spanish bullfighting. The last part of the book describes the author's time in the navy during the First World War, relating various anecdotes and adventures and dangers of the submarine war, and lifting the veil on a German invasion of Britain in 1917.

Halliday Sutherland is quaintly old-fashioned, and some of his jokes are no longer that funny. Incidentally, The Arches of the Years was published in the same year as Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway, and both books describe the Spanish bullfight traditions in a very similar way; Sutherland as a 25-year old in about 1907 and Hemingway two decades later in 1929, aged 30. Born in 1899, Hemingway was 17 younger than Halliday Sutherland. However, written at about the same time, and published in the same year, 1932, Hemingway's prose has held up much better than Sutherland's.

The Arches of the Years is perhaps still of interest to readers who enjoy the style of Edwardian prose, and might like to read about Spain and bullfighting during that period, and an adventurous episode of the naval experience of the Great War.… (meer)

This is an account of a few weeks Sutherland spent travelling across the Hebrides in the late 1930s, and he eventually clarifies that this is not intended as a travel guide. It's more of a trip report and while he takes in most of the Hebridean islands (Rum was still privately owned) he doesn't necessarily take in all the sights. He visits acquaintances and friends of friends; he knocks on croft doors to ask for accommodation and buttermilk; he recounts some religious history and local mythology; and includes any other diversions and conversations that entertained him.

His views are at times colourful (not to mention out of kilter with modern sensibilities) and it's sometimes difficult to tell whether he is deadly serious or seriously tongue in cheek as it's tricky to judge the attitudes and knowledge of the times (for example, he at times opines on something that I know full well to be untrue - but I don't know if this was common knowledge in the 30s). In other places, he's either having a good laugh or was an eccentric gentleman - he devotes some pages to recommending rising early when staying with friends even if it is not your usual habit, in part so they will think you industrious and in part because you will find they adjust their habits to match your supposed habit and make you a cup of tea (...but if you rose at 8 as usual rather than at 6, you wouldn't put them out and they'd still make you a cup of tea!)

This reads much like the 1930s equivalent of a blog - occasionally diverting, sometimes dull, and a bit of a curiosity. I'm glad I read it while travelling the islands it describes.… (meer)