Description

As Chamberlain, or manager, to Sir James Matheson, the then owner of the Island of Lewis, John Munro MacKenzie was the man in virtual control of the everyday lives of its people.

His Diary for the year 1851, when he was half-way through a six-year engagement as Chamberlain, gives a vivid and at times disturbing picture of the issues of the day: the poverty that engulfed much of the populace, the emigration that was seen as one solution, the rigid stratification of the social structure of the mid-nineteenth century. The Diary is published exactly as it was written, and will be a revelation of the recent history of the island and an evocative resonance to the events that helped to shape its present.