27 JUNE 1987, page 40

Boyhood In Scotland

Alan Bell NAIRN IN DARKNESS AND LIGHT by David Thomson Hutchinson, £12.95 D avid Thomson had some success in mixing the autobiographical and the dis- cursively historical in......

Not A Candle Flame But A Searchlight

Peter Levi THE NEW OXFORD BOOK OF VICTORIAN VERSE edited by Christopher Ricks OUP, £15.95 V ictorian poems are a constant plea- sure, and so numerous that everyone can make......

That's You

It's good to see the gulls back. I felt their lack - like a missing bit of mountain, a mysteriously withered tree - and long to acquire the knack of gull-speak: 'What poison......