How It All Began

Kilchoan Hotel in the late 1960s. Photograph courtesy of Polly Pullar.

As this year’s A Write Highland Hoolie approaches, author and co-founder Polly Pullar reveals the West Highlands inspiration behind Mallaig’s book festival . . .

I had been on the island of Rum with BBC Scotland’s Mark Stephen and we’d gone to see the Manx shearwaters at night. I stayed an extra night in the West Highland Hotel afterwards because Freddy, my son, was scallop-diving at the time and the small boat he was working on was in at the harbour, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to see him.

The next morning at breakfast, Sine Davis, the hotel owner, came over and we got chatting. She knew I was a writer and she told me she was trying to think of ways to extend the season in the hotel. “Have you got any ideas?” she asked.

I wasn’t long back from Wigtown Book Festival and was filled with enthusiasm, so I just casually said, “Why not organise a little book festival?”

Sine just about bit my hand off! She said, “What a wonderful idea. I’d love to do a book festival.” We chatted for a bit and swapped email addresses, and then I went home and never really thought I’d hear any more about it. But it wasn’t long before Sine was back in touch. We met and discussed what we could do, and she said, “Would you organise it?” And although I didn’t know anything about organising book festivals, reluctantly, I said I would give it a go.

For that very first book festival, I had the idea that I wanted to recreate something very similar to the wonderful, almost impromptu events that used to take place in the Kilchoan Hotel on dark winter nights when the wind was howling and people would blow in on the gale. My parents owned the hotel for a few years, and I spent part of my childhood there.

There were wonderful characters in Kilchoan at that time, many of them musical. Not far away there was also the great Fergie MacDonald, and sometimes he would come down the peninsula and when he did, a real skite would develop, either in the hotel or the village hall. What I loved about these events was that people of all ages were involved. There were the farm men in their tackety boots who would sit with their arms folded on the edge and not get up and dance until they had been loosened up by a few drams, and the grannies who used to dance with the children, and the people who’d get up on the stage and perform and sing.

It was just wonderful, and it was very much about the oral tradition, with people chatting to each other and the stories flowing like burns in full spate. I loved it all, particularly the Gaelic singing. So that was the atmosphere I wanted to try to recreate, and Sine agreed totally, as she’d had very similar experiences growing up in Mallaig. And we wanted to somehow incorporate all of that with books and storytelling and people making friends.

That first year, I played it safe, inviting authors that I knew – people such as the wonderful Jess Smith, who I knew would get up and sing, and John Love, who had worked on the Isle of Rum and who was a great fiddle player and a real character as well. It was going to be a one-off, but that didn’t last, obviously!

There were the four of us to begin with – Sine, the wonderful Ann Martin, and the late Deirdre Roberts. We made lots of mistakes that first year, not least trying to do the book sales ourselves. I think we all ended up paying a fortune to osteopaths after humping big boxes of books around! We soon got on board with the wonderful independent Highland Bookshop of Fort William instead, which helped enormously.

One of the things that has made the Hoolie so good right from the start has been the support of Tearlach – Charlie – MacFarlane and his lovely wife Isobel, who knew my parents in Kilchoan. Charlie is probably one of the best storytellers I know, and he is also an exceptional musician. Every year at the Hoolie, he has given us a rendition of the SS Politician. And I think it’s people like Charlie and Isobel, and their son Iain MacFarlane and daughter-in-law Ingrid Henderson, who regularly play for us, who have made the Hoolie what it is. We owe them so much.

We thought about expanding, but if the Hoolie was bigger then I don’t think it would have that same atmosphere. It’s almost like a house party, and it’s amazing how many guests get up after a few drams and have a go at a song or a poem. Often, great talent emerges. It’s the people who make each Hoolie special, and our authors join in, too. It really is a uniquely West Highland take on a book festival.

A Write Highland Hoolie 2025 takes place from November 7-9 at the West Highland Hotel, Mallaig. Full details are available at www.a-write-highland-hoolie.com, where you can also buy event tickets.