Brian McLaughlin on The Death of Hugh Miller

Tickets £3

This is a live, in-person event.

Location: The Edinburgh Bookshop, 219 Bruntsfield Place, EH10 4DH

Local author Brian McLaughlin joins us in the bookshop to tell us all about his novel in 3 parts, An Edinburgh Suicide: The Death of Hugh Miller. In this talk, Brian will relay his findings from researching the life and the mystery behind the death of this influential figure in Scotland's history. 

About the Book:

Hugh Miller - stonemason, pioneer geologist and fossil-hunter, ground-breaking popular science writer, folklorist, crusading newspaper editor and man of faith.  Much has been made of Miller's active participation in geological research, the formation of the Free Church of Scotland, the political debates of his day and his defence of Scottish culture. But he died alone, in many ways an outcast. How did this come about?

Hugh Miller was and is a man revered for his clear-sightedness, his plain-speaking and his unwavering servitude to his faith and the truth. “If Miller says it, it must be true!” cried the legions who read his newspaper, his books on geology and his tales of his own upbringing, where he offered his overcoming of poverty, injustice and prejudice as a spur to the workingman to eschew political action, democracy and trade-unionism. He drew on his labours as a stonemason in the Highlands and in Edinburgh to portray a group of men too debased to be trusted with the vote. At the moment of his widest fame, on Christmas Eve in 1856, aged just 52, this fierce yet gentle, compassionate man, shot himself, leaving a family and a nation bereft. Miller was both a part of and apart from his tumultuous times. Brian McLaughlin’s three-part novel, An Edinburgh Suicide: The Death of Hugh Miller, traces the rise and fall of this fascinaing individual.

About the Author:

Brian McLaughlin was born in Scotland and currently resides in Edinburgh, though he has lived and travelled all over the world, especially in the United States, India, France and Catalonia. He has an Honours degree in English Language and Literature from Edinburgh University, a Ph.d in English from The Pennsylvania State University and a Masters in Communication from the University of Barcelona. He was an English-Speaking Union scholar and was awarded the Gold Medal for European History while at Edinburgh.