Long Walk Home

First edition of Long Walk Home by Robbie Lawrence (2024)

First impression

One hardback book and one singer-sewn book, both housed in a silk-screened slipcase

In new condition

About

For the past five years Robbie Lawrence has travelled throughout Scotland and the United States photographing the Highland Games. His new book Long Walk Home examines the cultural significance of the traditional community sports tournament and questions the very notion of what it is to be from a place.

“The Games have always interested me, not just visually, but also as a vehicle for considering how we as Scots allow history to inform our modern identity. At first, I struggled to look past the myth-making and nationalism often espoused in the Games. I was trying to document these events objectively, without clarifying with myself how I felt about them. What you see in the pages of these two volumes is an attempt to engage with the myriad of fabricated ideas surrounding the modern Highland Games. Whether on a dusty sports field in Denver or at the local park at Burntisland, the Games is at its core a coming together of friends and family to enjoy sports, dance and music.” - Robbie Lawrence

Presented as a limited edition double-volume publication, including a hard back book of candid images of the Games, and a second Singer sewn volume containing a series of studio portraits of the Games participants, alongside an extended text by award-winning poet John Burnside which teases apart the threads of how Scots and the Scottish diaspora have remoulded the form of the Games to suit their cultural needs.