THE Scottish philosopher who inspired Tony Blair may also be the reason Nan Shepherd tried to find solace in the Cairngorms.
That’s one of the theories expressed in a new play about the author of The Living Mountain, which has been hailed as “one of the finest books ever written on landscape and nature in Britain”.
The play by award-winning Firebrand Theatre Company, which opened in co-production with Pitlochry Festival Theatre this weekend, also explains how Shepherd was at the heart of the famous Scottish literary renaissance of the 1930s but, because she was a woman in a man’s world, came to live much of her life in obscurity.
“Our research also newly reveals how a bruising, unrequited love affair with her best friend’s husband – the free-thinking philosopher John Macmurray – may have inspired Nan’s solitary journey into the mountains,” said co-writer Ellie Zeegen.
“Here, through communing with the landscape, she finally gained the thrilling insight to surmount all these personal obstacles.”
Zeegen, along with Firebrand Theatre Company director Richard Baron worked with researcher Dr Kerri Andrews to produce Nan Shepherd: Naked And Unashamed.
The play comes after the success of Firebrand’s successful podcast series, A Journey With Nan Shepherd, in 2022.
“We have found out new things since then to tell Nan’s story and we thought it would be great if the public could actually meet her in person in a way,” said Baron.
“And you hear this love story that underpinned her life which was a sort of forbidden love she had with her best friend’s husband, John Macmurray.
“We think Nan first met him when she was a teenager and they had a friendship but he married her best friend from school. Nan fell very much in love with him but he took a job in South Africa and took his wife with him.
“Nan was left forlorn but found solace and a love story with nature and communed with that. Her love affair with the mountain sort of supplanted her love for Macmurray in a way.”
The play also explores why, after writing three novels in five years, Shepherd gave up fiction and locked her manuscript of The Living Mountain in a drawer for 30 years before self-publishing it towards the end of her life.
“The three novels she wrote in the late 1920s and 30s are very much about female characters and the way they relate to the land,” said Baron.
“There is quite a lot of Doric in them so it was a ground-breaking form of Scottish literature she was creating. Lewis Grassic Gibbon wrote his Sunset Song trilogy after Nan had written her trilogy and then he gave her a terrible review which seems to have stopped her writing.
“She seems to have been rather prevented from flourishing as an artist by a lot of male characters in her life, including the publishers at the time who were all male and who were mostly based in London. It was therefore difficult if you were writing a Scottish book in the Doric dialect.
“That all comes up in the play as well as her literary relationship with the successful Highland writer Neil Gunn who was very much a mentor to her.”
Fortunately, Shepherd did seem to find fulfilment, not only in communing with nature but also through her teaching methods – which were rather unconventional.
“She was a Jean Brodie style character and gave her pupils the full uncensored version of books including all the ‘dirty bits’,” said Baron.
“She also told her pupils they would get full marks just by attending the class and contributing to lessons. She did not believe in exams.”
Baron believes one of the reasons Shepherd remained unmarried was because she didn’t want to give up teaching.
“In those days, if a female teacher got married, they had to give up the job, but Nan loved teaching and wanted to remain in the profession,” he said.
“A streak of feminism is very much in her make-up.”
Shepherd was also eclectic in her reading habits, owning copies of both Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.
“She dressed like Miss Marple and was a spinster living in a small village near Aberdeen but underneath, there was this other story going on because she was unconventional in her reading habits, tastes and love life,” said Baron.
“It’s quite a rich tale to tell and we have tried to make it as detailed and entertaining as possible. Audiences are meeting this remarkable person whom they may have seen on a five-pound note but don’t know very much about. That is how we started and we have discovered so much about her now that we are keen to tell her story on stage.”
Baron added: “Nan said that when you teach, you should enthuse, startle and inspire and that is what we have tried to do.”
Nan Shepherd: Naked and Unashamed is at Pitlochry Festival Theatre until July 6
