J. Laughton Johnston
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J. Laughton Johnston is a poet, novelist and biographer, and the author of A Naturalist's Shetland, the only comprehensive account of Shetland's natural history from its geological beginnings to the present day. He is also the author of Scotland's Nature in Trust, written in association with the National Trust for Scotland on the environmental management of their island and mountain properties. Johnston has an excellent knowledge of Shetland's wildlife, as well as its history and culture, being a half-Shetlander himself and familiar with the islands since childhood. From 1969 until he took early retirement, he worked for Scottish Natural Heritage. During that period, among other things, he was responsible for Shetland and Orkney for 6 years and the island of Rum on the West Coast of Scotland. Because of his love of the islands he has recently renovated a cottage in Sandness where he now spends half the year wildlife guiding and writing.
Johnston's A Dream of Silver (2006) is his first novel. It is the story of an old man who, due to the decline in his health, is "forced to move from his retirement cottage in Shetland to live at the Edinburgh home of his 10-year-old grandson. As a way of making contact with a child he hardly knows, and who hardly knows him, the old man begins to tell the boy the story of his own childhood and of his encounter with the works of the two giants of Scottish literature of the 19th century. It is a moral and physical journey; the narratives of the grandfather and grandson, and that of an old man's childhood, closely interweaving" - Shetland Times.
Victorians 60 Degrees North: The Story of the Edmondstons and Saxbys of Shetland (2007) is "the saga of five Edmondston brothers of Unst and their families, from the late 18th to the early 20th century, told through their personal correspondence, their many publications, private, scientific and literary and from archival material from their home, local records, Edinburgh, Cambridge, London and Charleston, South Carolina. Their story is woven through the events of their time, beginning with the marriage of the parents and the inheritance of the Buness House and surrounding estate. It is a story of generosity and avarice, ambition and hubris, of science and literature, sobriety and intemperance. The main characters are supported by a cast that includes the tenants of their Unst estate and the principal worthies of Shetland; an array of the great naturalists of the 19th century, including Charles Darwin; the forty-niners on their trek to California; the defenders of Charleston in the American Civil War; Lady Franklin; Joseph Bell, the model for Sherlock Holmes; Burke and Hare, and many others" - (Shetland Times)
Laughton Johnston has also published two collections of poetry, Meetings (1968) and Poems (1975). His work has appeared in The New Shetlander and other journals, and he is featured in A Shetland Anthology.
The author and artist Elizabeth Balneaves is J. Laughton Johnston's mother.
