RAW SPIRIT was published in 2003.
Malt whisky is made in tiny quantities in some of the most breathtaking and inaccessible places in Scotland. To get to many of the distilleries requires careful planning and lots of different modes of transport. Getting there might not be the problem: surviving them might be.
Along with a curious bunch of fellow travellers – some svelte, some burly, some vintage, some just over the top; in a selection of cars, planes, ferries, trains, bikes and shoes – Iain journeys to remote shores and hidden glens.
He finds people engaged in a centuries old tradition where eccentricity is the norm. It’s a journey of a thousand ‘cheers’ and subsequent wobbly walks, of beautiful place names and daft customs and superstitions. Will Iain prevail? As he puts it, “someone’s got to do it, and I’m damn sure it’s going to be me.”
Raw Spirit was reissued in 2019 with a new introduction by Ian Rankin.
Iain was frequently asked if he ever considered writing his life story and he had this to say, “I try to avoid autobiography as much as possible. I’d like my friends to keep speaking to me, for one thing, and I have a better imagination than I have a memory, so it’s easier for me to make things up than to report.”
About Raw Spirit specifically, he said, “It was great getting to write a book and not having to think of a plot, it was brilliant. I can’t even see myself doing an autobiography either because Raw Spirit is as close to an autobiography as I’m ever likely to come.”
