Jim Crumley, Scotland’s foremost creative nature writer, was the Libraries’ Literature Festival guest speaker on Tuesday 19th May at Dumbarton Library. Jim is a passionate and often poetic writer with a special interest in wild animals, and in particular those animals that have had a singularly raw deal in their interactions with mankind.

Jim is a supporter of the idea of re-introducing wolves to Scotland, and spoke last year on that subject at Balloch Library. His belief in the importance of being an accepting presence in nature alongside wild animals rather than a disruptive commercial intruder was outlined in an account he gave of his witness to an encounter between a swan and an otter – an enchanting experience before his own obtrusive movement broke the spell.

His talk this time was mainly about his latest book The Winter Whale, in which he tells the story of the appearance in the Tay Estuary in 1883 of an enormous but youthful whale. Dundee was a world centre of whaling at the time, but most Dundonians had never seen a live whale in action. Huge crowds assembled over several weeks, and eventually the whalers were goaded into pursuing and killing it – a slow and cruel sequence of events that resulted in the carcass being washed ashore near Stonehaven.

Jim’s hatred of this episode was palpable, his message being that we should leave these creatures alone to live their lives. Amazingly, it is a fact that this whale could still have been alive today! His book is a moving and heart-rending account of the whole episode and its background, and is strongly recommended.