R.P.J. Blake
Sugar, Slaves and High Society: The Grants of Kilgraston 1750-1860
Sugar, Slaves and High Society is R.P.J. Blake’s first book.
An honours degree in Law from the University of Edinburgh was followed many years later by a part-time MSc in The Origins, History and Contemporary Impact of Globalisation from the University of Dundee. With a legal office adjacent to Smeaton’s Bridge over the River Tay in Perth, he specialised as a rural law solicitor for 35 years. On retirement, he moved with his wife, Mary, to south-east Scotland close to the area where he had spent the first twenty years of his life.
When not planning the next book about the Grants of Kilgraston or walking his dog, much of his time is taken up in his position as President of the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club, the oldest continuously active Natural History Society in the United Kingdom.
“The author has achieved a remarkable feat in pulling together the disparate threads of an exotic, and at times chaotic, family story...”
Buskin Books
Coat of Arms of the Grants of Kilgraston
Buskin Books is R.P.J. Blake’s publishing imprint. The name was chosen because the author’s house, where Sugar, Slaves and High Society was written, overlooks the Buskin Burn. A buskin is a leather or cloth boot, either knee or calf length and open at the toes, which was worn both by Athenian tragic actors and also hunters and soldiers to protect the lower legs from thorns and mud. It also described a ceremonial liturgical stocking formerly worn by the celebrant of a pontifical Mass in the Roman Catholic Church. It is thought that the burn was named Buskin Burn as pilgrims on their way to the nearby Coldingham Priory would remove their boots and wash their feet before travelling the final few hundred yards. Sock & Buskin has, for over a century, been the name of the theatrical production department at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A.
While Sugar, Slaves and High Society is Buskin Books’ first publication, further books about the Grants of Kilgraston are planned.