I always think that the best non-fiction looks at specific elements of a subject, then draws links and resonances with more universal appeal. Drifting North by Dominic Hinde does exactly that with both skill and care.
The author is an academic and sociologist as well as an environmental journalist, and he brings all of that experience as well as more personal observations to a book that manages to be both intimately moving and expansive in terms of its scope.
The book is subtitled Finding a sustainable future in Scotland’s past, which only begins to describe the journey inside, a narrative that is a blend of a whole heap of genres. The central framing device revolves around Hinde travelling the length and breadth of Scotland, looking at specific examples of both Scotland’s fossil-burning past and its renewable future.
Hinde has a real journalistic instinct for the personal story, and delights in talking to all sorts of people, from oil workers to environmental activists and all points in between. He unearths fascinating characters and extrapolates their stories to take in ideas of fossil capitalism and deindustrialisation, and the constant conflict between people’s livelihoods and the search for a more sustainable way of life.
The author’s turn of phrase and observational eye are to the fore, with some beautiful travel and nature writing at times, and Hinde is not afraid to interweave his own personal story, linking his medical issues after a near-fatal accident to the chaos and exhaustion he sees around him.
This is no rose-tinted view of Scotland, rather a clear-eyed and searching investigation into the country’s prominent early role in bringing about the current climate catastrophe, as well as promising signs for the future of the planet. Fantastic stuff.
