Bücher der Reihe The Naomi Mitchison Library

Two short novels, each first published in 1991, and each prefaced by an introduction to 'the history fiction game' by the author.

An autobiographical volume of two books - 'Other People's Worlds. Impressions of Ghana ad Nigeria' (1958) and 'Mucking Around. Five Continents over Fifty Years' (1981).

A portrait of the man whom Nelson Mandela was to describe as one of the 'bravest and staunchest friends of the freedom struggle that I have ever known'.

This is fantasy. More than that, it's a fantasy about a fable, overlaid with humour. Mitchison's 1955 novel creates a journey encompassing intrigue and broken expectations in which the simple plot, of the search for the Holy Grail, is underpinned by the understated, unresolved and ambiguous relationship between the two journalists who tell it.

Naomi Mitchison had travelled to India in 1951 and to Madras (Chennai) in 1958, after which she visited her brother Jack. He was by then living an Indian lifestyle in Calcutta (Kolkata) with which she found it difficult to empathise - in stark contrast to her own later immersion in a Botswana community. As was her habit, she sought to understand the country and her reactions to it by looking at the role of women, in their homes and in society. This led to the writing of Judy and Lakshmi. The developing friendship between two girls is the framework for an open and straightforward account of the ethnic and cultural issues across the country at an important time in its history. It captures with a deft touch the nuances of social interactions and their consequences. The style may be dated, but the message remains relevant.

In 1983, at the age of 86, Naomi Mitchison published Not By Bread Alone. Sixty years had passed since the publication of her first novel, The Conquered. As a lifelong advocate of socialism and feminism, Mitchison draws upon the speculative imaginary in Not By Bread Alone to put forward and strategise political concerns which remain uncomfortably pertinent. The narrative transports the reader to a now not-so-distant future, where a powerful multinational corporation is close to producing free food for the entire world. It follows a group of scientists spread across continents, working on early GMOs. Their research is funded by the PAX corporation which (like its real-world counterpart) represents the global economic hegemony. Whilst their 'Freefood' policy may appear initially beneficial, the genetically modified crops soon start to present major problems. The scientists must learn from the people of Murngin, who reject PAX's Freefood and instead uphold a symbiotic connection to their land, before it is too late.Mitchison characterised the disastrous consequences of something going wrong with a global single-strain crop supply not as science fiction but as something that might really happen. In 1983, when the novel was first published, the world succeeded in producing the first genetically modified plant but it would be decades before the production of GM crops became as widespread as envisioned in the novel. It remains to be seen whether humankind is yet prepared to heed Naomi Mitchison's warnings.

Fact and fiction mix in this telling of the history of Orkney and its people from the earliest times to the book's first publication in the late twentieth century.

With almost seven hundred articles included in this series, it is not surprising to learn that political thinking, anecdote, frustration and reflection appear across the spectrum and therefore are not exclusive to this volume.Those brought together here - dating from as early as 1923 in Fascist Italy, through more than 60 years, to the lack of women in the U.K Parliament - show an underlying belief which educates and informs much of her other writing.This volume also contains the full text of The Moral Basic of Politics, originally published separately in 1938, on the eve of World War II.

This volume covers from 1935 to 1993, over a wide range of topics. Often serious, with passion, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, Mitchison looks at issues of the day, and reflects, usually critically, on how society is being affected by current affairs, usually for the worse.Articles rarely confine themselves to a narrow perspective.The volume includes the entire text of the extended essay The Kingdom of Heaven, originally published separately in 1939, the editorial text of What the Human Race Is Up To, published in 1962, and the pamphlet Sittlichkeit (1975).

Naomi Mitchison travelled extensively outside Britain, writing freely about her adventures and tribulations, her disturbing experiences and those of others. This volume includes autobiographical material and newspaper reporting, as well as more detached observations, written from 1929 through to the mid-1980s, and covers every continent except South America. Geographically, the articles are divided into sections on Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, The Mediterranean and Middle East, and The United States. A broadly chronological arrangement is followed within each section. Many pieces debate, compare and contrast topics or circumstances, and their location might be considered arbitrary.Botwana (Bechunaland) occupied much of her attention for a time, and her writing there is collected, separately, in a separate volume.

The British know nothing about Botswana because it seldom gets a mention in the press; and because it's 'simply not interesting'. So says Alfred Dube, Botswana's High Commissioner in London. As a generalisation, he may be right. But turn the coin and realise that many thousands of people in Britain, with no direct contact with this country, owe their knowledge of it to a single person, Naomi Mitchison, its one time, self appointed, prolific publicist and unofficial ambassador.Articles rarely appear in the British press today for the simple reason that Naomi is in her mid 90s and no longer provides them. Unsurprisingly, no one of equivalent abilities and interests has stepped forward to fill her shoes. Perhaps they realised what little value the government placed on Naomi's earlier efforts. She may have been an irritant to many. But how many of the newly independent states of Africa had a friend like her? Someone who had the contacts, the ability and the motivation to argue a point, paint an image or present a human need. -- Sandy Grant, 1995

Naomi Mitchison was born in Edinburgh, and from at least the late 1930s onwards she was not only passionately interested in Scottish landscape and history but involved in Scottish politics and current affairs. A first glance at the pieces collected here might suggest that her Scotland comprised only the West Highlands which she knew so well. Much of her journalism stems from her activity as a member of such public bodies as Argyll County Council and the advisory Highland Panel: the problems she encountered, and helped to solve, find their way into her writing. But she has a wider vision than that would imply. She is concerned, particularly in later years, with Scotland's place as a small nation, still at the time governed from Westminster, in a world where global politics and finance - NATO and oil - seem to hold almost unquestioned power (but she asks the questions)Scotland's identity is indeed an overriding concern. As early as the 1940s and as late as the 1970s, Mitchison reiterates the virtues of 'the Highland way of life', an almost indefinable ethos which she returns to again and again. Her championship of this idea can lead her into paths which are perhaps unexpected, given her general support of progress and scientific advance. As in the Carradale volume, it has seemed a good idea to group the pieces by topic, with a certain inevitable crossover arising from Mitchison's digressive, irrepressible writing style.

Among over eighty articles in this volume are Mitchison's earliest known published non-fiction, her thoughts on motherhood and children - and her contributions to the debate on contraception, including the pamphlet "Comments On Birth Control" published separately in 1930.As well as the text of her editorial for the collection of essays "An Outline for Boys and Girls and their Parents" (1932), and the full text of the extended essay "The Home and a Changing Civilisation" (1934) there are humorous stories from 'The Passing Show' and some of the nascent journeys into left-wing political expression.The second half of the volume takes time to reflect on past occasions, on her early life in Edinburgh and Oxford, and on family at Cloan.

Anna Comnena is described as the first female historian, the author of her father's celebratory biography. She was an educated princess in eleventh-century Constantinople, the daughter of the Emperor Alexius. She was expected to succeed him, and raised as heir, but her hopes were dashed by the birth of a younger brother.

Retells in realistic terms and colloquial dialogue the story of the passion and death of Jesus, hour by hour, as it unfolds over the twenty-four hours of Good Friday.

On February 24th, 1934 - shortly after the civil war in Austria and the defeat of the Socialists - Naomi Mitchison left England on a visit to Vienna in order to do what she could to relieve the terrible distress of the defeated. This is her record.

Mitchison's first novel, published in 1923, five years after the end of World War I. It is about wars, but historic ones - Julius Caesar's bloody and gradual conquest of Gaul; and Instead of Caesar's lists of victories and setbacks, it is abut the impact of these wars on her Gallic hero Meromic. With an Introduction by Isobel Murray.

Eschewing Plutarch and Shakespeare's tale of Mark Antony's fatal romance, Naomi Mitchison's 'Cleopatra's People' starts with the next generation, with the children of the Queen and of Charmian, one of her 'mates'. The impact of Cleopatra's life and personality is reflected through them, and their efforts to follow in her wake.

Naomi Mitchison's 1947 novel about events two hundred years earlier - in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745 - as a family, based on her own ancestors, gathers at Gleneagles.