WORK IS IN HAND to form a virtual library, an archive of books relating to Murray history. Have a look at some favourite books from the Head Trustee's private collection. The aim is to preserve the books in his care for the benefit of future generations.

"I am pleased to have been asked to provide a foreword for this publication. I agreed to become Patron of the Castle Cluggy Charitable Trust to support the charity formed to carry out consolidation works, bring back to good health, and preserve Castle Cluggy in the form it is today for present and future generations. It would have been a shame to allow one of the oldest fortresses in Scotland to collapse into a picturesque ruin.

Crieff Hydro Hotel has a close connection with the Ochtertyre estate within which lies Castle Cluggy. I am the fifth generation of my family to run this hotel since 1868. In May 1899, Sir Patrick Keith Murray signed an agreement with the founders of the Strathearn Hydropathic Establishment Company Limited in order for them to utilise the water supply from Loch Turret above Castle Cluggy for production of electricity for lighting and other benefits within the company’s establishment and elsewhere in Crieff.

Despite its ruined state, this hidden gem hides a thousand years of history. It is often said if things could talk, what a story they would have to tell. Imagine what has occurred within the castle’s walls over many years.  Now, as befits its long and interesting past, the drawbridge has been pulled back on access to one of Perth and Kinross’s least known historic castles. .. I hope you enjoy discovering more about this wonderful piece of Scottish history". Stephen Leckie - Lord-Lieutenant for Perth and Kinross.

Book reviewed on 14th January 2024 - The Murray Clan Society of North America: This past Friday, my copy of “The History of Castle Cluggy: Ancestral seat of the Murray baronets of Ochtertyre” arrived. It is a phenomenal illustrated book covering a cadet branch (branch descending a younger son of a patriarch) of the Murrays of Tullibardine. While the Tullibardine Murrays moved on to Atholl, the Ochtertyre Murrays have held these lands in Strathearn through to the present and have an intricate and fascinating history in the area. The book shares this history in extremely well-researched detail and is a vital addition to any Murray collection. Be sure to get your copy here:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/116024869560?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=122X0JLVQjC&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=NzQbWgJmQ_C&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Do you believe in fairies? Hiding behind a fictional title is the true story of the Murray family. Contains lovely poems and artwork as well as the Clan's history and a family tree at the back of book that is beyond excellent. For anyone who is a Murray, knows a Murray or wants to know about the Murrays. You will not be disappointed.

Reviewed by Lesley-Anne McLeod on 4th September 2009: "I came across a book on my bookshelves the other day that I had not looked at for a while. It is a charming thing entitled A Regency Lady’s Faery Bower subtitled A Private View of Fairyland: Amelia Jane Murray 1800-1896.

The book was published in 1985 by Holt Rinehart in hardcover, ISBN 0-03-006109-1. It is copyrighted by April Agnew-Somerville, who is apparently the current owner of the faery drawings.

Amelia Jane Murray was known as Emily by her family, and a very prestigious family it was. She was the niece of the Duke of Atholl who was at the time the Governor of the Isle of Man. As her father died when she was five, Emily grew up on the Isle Man in a privileged position at Mount Murray and later Castle Mona.

Emily was instructed in drawing, sketching and watercolours as was every proper Regency lady, and her work has echoes of Canova, Bewick and Flaxman. She drew these fairies in her twenties in the 1820s before the Victorian vogue for fairies began. There was an interest in fairies during the Regency fostered by Scott’s ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’ and the 1815 Brothers Grimm stories, but certainly Emily was in the vanguard of the fashion for fairies.

Emily Murray’s fairies are certainly perfect little Regency ladies. They have that 'look' of the Regency. Their gowns display classical simplicity, and their diaphanous scarves appeared in fashion plates of the day. She had no text with her paintings; in this book appropriate poems and excerpts have been added to the drawings to add to the reader’s enjoyment. The watercolours were executed on fine pasteboards surrounded by embossed borders, a delicate enhancement produced by a new process of gauffrage.

When she married in 1829 Emily quit fairy painting, and produced little artwork for the rest of her long life. Her album of fairy paintings was a family memento for several generations until its publication. Her drawings are now recognised as important additions to the genre of British fairy painting. If you love the Regency and delight in fairies, you must seek out this out of print book. It seems to be fairly easily available through on-line out of print book dealers. You won’t regret it, I promise you".

The inspiration behind the powerful new film starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson, this is the story of Dido Belle, whose adoption by an aristocratic family challenged the conventions of 18th-century England.

In one of the most famous portraits in the world, a pretty girl walks through the grounds of Kenwood House, a vision of aristocratic refinement. But the eye is drawn to the beautiful woman on her right. Pointing at her own cheek, she playfully acknowledges her remarkable position in eighteenth-century society. For Dido Belle was the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy captain and a slave woman, adopted by the Earl of Mansfield. As Lord Chief Justice of England he would preside over the notorious Zong case – the drowning of 142 slaves by an unscrupulous shipping company. His ruling provided the legal underpinning to the abolition of slavery in Britain. From the privileged yet unequal lives of Dido and her cousin Elizabeth, to the horrific treatment of African slaves, Paula Byrne – the bestselling author of ‘The Real Jane Austen’ – vividly narrates the story of a family that defied convention, the legal trial that exposed the cruelties of slavery and the woman who challenged notions of race at the highest rank.

FOREWORD: In this memoir there will not be found any exhaustive political or social history of the times. It contains a portrait, painted against the background of several momentous years, of one who played a conspicuous part in shaping political events. "It will, I am sure, be impossible", wrote that prominent man of letters, J. A. Spender, at the time of the passing, in 1920, of my brother Alick, Master of Elibank, "to write truthfully the history of at least five very important years without assigning a very considerable part to him". In these pages are also recounted events relating to "men and affairs" which flitted across the canvas of my live. A.C.M.

ISBN 9780900594243 (978-0-900594-24-3) softcover. Published by The Pilgrim Press 1974

Jack Hunter allocates Alexander Murray his rightful place in the pantheon of Scottish geniuses by making clear the formidable difficulties he had to surmount in his brief career and the astonishing achievements he nevertheless accomplished. Meet Alexander Murray (1775-1813), the sickly son of an impoverished Galloway shepherd who would live to become Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Edinburgh. It was quickly apparent that he was not to follow in his father’s footsteps; his eyesight was so poor that he could not see the flock he was charged to herd. After just a few months of formal schooling in rural Galloway, Murray embarked on his astoundingly impressive programme of self-education in the late 1780s, supporting himself by teaching children of isolated communities like his ‘the three Rs’ as a resident tutor. Throughout his career as a resident tutor, he borrowed and bought (when cheap enough) whatever books he could lay his hands on. He received, for example, from a farmer in Glentrool a copy of Plutarch’s Lives, and a bilingual edition (Greek and Latin) of Homer’s Iliad from a lead miner at Palnure. He purchased a stout Latin Dictionary (1s 6d) from an old man in Minnigaff, and was gifted a Hebrew lexicon from a distant cousin.

In his autobiographical writing, Murray reflected at some length on a time when his twelve-year-old self got hold of a copy of Thomas Salmon’s Geographical  and Historical Grammar. This book contained the Lord’s Prayer in several languages. He recalled how much he had enjoyed, and benefited from, poring over those translations as a boy. It is perhaps no wonder, considering the odd conglomeration of obscure and arcane texts at his disposal, that on growing up Murray should fix his attention on the acquisition and comparison of languages. When he applied to enter the University of Edinburgh, at the age of 18, he already had a thorough knowledge of French, Latin, Hebrew, Greek and German, and had somehow picked up a smattering of Arabic, Abyssinian, Welsh and Anglo-Saxon. By the end of his life it is reported that he knew most (if not all) of the European languages, ancient and modern, and – of course - numerous Oriental languages.

In 1812 - the same year he won the Chair of Oriental Languages at Edinburgh - Murray completed work on his magnum opus, History of the European Languages: Researches into the Affinities of the Teutonic, Greek, Celtic, Slavonic, and Indian Nations. He finished the book one year before his death, and four years before the German philologist Franz Bopp - the founding father of Indo-European Studies - published his influential comparative grammar. Sadly, Murray’s book did not see print before 1823, and so his pioneering contribution to Comparative Linguistics has been somewhat overlooked. As early as 1808, Murray provocatively wrote that “Greek and Latin are only dialects of a language much more simple, regular, and ancient which forms the basis of almost all the tongues of Europe and… of Sanskrit itself.” He was buried in Greyfriars Burial Ground. A granite obelisk was erected on the hill overlooking his birthplace. It is known as Murray's Monument and is a tourist attraction. 

Jack Hunter’s Alexander Murray; Galloway’s Self-Taught Genius (Stranraer & District Local History Trust, 2014)