This connection soon led to his adoption as Smith’s partner, which he enjoyed until his appointment as Sole Engineer in 1808. Robert Stevenson is the ghost at the feast and his uneasy spirit presided over the family long after his death in Bathurst's account. This is equally true in the area of lighthouse construction, a story that revolves around three generations of the Stevenson family of Edinburgh. The Lighthouse Stevensons is a story of high endeavour, beautifully told; indeed, this is one of the most celebrated works of historical biography in recent memory. For over one hundred and fifty years Robert Stevenson and his descendants designed most of Scotland’s Lighthouses.

It's an inspiring story that tells us non-Scots about an aspect of the country that we wouldn't likely understand. I first saw the book while staying at Cantick Light, a set of lighthouse keepers' cottages on the island of Hoy, in Orkney, while there for a music festival two years ago. I found swapping to and from the internet allowed better judgement about each lighthouse rather than relying on the book's illustrations. Finally, we are introduced to Alan Stevenson's son, David Alan (1854 - 1938), who unlike his literary-inclined cousin - Robert Louis was Tom's only son - follows in the family's footsteps and builds his own legacy in the Dubh Artach Light.

Most chilling were the "wreckers," people who lived in villages along the coast and relied on salvaging wood, metal, and manufactured goods from the wrecks.

Where the kindle version falls flat is without more pictures of the actual lighthouses (there are some drawings etc). Furthermore, if those who decide the allocations of the real and unreal are cruel, mad or colossally wrong, what then? It remained in use until 1985 when the last lighthouse keeper was withdrawn and the light was automated. Robert Louis Stevenson was the most famous of the Stevensons, but not by any means the most productive.

As well as the sheer number of lighthouses the Stevensons contributed to, the family also championed key engineering developments that fundamentally changed the course of lighthouse building forever. Robert Louis Stevenson, author of classics like Kidnapped and Treasure Island, was Robert’s grandson (and Alan’s nephew), and much of his own accounts of his family history inform this work. Sketch of the Bell Rock Lighthouse by Jane Stevenson, from Alan Stevenson, Biographical Sketches of the Late Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburgh: W. I for one had no idea that the 14 lighthouses dotting the Scottish coast were all built by the same Stevenson family that produced Robert Louis Stevenson, Scotland's most famous novelist.

Not only was it built into a sandstone reef, the North Sea created hazardous and very limited working conditions.I saw optics from Stevenson lighthouses in the National Museum of Scotland, and saw the Stevensons' Duncansby Head Lighthouse up close. Her first published book was The Lighthouse Stevensons (1999), an account of the construction of the Scottish lighthouses by the ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson, and named one of the List Magazine's '100 Best Scottish Books of all time'. I could have done without the last chapter about lighthouse keepers and how their profession is dying. Read on for the story of the ‘Lighthouse Stevensons’ and their invaluable contribution to lighting up Scotland’s coastlines.

And I would have liked a little more on Robert Louis Stevenson's life: the author just assumed that his life is now legend so there's no need to talk about him in this book. The workforce suffered from sea sickness and inadequate quantities of beer, traditionally lighthouse keepers were expected to maintain a cow and fend for themselves, Skerryvore was so difficult to reach that instead Alan recommended enhanced rations for the lighthouse keepers. Notable among the Stevenson engineered lighthouses are the tallest Scottish lighthouse at Skerryvore (1844), the most northerly lighthouse at Muckle Flugga in Shetland (1854) and the most westerly lighthouse at Ardnamurchan (1849). For instance, we learn that the ground rocks for the Skerryvore lighthouse were prepared by hand (even though the "gneiss could blunt a pick in three blows") in waves and winds "strong enough to lift a man bodily off the rock" and that "it took 120 hours to dress a single stone for the outside of the tower and 320 hours to dress one of the central stones. He was also an inventor of intermittent and flashing lights, for which he received a gold medal from the King of the Netherlands, as a mark of his Majesty’s approbation.Robert Stevenson is his 4th Great Grandfather, which means my children also share this heritage and I want them to know about it. Robert showed himself as savvy at politicking as he was at engineering to be charged with the design and construction of the Bell Rock, the world’s old sea-washed lighthouse, located over ten miles off the eastern coast, effectively on a rock. David Alan Stevenson (1854-1938) and Charles Alexander Stevenson (1855-1950) designed numerous lighthouses from the late nineteenth century to the late 1930s. Anyone who was involved in the buildings of these lighthouse must have not only great patience, but great strength.