Book review: Into The Mountain: A Life Of Nan Shepherd, by Charlotte Peacock

The image of Nan Shepherd which now graces a £5 bank note is a curious one. She looks as if she is in fancy-dress as a Native American, or a flapper more concerned with the Charleston than the Cairngorms. In fact, the strange band around her head is a piece of photographic film she hastily wrapped around her brow on a whim, before placing a broach in the middle. It is an image which seems to blur the technological and the primitive, the futuristic and the chthonic, the avant-garde and the elemental. To that extent, it is the perfect image for this strange, inspiring writer. Charlotte Peacock has done an immense service in writing the first full biography of Shepherd. In recent years writers like Robert Macfarlane and Amy Liptrot have been eloquent about the work: but what of the life?