After seven exciting years as soldier, student, lecturer, poet, traveller, editor, novelist, and lover, Magnus Merriman returns to his native Scotland. There his public and private life unfolds, partly in hilarious scenes in Edinburgh, punctuated by 'glass and bottle music', partly against the slow rhythm of farming life in the Orkneys. Some of the characters from poet's Pub (the third of the original Penguins in 1935) figure in the robust cast. The conversations are laced with quotation and wit. The mood changes from the bawdy to the mock-heroic, from poetry to reportage. The twenty-five years which have elapsed since its first publication serve only to emphasize the enduring humanity of Magnus Merriman.