Selim Aga

Selim Aga was eight years old when he was abducted from the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and sold into slavery and auctioned 2000 miles away in Egypt to the highest bidder. Born around 1827 Selim was killed in a war in Liberia in 1875. How then did this slave come to be lecturing to fashionable audiences in London and publishing in the "Geographical Magazine"? James McCarthy has pieced together the life of this remarkable man using Selim's own narrative and those of others such as Sir Richard Burton.

James McCarthy James McCarthy, former Deputy Director for Scotland of the Nature Conservancy Council, is now a Board Meiber of SNH. He has extensive experience both of introducing visitors to the best of natural Scotland, and training professionals from conservation organisations.

James Robertson About James Robertson: James Robertson was born in Kent in 1958, but grew up in Bridge of Allan in Stirlingshire. He studied history at Edinburgh University, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His first book of short stories, Close, was published in 1991 by Black & White Publishing. From 1993 to 1995 he was appointed writer-in-residence at Brownsbank Cottage, the former home of the poet Hugh MacDiarmid, in Lanarkshire. He is general editor of the Scots language educational imprint Itchy Coo, for which he wrote A Scots Parliament (2002). His first novel, The Fanatic, was published by Fourth Estate in 2000. His second, Joseph Knight (0007150253), won both the Saltire and Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Awards for 2003-04. He lives in Angus.