One side is the intellectual Chris that excels at school, is a voracious reader and wants to be a teacher, the other Chris is her more spiritual, emotional side that is at one with the land and the people of the Mearns Through Chris we learn about the people and land of the Mearns but also discover Chris herself as we see her change and develop over the course of the novel. This sentence introduces us to Chris Guthrie a young woman marvelling at and at one with the natural world around her. 'Below and around where Chris Guthrie lay the June moors whispered and shook their cloaks, yellow with broom and powdered faintly with purple, that was the heather but not the full passion of its colour yet'. First time readers might want to at least initially skip the prelude. Although written with wit and technical skill most readers will breathe a sigh of relief when just over 20 pages into the novel they reach its second part which is called ‘The song’ where we meet Chris Guthrie. Densely written, the prelude is a pastiche of a now dated style of history writing that would have been more familiar to readers in 1932 than a modern audience. It begins with a lengthy prelude 'The unforrowed field' which tells the history of Kinraddie from ancient times ‘when gryphons and such-like beasts still roamed the Scots countryside’ to 1911 when the events covered in the novel begin. There is also a short introduction filmed in 2022 where Heilbron and Armstrong discuss the serial.In the novel Gibbon uses the rhythms and cadences of Doric, the north east Scots language to capture the land and people of Kincardineshire and in doing so helped create a new tradition of Scottish writing quite distinct from the English novel. In September 2022 the serial was repeated on BBC Four, available for 11 months on BBC iPlayer.

The script was by Bill Craig, and it was directed by Moira Armstrong. The cast included several other leading Scottish actors of the time, including Andrew Keir, Edith MacArthur, Anne Kristen, Roddy McMillan, Alex McAvoy and John Grieve.

The composer Thomas Wilson was commissioned to write the theme music, which the BBC retained for the remaining two parts of the trilogy A Scots Quair, commissioning Wilson again to compose the incidental music for the remaining productions of Cloud Howe and Grey Granite.Ĭhris Guthrie was played by Vivien Heilbron. It was shown in the USA on Masterpiece Theatre in 1975–76. The series made the important change from the novel of turning Chris Guthrie, the main character, into the narrator. The series was the first colour drama made by BBC Scotland, and also contained the first nude scene. It consists of six episodes of around 45 minutes each. Sunset Song is a 1971 BBC Scotland adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's novel of the same name for television.

Sunset song by lewis grassic gibbon