Play aims to unravel the mystery of poet Nan Shepherd’s masterwork

Production examines why Scottish poet’s The Living Mountain laid unpublished in a drawer for 30 years

Nan Shepherd, the Scottish poet and nature writer whose vivid reflections on her treks through the Cairngorms have brought posthumous acclaim, is celebrated in a new play that aims to unravel the mystery of why her masterwork remained unpublished in a drawer for 30 years.

Shepherd is recognisable to many from her striking pose on the Royal Bank of Scotland’s £5 note after preceding Jane Austen by a year to become the first female writer on British paper currency. While she enjoyed bursts of public recognition throughout her lifetime, it is since her death in 1981, and the 2011 republication of her seminal meditation on the Cairngorm range, The Living Mountain, that she has reached a global audience.