Norman MacCaig asked, in his renowned poem about Assynt, “Who owns this landscape?” His meditation on landlords, tenants, and poachers hauling a stag off the hill in the early morning, overlooked the part played by those who dominated Highland landed estates over centuries. The role of the factor – the land agent – has been, until now, largely ignored. Patrick Sellar, he with the head of a wolf, remains the only one anyone has ever heard of, his name shorthand for all those who ever occupied an estate office, before or since.

Judith Ross Napier has explored unpublished diaries, archives, Napier Commission evidence, and spoken to factors themselves, to assess this most thankless of jobs. The book looks at how Highland factors operated under the scrutiny of proprietors on the one hand, of tenantry on the other, as well as their private thoughts and often isolated lives, from 1745 to the present. Unfettered power, brutality, certainly, even black magic, but evidence, too, of humour, wisdom and humanity so inspiring that, when one 18th century factor died, it was said that even the fields mourned him. While Patrick Sellar is inevitably present here, so too are many others, beloved and respected, a reminder that an entire profession has been too easily smeared by the infamy of Strathnaver 1814. One commentator noted: “When you talk to the factor, you are, in effect, talking to the shadow of the laird.” Here, the factors emerge from the shadows.