Auchinleck House

A fine example of an 18th-century Scottish country villa, Auchinleck House is where the renowned biographer James Boswell indulged his penchant for ‘old Laird and family ideas’. 250 years on, you can do the same, reliving a time when you dressed for dinner and retired to the library to watch the sunset. Boswell’s friend and mentor Dr. Samuel Johnson famously argued over politics with Lord Auchinleck in the library here, when they visited at the end of their tour of the Hebrides in 1773. Once inherited by Boswell, the house was host to much ‘social glee’, which he recorded in his Book of Company and Liquors.