THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Claire MacLeary is releasing her third novel, Runaway, with Saraband this month. If you’re ready for another slice of Tartan Noir with a dash of the doric, best get down to your nearest bookshop!

 

Extract by Runaway
By Claire MacLeary
Published by Saraband

 

Mad Mike

 

‘Jeannie?’

The voice was frighteningly familiar.

‘Mikey?’ She squinted through the security spyhole. ‘That you?’ She hadn’t been expecting him.

A distorted face glowered back. ‘Who the hell dae ye think it is, Clint Eastwood?’

‘N-no,’ she faltered.

‘Well, open the door.’

Jean Meston eased the door a fraction. She peered through the crack.

‘Now.’

The safety chain strained under the man’s weight.
Jean unlatched the chain from its housing. ‘Och, Mikey.’ She opened her arms, a tentative smile on her lips. ‘Ye canna be too sure. No these days.’

Mike Meston stormed past his wife.

Gingerly, she pushed the door to, followed his dark shape down the hall.

‘Christ’s sake.’ He whirled to face her. ‘This how ye’ve been living?’

Covertly, Jean ran her eyes over the disordered settee, the stained carpet, the ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. ‘I’ve no had the time, what wi one thing an…’ Her voice trailed off.

‘I’ll gie ye time,’ Mike thundered. ‘Wean in bed?’

‘Naw.’ How to explain Willie’s absence? ‘He’s at his Gran’s.’

‘Get us a beer, then. Ah’m gaspin fur a swallow.’

She stood, immobile.

‘Go on.’

There was silence, then, ‘There’s nae money fur beer.’

He cast her an evil look. ‘An ye ken why.’

Jean struggled for an excuse. ‘Benefit’s no in.’

‘Benefit, my arse.’ Mike stood, hands on hips, legs straddled. ‘I’ll tell you why there’s no beer. My income’s gone up in smoke.’

‘Well,’ she ventured, ‘if you’d stuck wi what you were used to…’

‘Puntin the odd nicked phone or carton o fags? Widna keep a roof ower our heids. Too many other punters on the game.’

‘But… drugs, Mikey?’

‘That’s where the money is. An it’s no as if it was heavy stuff, like, heroin or naethin. Onywye,’ – his lips formed a thin line – ‘it’s your fault it’s gone down the tubes.’

‘Mine? How?’

‘Fur no keepin a tight rein on thon laddie o yours.’

‘Yours an aw,’ Jean shot back.

‘Aye.’ Long pause. ‘Mebbe.’

‘You’ve a neck.’ She drew herself up. ‘The way you sent the loon roon pub doors, an him the age he is.’

‘Bastard might as weel be occupied if he’s no at the school.’

‘He wullna go tae the school.’

‘That’s at your door an aw. He widna get the chance tae skip school if you wurna blootered in the mornings.’

‘Ah wisna blootered. The wean widna get oot o’ bed. An wi nae man in the hoose Ah couldna mak him.’

Mike flexed his biceps. ‘Ye couldna get a wee loon on his feet, is that what ye’re tellin me?’

Jean took a backwards step. ‘Aye, that’s the God’s honest truth. If Wullie’s set his heid against it, naebody could. No me. No the teacher. No the Schools Inspector. No the Social. An…’ She was grasping at straws, now. ‘Ah dinna ken how ye’re layin the blame at ma door. Wisna down tae me ye landed yersel in the jail.’

‘Dinna even go there, ya idle cow.’

‘It’s down tae thon Fatboy.’ Jean moved to mollify her husband. ‘If Willie hudna got in tow wi him, nane o this wid huv happened.’ When, the previous year, Mike had been sent down, he’d dispatched ten-year-old Willie to act in his place as runner for local drug dealer Christopher Gilruth, who went by the name Fatboy.

‘Aye. Weel, he’ll no be botherin onybody fur a while.’

‘How d’ye ken that if ye jist got oot?’

Mike puffed his chest. ‘Jungle drums.’

Jean quailed. If her husband knew about the outcome of the Fatboy affair, what else had he heard? She cosied up to him. ‘Hiv ye hud yer breakfast?’

‘Naw. Couldna wait tae get doon the road.’

‘Come in aboot.’ She took him by the sleeve, led him through to the kitchen. ‘Ah’ve no long made a fry-up.’

‘Is that what ye’d call it?’ Mike Meston eyed the plateful of food. ‘Twa eggs an a puddle o beans? Whaur’s the meat?’

‘There’s nae money fur…’

‘How d’ye fancy that fur a fry-up, then?’ He grasped her by the hair, shoved her face into the plate of food.

She fought for breath as the congealed egg yolks filled her mouth and nose, the still hot beans scalded her skin.

‘Be my guest.’ He pushed down harder.

Desperately, Jean scrabbled for the edge of the table. She tried to brace herself, push back, but his grip was too strong.

‘Fit ur ye sayin tae it now?’ He yanked her head up.

She brushed the back of one hand across her face. Gobs of egg and clusters of beans dropped to the floor.

‘Weel?’

She stuck two fingers into her mouth. Cleared her throat. ‘Naethin.’

He threw her the evils. ‘Canna hear you.’

She took a breath. ‘Naethin.’

It was then he put the boot in.
Jean felt the searing pain as one of her ribs cracked. Maybe more than one.

She drew her knees up to her chest.

Covered her head with both hands.

 

Runaway by Claire MacLeary published by Saraband, priced £8.99

BooksfromScotland were massive fans of David Keenan’s debut This is Memorial Device. Here, Alistair Braidwood discovers that Keenan’s follow up more than lives up to the energetic, adventurous promise of his first novel.

 

For The Good Times
By David Keenan
Published by Faber

 

David Keenan’s 2017 debut This Is Memorial Device announced his arrival as a novelist in such a barnstorming manner that you couldn’t help but wonder how he was going to follow it. Now he has, and, as we should have expected, he does so with élan, subverting all expectations.

For The Good Times, is set mainly in 1970s Northern Ireland (some memorable away days aside), slap bang in the middle of that none more euphemistically titled time, ‘The Troubles’. For those who lived in Ireland and the UK in the ’70s – ’90s there are many of the familiar and widely reported touchstones – the H-Block prison and hunger strikes, the Europa Hotel (infamous as the most bombed hotel in the world), Republican and Loyalist groups known best by three letters, gun-fire at funerals, sectarian songs, balaclavas, bombast, and bomb-blasts. Keenan captures the time and place perfectly, not only with such knowledge and detail, but also using music, fashion, and other cultural references to great effect.

The story focuses on narrator Sammy and his three closest friends, a group of young Jack-the-Lads who just happen to be running violent, and sometimes deadly, errands for the Provisional IRA and other offshoots if they’ll have them. Buying into the more extreme mythology of the Republican cause, these boys are playing dangerous games, with a desire to be the cock of the walk as long as that walk isn’t Orange.

Obsessed with the life and style of the singer Perry Como, and dressed in only the best of gear, violence is second nature to them justified by the belief that they are committing it for a worthy cause. To most they are seen as gangsters, thugs, and smugglers, but they have a strong sense of their own worth and shared identity. If Shane Meadows and Martin Scorsese collaborated on the film adaptation of Bernard McLaverty’s Cal then the script may have been something like this, walking the fine line between condemning, or at least demonstrating, the terrible effects of self-righteous violence, and romanticising it.

This may seem like a fairly straightforward premise but Keenan uses it to explore cultural mythology and memory, place, masculinity (toxic or otherwise), the psychology of gangs and groups, and the need for individuals to belong, but also stand-alone. Just when you think you have a grasp of what is going on and understand the essence of what you are reading, things shift just enough to discombobulate. This will not be unexpected to those who read his previous novel which showed a writer almost bursting with ideas – so many that at times what unfolded came close to being overwhelming.

For The Good Times is leaner in terms of ideas and style allowing the story and the characters more time and space to breathe. The result may be a more conventional narrative (it would have to go some not to be), but it makes for an equally satisfying read, if not more so. If you tried This Is Memorial Device and found it wasn’t for you then you should give Keenan a second chance. He’s too good a writer not to.

That’s not to say that he has dispensed with the literary flourishes altogether. There are songs, poems, and comic book stories, and not many other writers would have quotations from the aforementioned crooner Como, Aleister Crowley’s ‘The Master Therion’, and Friedrich Nietzsche. They may seem incongruous bedfellows, but all tell you something about what you are about to read. There are also séances, astral connections, perversions, and rumination on the nature of art, as well as further evidence that Keenan may have an obsession with mannequins.

All of these unexpected detours remind you that this is a writer who is pushing everyone involved out of their comfort zone. He is a player of games but with serious intent, and it forces you to ask questions about what is written, and how. In my review copy the numbers on the Contents page were all “00”. I have since found out that this isn’t deliberate, but with Keenan I wouldn’t have been surprised. With doppelgangers, the bureaucracy of institutions, betrayal, the power of sex, seduction and obsession, and the need to find an identity when others simply want you subsumed, it has clear echoes of George Orwell, Franz Kafka, John Fowles and Milan Kundera.

However, for all the artistry this novel wouldn’t work without the characters being believable, especially when they are thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Keenan shows he has a keen ear for how people speak, but to do so in an accent other than your own throws in another ball to keep in the air. It’s always a risk to take on the voices of a time and place which is so infamous, but from the first sentence to the last the mask never slips, and you absolutely believe these are lives lived. He also understands how people act in their different groups, and how they think and act when they are alone. The bold and the brave versus the insecure and uncertain – this is a world where front can literally be a matter of life and death. You realise that the time and place has been chosen for good reasons.

For The Good Times is a multi-layered novel of extremes set in the most extreme of times (it is also extremely funny). It plays with form and structure, yet, for all its sensational subject matter and style, it is an acute examination of the human psyche. For David Keenan it is another magnificent, and memorable, achievement and cements his growing reputation as one of the finest writers around.

 

For The Good Times by David Keenan is published by Faber, priced £12.99

With only a few shopping days until Christmas, BooksfromScotland recommends picking up Luath Press’s guide to the fashion industry, How to Get Into Fashion. It’s a small, but a perfectly formed, stocking filler, and its author, Eunice Olumide, talks to BooksfromScotland about its publication.

 

How to Get Into Fashion
By Eunice Olumide
Published by Luath Press

 

How to Get Into Fashion may be a book dinky enough to fit in a pocket or a handbag, but its author, Eunice Olumide—Scotland’s first black supermodel—is someone with big ideas and is working hard to have the world catch up with her. She laughs as she recalls that she decided to write the book as ‘my family were going to kick me out of the house for spending so much time on social media.’ Following a successful career in modelling, acting and activism, Eunice had gathered a massive following online offering advice to aspiring models on a range of topics such as how to get an agent, what to expect from agents, what to wear to a casting, as well as make up tips for meetings. The guidance proved so popular, she realised capturing it all in a book would save her time—as well as her tweeting thumbs—and give herself the space to concentrate on her other projects.

Eunice has enjoyed success in the fashion world, but knows a lot of work needs to be done to make the industry a safer, more ethical place of work. Realising that there was no union for models, she joined forces with Equity to campaign for protection and representation for models, even speaking at the House of Lords on developing legislation. She is also keenly aware that though the fashion industry, compared to other culture sectors, are leaders in diversity often representing people of colour, different kinds of masculinity, and, in the main, paying women more than men, there is still a lot of work to be done to represent the true diverse nature of our multicultural world.

Still, in writing How to Get Into Fashion, Eunice is keen to focus on the positives in her advice to fashionistas young and old. The book also includes chapters on healthy eating, fitness, and information on jobs in fashion outside of modelling. She is also keen to focus on keeping good mental health with advice on common roadblocks, how to deal with rejection, and how to create your own definition of success.

When BfS asked Eunice about her own successes, though she admitted ‘being in Italian Vogue was pretty cool,’ her proudest moments were getting her Masters degree at 21—she was the first of her family to go to university—along with her charity work. She has also branched out from modelling into acting and broadcasting, and is heavily involved in the arts with a permanent space in the National Museum of Scotland as well as her own gallery in London. She was also named as a design champion for the V & A in Dundee when it opened this year. Eunice takes her busy schedule in her stride saying ‘I see myself as an artist and I communicate myself through my art in different ways.’

And her last piece of advice for her readers? ‘Be honest and real because people can tell.’ We heartily agree.

 

How to Get Into Fashion by Eunice Olumide is published by Luath Press, priced £9.99.

 

If you’re still undecided about what to get you loved ones for Christmas, take some inspiration from Books from Scotland’s Vikki Reilly and Scots Whay Hae’s Alistair Braidwood as they blether about the best of Scottish books from 2018. Get your feet up with your favourite tipple, have a listen – then hit the shops!

 

 

https://scotswhayhae.com/2018/12/17/that-was-the-year-that-was-its-the-best-of-2018-podcasts-part-1-books-2/

Sports biographies fill many a stocking on Christmas day, and the fine people at Quality Chess have just released one that all budding Grandmasters will cherish. Here at BooksfromScotland, we have a little taster.

 

Extract taken from Vladimir Kramnik: The Inside Story of a Chess Genuis
By Carsten Hensel
Published by Quality Chess

 

Much has been written about Vladimir Kramnik. What I can add is an authentic first-hand impression of this extraordinary man and the most important events in his great career. Nobody else was as close to the great matches of the 14th World Chess Champion over such a long period of time. Our friendship began back in the 1990s and stays strong. And in the intense period from 2002 to 2009, I was his professional advisor.

During specific phases of his career, certain circles have tried to portray Kramnik as a boring, self-centred pragmatist. Even Garry Kasparov, his predecessor on the chess throne, joined in this criticism for a while. But those presenting such an image of Kramnik have either no idea of who or what they are talking about, or simply wished to create this image out of self-interest.

Kramnik, a positionally active and very creative player, has played some of the most beautiful games in chess history. And the way he plays chess is how he conducts himself away from the board: sometimes chaotic, sometimes emotional, sometimes brilliant – but consistently authentic. Few, if any, have enriched the development of this magnificent game as much as Vladimir.

We are setting out on a journey through four decades of the life of the 14th World Chess Champion. On the way we will experience many emotional moments and come into contact with the dark side of the chess world.

In 1992 Garry Kasparov won the super-tournament “Dortmund Chess Days”, nowadays known as the Sparkassen Chess Meeting. On the floor below, in the public bar of the Westfalenhalle, 17-year old Vladimir Kramnik shared first in the accompanying Dortmund Open. He achieved this in great style, ahead of another 541 participants, including more than 100 international title holders. This success drew the attention of the chess media to the young Russian for the first time. Garry Kasparov said: “The most talented of all the players here is Vladimir Kramnik. All the others are making moves, but Kramnik is playing chess!”

I had heard of Kramnik the year before, picked up in passing in conversation with the ex-world champion (1948-1963) Mikhail Botvinnik, but it was only at this moment I really paid attention. Vladimir and I got to know each other better and better during the 1990s. After the Dortmund tournament of 1992, Kramnik received invitations to all the top events. He quickly climbed into the top 10 of the world ranking list, a place he would not relinquish until November 2014 (at the time of printing, October 2018, Kramnik is ranked 7th).

In 1993, Kramnik was invited to the top group in Dortmund, a tournament which he won for the first time in 1995 and would go on to win a further nine times in his “Dortmund living room”. His ten victories in such a high-level international competition represent a special record in the history of sport.

In the account which follows it is Vladimir Kramnik the man who is to be portrayed, while at the same time priority will be given to what happened during his time as World Chess Champion. It is the first biography to be published since he won the world championship title in a match in 2000 against Garry Kasparov.

Vladimir has contributed to this book quite considerably. My work was made easier by notes I had made during his great matches. Once years have passed, we tend to see things through a particular lens. For that reason, I have tried to present Kramnik’s and my views from as close as possible to what was happening at the time. I was helped in this by a dozen folders of material, notes in my weekly planners, as well as interviews and comments made by Kramnik at the time.

At the end of each chapter Vladimir Kramnik himself reviews the most important games played at these key moments in his career. These annotations are not the usual deep analysis of possible variations we see in magazines and tournament chess; rather they describe what the 14th World Champion was feeling at these peaks of his career.

At the end of the book there is a detailed historical record. This includes, amongst others, all Kramnik’s world championship games played between 2000 and 2008. There is also information about all previous world champions in the history of classical chess, based to a great extent on the opinions of Vladimir.

It would be a great satisfaction to Vladimir Kramnik and me if this book ignites in any reader of this book an interest in the most splendid of all games, chess. I hope you will read on and patiently study many wonderful games by the 14th World Chess Champion with a smile on your face.

Carsten Hensel
Dortmund, October 2018

 

Vladimir’s style is linked to enjoying the game. He likes to play beautiful chess. For him beauty comes to life more in the depth of the process and less in some extraordinary event: “As a child I would have liked to become a painter and later I integrated this desire into my play. I like to be creative. In this way I can penetrate more deeply than usual into the subtleties of a position.”

The public is another important factor for Kramnik. When hundreds of people stream into the playing hall and millions of chess fans follow his games on the internet, that is a great source of satisfaction. However, not all chess lovers can see all the nuances of the game. When we talk about depth and understanding, the analysis provided by a chess engine is often of little help. Kramnik does not find this so tragic: “The more people there are at a concert by a musician, the more intense the effect the performance will be on each individual. Whenever I am at a concert, I know that I can only reach a certain depth in my listening to the music. But feeling that perfection is to be found at a greater depth than my subjective experience has always fascinated me.”

Vladimir Kramnik’s favourite colour is blue, and he is particularly fond of desserts. He likes double espressos, from time to time a good glass of red wine, and also after particularly great efforts sometimes a small glass of single malt Scotch whisky. He can no longer tolerate much alcohol since in 2005 he was diagnosed with a rheumatic illness, which is chronic and demands almost total abstinence.

Kramnik is a lover of literature. His favourite works include Siddharta by Hermann Hesse, whose work he has discovered in recent years, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, Animal Farm by George Orwell, and Generation P by Viktor Pelevin. He likes the movies directed by Stanley Kubrick and Miloš Forman, although in general he prefers reading. His favourite actors are Robert De Niro and Inna Churikova.

His musical interests are universal, though he is turning more and more to classical music. His favourite composer is Johann Sebastian Bach. Vladimir is good friends with several virtuosi, including Vadim Repin, about whom Yehudi Menuhin once said: “He is simply the best and most perfect violinist that I have ever had the privilege of listening to.” In painting he feels an affinity to impressionism and loves the works of the Italian painter Amedeo Clemente Modigliani.

Karpov’s Best Games was the chess book which had the greatest influence on him as a child. For one simple reason: in the Soviet Union it was for a long time the only chess book which was available to him. As for his favourite players, he names them in chronological order: Emanuel Lasker, Alexander Alekhine, Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov.

What Kramnik considers as the most important character trait in a person is integrity. Vladimir Kramnik is married to Marie-Laure Kramnik, née Germon. He got to know the former journalist at the major Paris newspaper Le Figaro during an interview in 2003. Marie-Laure and Vladimir married in 2007 in the Russian Orthodox church in Paris and are proud parents of two children: Daria and Vadim. The family lives in Geneva, Switzerland.

 

Vladimir Kramnik: The Inside Story of a Chess Genuis by Carsten Hensel is published by Quality Chess, priced £22.50

Another Christmas recommendation: My Name’5 Doddie: The Autobiography by Doddie Weir, published by Black and White Publishing, priced £20.00

We’re big fans of small gift hardbacks here at BooksfromScotland, and fans of AL Kennedy too, so her latest release, The Little Snake, is definitely on our Christmas list. Here, Laura Waddell discovers its message of hope, trust and kindness.

 

The Little Snake
By AL Kennedy
Published by Canongate Books

 

Just in time for Christmas comes a short fable wrapped in gold. The cover of The Little Snake by AL Kennedy shines with the scales of snake Lanmo.

Google tells me this word means ‘death’ in Haition Creole. The reader doesn’t have to know this to appreciate the solid two-syllable name, rare and befitting an unusual creature, but simple enough for a child to grasp. But although the snake slips away periodically, on lengthy missions tasked with delivering fatal bites to an array of deserving humans at the end of their lives, at the core of this story is a warm heart. An unlikely friendship forms between this mysterious, cold-blooded snake and a little girl called Mary, on whose lips the name seesaws.

Mary lives in a town once prosperous where locals charmingly flew red kites above the chimneytops. Details are simple enough to avoid tweeness, but we get the gist. The collective has degraded and the future is uncertain. Change has happened in a short enough space of time to be within her own short living memory. Mary has a small garden on the roof of her parents’ building, across which she takes tiny steps so as to make a short walk feel long and satisfying. It’s the perspective of a child who has very little, using her imagination to make humble things vast. Although the town struggles to procure food, there grows a rose and simple vegetables. The family eat, resourcefully and good-natured, until the time comes when self-determination alone cannot make up for societal ill fortune.

Lanmo the snake is witnessed only by Mary when he arrives at her home one day. Small, and self-conscious of this, he is prone to boasting and unwittingly funny. Despite Lanmo’s deathly habits he chooses not to eat Mary, and the two become friends, cuddling up together for confidences and naps. Things become strained only when he tries to eat Mary’s kitten, but he spits it out again. The kitten sneezes with a “meoof”, grooms its fur back into shape, and all is well. When Lanmo is away from Mary, he sends her good dreams; Mary counts his long absences to the day.

As things become worse, Mary’s family leaves, and a boy from school she has taken a liking to tags along. Lanmo discovers a note she has left behind and makes his way to her, finding Mary and the boy in the woods, sleeping in trees for protection. Others from the town have dispersed, too, and Mary’s parents left the two to continue without them, with the implication they were not up to continuing the journey. Lanmo offers to wed the pair, with the logic that the word of a golden snake can be no less official than registered celebrants. For rings, he gives up two golden scales to Mary, who plucks them from his body; they mould fluidly around fingers. This is sacrifice: love hurts. But not so much physically for Lanmo losing scales as the knowledge that Mary is travelling to an adult realm, and he will make fewer appearances in her life. The married pair travel on to a new town with the help of the snake’s guidance; it appears over a hill as a beacon of safety and prosperity, and there they live their lives. They’re happy, but the magic of a speaking snake is something left in childhood.

Being a fable, The Little Snake is filled with symbols infused with magic and meaning. Golden rings, good dreams, a difficult journey, and a speaking creature are the backdrop to a subtle battle between good and evil. Mary, pure of heart, loves the snake easily, and tries to teach him what she knows of the emotion. It’s Lanmo’s journey, perhaps, that takes the hardest road. He already has a moral compass; those he takes out with his fangs include an exploitative industrialist, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it clue as to why Mary’s impoverished home declined while others prospered, hinting at Capitalist inequality. But the warmth of love, and acting in its interest, is new and difficult for him. Mary has never doubted the little snake; she has firm expectations for his capacity to love, and perhaps it is this faith which has made it possible.

Deceptively simple, as fables are, there are parallels with the real world in the themes of displaced peoples, arduous migration, and loneliness. Reading it, I thought of Irmgard Keun’s Child of All Nations, a story narrated by a child which describes crossing Europe in the late 1930s to seek safety from rising ethno-nationalism. The Little Snake is subtler and the lesson we learn from it, that love and friendship lead the way to a safe and happy society, is more optimistic, but perhaps no less true for that. A child’s perspective, after all, can observe what adults can and will not.

Adult and child readers alike will leave with a fondness of this little snake who appears, scales glinting, as a symbol of hope when it is needed most, hoping that was a shimmer of gold they glimpsed from the corner of their eye.

 

The Little Snake by AL Kennedy is published by Canongate Books, priced £9.99

Another Christmas recommendation: A Wee Bird Was Watching by Karine Polwart, illustrated by Kate Lieper, published by BC Books, priced £6.99

Gorgeous cookbooks are always a mainstay on Christmas and bestseller lists.  Father and son, Tom and James Morton have given us a tribute Shetland life that will make your mouth water and have you booking a trip there for the new year. Here is their perfect recipe for your Christmas leftovers.

 

Shetland: Cooking at the Edge of the World
By Tom & James Morton
Published by Quadrille

 

Shetland didn’t really have Christmas until Christianity came calling in the middle of the last millennium, initially in the form of strange, clifftop monastic communities from Ireland. When it took root, Christmas grew in the fertile soil of Yule or Jöl.

And now we get to the trows or trowies – a word derived from the Scandinavian Troll. Their legend is intertwined with Yule. There are all kinds of abstruse academic discussions in Shetland as to who the trowies were or who they represent – some say they were the remnants of the Pictish inhabitants of the soaring brochs: the stone-built structures that remain best preserved in Shetland.

To me, the trows signify some of the darkest fears of a small rural community. The child-stealer. The thief. The kidnapper and the husbandgrabber. The dreadful monster from the sea that lurks in the dark and will destroy you and all you love. Best guard against the trows. And, if you happen to be seduced by their music and end up in their hollow mound or cave, never, ever eat their food. Or they will have you forever.

Seven days before Yule Day, legend says that trows had permission to live above ground. Various precautions were taken. Two straws were formed into a cross and laid at the entrance to the yard where the corn and hay were stored. Animal hair was pleated and pinned over the door to the byre. And a blazing peat was carried through all the outhouses.

A day later it was Helya’s Nicht, another occasion for milgruel. Then came Tammasmas Nicht. No work was done after twilight on Tammasmas and breaking that rule was bound to bring bad luck:

 

The very babe unborn cries, “Oh dül, dül”, ( ‘dül’ – sorrow.)

For the brakkin o” Tammasmas Nicht

Five nichts afore Yule.

 

The Sunday before Yule was Byaena’s Day, and it was time for the head of an ox or cow. Substituting a sheep’s head was permissible. Once the fat and meat from the head was used, the skull was thoroughly cleaned and a candle placed in the eye-socket, ready for Yule morning. This was considered both acceptable and indeed, welcome.

On Yule Eve, even the poorest family would eat meat. There was ritual washing: three pieces of red-hot peat were dropped into the water when hands or feet were washed, or the trows would paralyse them. People put on clean clothes, cleaned the house and hid away anything considered unholy. All doors were left unlocked with a lamp lit and a piece of iron near the door.

For Yule dawn, the candle in the cow’s skull was lit and carried through the house and adjoining barn, where the animals were especially well fed.

There was a morning glass of spirit – sometimes home-distilled, sometimes imported rum – and breakfast was taken. Yule cakes (more scalloped bannocks) were made to resemble and symbolise the lost sun. From then, meat was key. Salted, smoked fresh mutton, beef – no dirty pork – along with salt or dried fish. Vivda (dried meat). Some even had wild ducks, captured in early December and fattened in cages. Oh, and stovies.

Once the animals were fed, Yule Day was a day of rest, although as the short day passed and night fell in the town of Lerwick, bored young men’s thoughts turned to dangerous pastimes. Namely, lighting tar-filled barrels on fire. This practice morphed into the festival of Up Helly Aa, which was once the name for the twenty-fourth night of Yule. Fire always played a part – it signified the lightening of the coming days and scared away those pesky trows.

 

Our Christmas

I love Christmas, and I love it for the way it brings light to the darkness. It’s all about being together, at home. Has my entire extant family ever been at home together at Christmas? Not yet. But a large chunk of them regularly do trek to Shetland, amid the extreme weather, the cold, the darkness and the risk of trow attack. And there is fire and warmth from the Rayburn and the well-oiled central heating. There is good food, fine wine, and the best whisky I can afford.

We watch TV. We squabble and fight and laugh. We even go to church, for that once-a-year visit to the disused otherwise Hillswick Kirk. Candles flicker in its cavernous interior, which smells of damp. We sit and remember other Christmases, those that are lost to us. We sing hymns, badly, and listen to a sermon nobody remembers. And I think of that one magical year when we went into the Kirk in hard, blustery frost, and emerged into the calm, muffled silence of heavy snow, falling, covering our sins like forgiveness. We took off our gloves and shook hands and smiled.

 

Leftover stovies

2 large onions
2 tbsp dripping from your roast (lard will do)
1kg (2lb 4oz) potatoes, peeled and sliced
500ml (2 cups) leftover gravy or meat juices (or stock)
500g (1lb 2oz) leftover cooked meat, cut into 2–3cm (1 inch) chunks
good sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

 

More stovies because stovies are wonderful. And the reason stovies were so much a part of Yule is because they are made from leftovers. Imagine all the aspects of a roast dinner, chopped and mushed together with gravy. Astounding.

Cooked meat is an essential.

Slice your onions as finely as you can be bothered. Chuck them into a large, heavy-bottomed pan with a lid, together with the dripping, and stick it on a medium heat. Fry until soft.

Slice your potatoes thinly – this can take a wee while. Layer them all over the fried onions and pour in your gravy. Add the meat, then top up with enough water or stock to cover.

Stick the lid on and bring to a boil. Then, once boiling vigorously, turn down to a low heat so that it barely simmers.

Cook for about half an hour, stirring occasionally. Check regularly and keep cooking until the potatoes start to fall apart – this is proper comfort food. Taste, and be ready to add a good bit of salt and a healthy dose of pepper for that background bit of Scottish spice.

 

Shetland: Cooking at the Edge of the World by Tom & James Morton is published by Quadrille, priced £25.00

Another Christmas recommendation: Gary Maclean’s Kitchen Essentials, published by Black and White, priced £20.00

Shaun Bythell’s The Diary of a Bookseller has been delighting readers ever since publication in 2017. BooksfromScotland are delighted he has written an exclusive piece for us giving us an insight into the run up to Christmas in his bookshop, and it’s not what you might expect!

 

The Diary of a Bookseller
By Shaun Bythell
Published by Profile Books

 

Christmas in The Bookshop

For most retailers, the run-up to Christmas is the best of times. For my business, it is the worst of times. Apart from the insufferable cold that inevitably accompanies this time of year, daily footfall – like the temperature – drops to single figures in December. This is, in part, due to the fact that the economy of Galloway is heavily dependent on tourism, and this month is not a time when people choose to visit. And even if they did, I very much doubt whether many of them would be buying second-hand books as Christmas presents for their loved ones. Quite why this is the case bewilders me, but I suppose people generally like shiny new things as gifts rather than old books.

My efforts to decorate the shop for the season are frequently the subject of conversation among the other traders in Wigtown, and not for positive reasons.  While everyone else puts their decorations up at the end of November, I wait until exactly one week before Christmas Day. I walk down to the disused railway line with a sack and a pair of secateurs, like some sort of demonic Santa, and cut enough ivy to fill the sack. The freshly cut ivy is then placed, with no nod to any sort of aesthetic, in the front windows of the shop, on top of which are (literally) thrown a set of fairy lights. I think it looks nice, but popular opinion is most assuredly not with me on this, and I’m daily berated for my lack of effort by other businesses and strangers alike. One year, I cleared everything out of the shop windows and put a solitary humbug in each one. I can’t say that praise was heaped upon me for my imagination.

The rest of Wigtown, though, makes a good effort to embrace the bling of the festive season – we have an enormous Christmas tree in the square, and the shops are festooned with flashing lights and all the usual garish horrors that try to bring light to the darkest month. The festivities include Christmas carols by the tree, accompanied by the Creetown Silver Band, and a Christmas Fair in the town hall. This requires someone to dress up as Santa and give presents to the children who turn up. Several years ago, nobody volunteered to play the role, so Jessica – my partner at the time – offered to be Santa, and on that day Wigtown had its first female, Jewish Santa Claus.

Shortly before closing time on Christmas Eve there is, without fail, a surge of panicked farmers desperate to buy something for their wives, who inevitably show up on the 27th to return whatever their husbands have seen fit to buy for them. More often than not, these reflect the taste of the purchaser rather than the recipient, and farmers love nothing more than Westerns. My sales of Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey spike on Christmas Eve, and three days later the shelves are replenished by disappointed spouses.

Last year’s best-selling book in the shop during the festive period was Eilidh MacPherson’s 300 Farmers of Scotland, one of the few new books I stock. I bought a dozen copies, I think, and to my astonishment they sold almost straight away, predominantly (I suspect) to people who she’d included in the book.

The week between Christmas and New Year is – in marked contrast to the week before – extremely busy. Despite the unspoilt landscape and lazy pace of life, Galloway has little in the way of employment opportunities, and many of the industrious young tend to leave the area for more metropolitan lifestyles. They do, however, have to return occasionally to visit their families, and Christmas is the one time when they have little choice but to come home. Starved of daylight and desperate to escape from those most closely tied to them by consanguinity, these exiles flock to the shop to hide for a few hours, and dodge the inevitable leftover turkey and sherry-sipping great-aunts. During this week the shop is populated by bushy beards and skinny jeans as the youths who have been financially forced to leave the area are forced by family to return. It is also a time when many of my childhood friends return, and social life picks up considerably, although I’m usually working alone in the shop, so miss out on most things, but no matter – at least the shop is busy, and there’s a sense of bonhomie about town.

Once New Year has passed there is a mass exodus from Galloway as people return to work. With this comes a crippling drop in takings in the shop, but after 17 years I have finally become accustomed to it, and budget accordingly. Between New Year and Easter, barely a soul darkens the doorstep of the shop and I become (as Dickens describes Scrooge) a  ‘squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner’ until the spring sun finally warms up the soil enough for flowers and people to come out once again.

 

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell is published by Profile Books, priced £8.99

Another Christmas recommendation: The Bookshop Detective by Jan Ellis, published by Waverley Books, priced £7.99

Still looking for the best Christmas books for kids? Barrington Stoke have just released this charming story for those who find the festive season a bit overwhelming. Author, Nicola Davies tells us more about the motivation behind her new book.

 

The Dog That Saved Christmas
By Nicola Davies, illustrated by Mike Byrne
Published by Barrington Stoke

 

A Christmas for Everyone with Nicola Davies

Christmas can be a bit mad can’t it? The Christmas tree gets stuck in the door, the fairy lights blow a fuse, you forget to buy a present for old Uncle Whats-His-Name. Just when you think you have a bit of peace and quiet the carol singers are shrieking out of tune at the front door!

I love Christmas trees and fairy lights, Christmas carols and the mad chaos of my family all getting together but, even for me, it can all be a bit tiring. Children who rely on routine for their happiness and well being, also really struggle at Christmas because nothing is normal. Their school, their street, their home is taken over by this thing we call Christmas, and they find it really disturbing.  Jake the hero of my story The Dog That Saved Christmas is one of those children. He dreads Christmas and just wants it to be over as soon as possible!

Some years I feel just like Jake. I would rather give Christmas a miss; all that rushing about buying presents and food, all the adverts on telly and in the shops telling you to buy Christmas this and Christmas that. Some years it drives me nuts and I can’t wait to get back to my nice safe predictable ordinary life. But for Jake and other children like him, who have Aspergers spectrum disorders, the chaos of Christmas is more than an irritation – it makes them feel afraid and insecure, angry and upset. Of course this can make family life tricky – part of the family is getting excited about Christmas, but another part hates everything about it.

For children like Jake, Christmas is just the extreme version of some of the problems they struggle with every day. Their reaction to what’s going on around them can seem strange, so I wanted to write a story that tried to show what it was like from their perspective. As I was thinking and researching the story, I found out about how trained companion dogs can help children like Jake feel happier and calmer even when the world about them is doing something a bit bonkers, like Christmas.

We all assume that Christmas is something that everyone looks forward to but for many people Christmas is a really difficult time. People who live alone are reminded of how lonely they are; families who have lost loved ones miss them even more and people who are struggling to make ends meet just feel left out of the whole jamboree. It’s easy to forget that Christmas isn’t really about buying things but about being together, being kind and making sure that everyone has a Christmas that suits them – even if that means perfect toast fingers instead of turkey!

 

The Dog That Saved Christmas by Nicola Davies and illustrated by Mike Byrne is published by Barrington Stoke, priced £6.99

Another Christmas recommendation: A Boy Called Christmas by Matt Haig and illustrated by Chris Mould, published by Canongate Books, priced £6.99

We have advent calendars filled with chocolate, cheese and even gin. But for the kids, what about a book that is also an advent calendar? Author Nick Simons tells us more about Elma the Elf.

 

Elma the Elf and the Tinsel-tastic Sled Zeppelin
By Nick Simons & Camilla Victoria Storm
Published by Cranachan

 

Q&A Session with Nick Simons

1) Your first book Elma the Elf and the Tinsel-Tastic Sled Zeppelin was recently published.  A unique idea behind the book in that it is an ‘advent’ book with 24 chapters for the child and the caregiver to read in the days leading up to Christmas.  How did that idea come about?

It all started when a song and a Christmas decoration crashed into each other a few Christmasses ago. This snowball turned into an avalanche of ideas, eventually developing into the book which is now out. Once we figured out that the story was more of a globe-spanning epic adventure than a simple short tale, it made complete sense to turn it into an advent calendar. Here in Norway, the “julekalender” story is a big tradition. What could be more “hyggelig” (norwegian for hygge) than bringing a Scandi-Yule tradition to the UK?

2) What are you hoping that readers will take from reading the book in this way?

Lots of things! Christmas is still a deeply shared and traditional experience, so our dream is that our readers and listeners curl up as families every day in the run-up and dive into and swim around in this world. The days and weeks counting down to Christmas are magic enough in themselves, but building a tradition of episodic storytelling could be a lovely way of bringing people together. Thinking about what Christmas really means. Hopefully having a warm, fuzzy, cinnamon-flavoured Christmas feeling in their tummies from December 1st onwards.

3) Elma is the main character of the book and is, frankly, a little bit scatty and unorthodox.  Where did you come from?  Is she based on anyone in particular?

We have a firm belief in strong female role models who don’t have to be princesses or wear pink clothes. Elma is like the famous girl in the old Lego advert – ready to think, create, design and build. So there’s a bit of STEM in there too. We wanted her to be funny, spiky, rough around the edges… with impulsive instincts causing her to self-inflict the worst thing that could happen to a factory elf. There are some people who have asked whether aspects of her personality and inspiration for dialogue was based a little bit on Camilla, Elma’s co-storyteller and illustrator… but we couldn’t possibly comment on that.

4) Santa’s reindeer are a major part of the story, so much so that you even held the book launch at the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre in Glenmore, Aviemore.  How did that come about and how was it?

Is it possible to have a Christmas story set in Santa’s factory without reindeer? We don’t think so. And Comet is a firm favourite character of ours. It was the brainwave of our genius publishing team to approach the reindeer centre, and it couldn’t have been more appropriate. We donned our best elvish clothes and pointy ears, brought our ukuleles and played some laplandish christmas music, and read to a never-ending stream of lovely kids. It was magic.

5) As with many Christmas titles, Elma the Elf and the Tinsel-Tastic Sled Zeppelin has the receiving and giving of gifts as one of its central themes.  You both live in Norway so do you have any traditions in your own families relating to gifting?

Personally, and a theme of the book, is that gifts are about quality, meaning and love, and not quantity or size. Elvish-made presents are a symbol of that. But personally, and slightly contradictory, we also both believe there can be never be enough ukuleles. So that’s always a good gift, along with lovely family gatherings.

6) If you could only receive one gift at Christmas, what would it be?

A ukulele…? Lego…? A time turner…? The collected works of Frank Zappa, Genesis and the Punch Brothers on vinyl? Unlimited crunchy cranberry porridge toppings? Enough coffee for a lifetime?

7) What do you think is the perfect gift for a booklover?

This brilliant new book which just came out, called Elma the Elf and the Tinsel-tastic Sled Zeppelin, of course!

8) And finally, what does the future hold for Elma?

We don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to tell you that Elma made it through the book with no worse injuries than a few bungee-based bumps and bruises. So Elma and Comet will most certainly be back for more adventures of creating, cahooting, inventing and mischief.

 

Elma the Elf and the Tinsel-tastic Sled Zeppelin by Nick Simons & Camilla Victoria Storm is published by Cranachan, priced £6.99

Another Christmas recommendation: The Little Inventor’s Handbook, published by HarperCollins, priced £9.99

BooksfromScotland have a bit of a soft spot for The Bay City Rollers. Shang-A-Lang is compulsory at family parties, and though most Scots favour The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles as our alternative national anthem, Shang-A-Lang has to be a contender too. In his memoir, I Ran With The Gang, written before his untimely death earlier this year, Alan Longmuir remembers the making of that classic pop anthem.

 

Extract taken from I Ran With The Gang: My Life In and Out of The Bay City Rollers
By Alan Longmuir with Martin Knight
Published by Luath Press

 

At the recording session for Remember Mark 11, we were introduced to the follow-up single from Martin and Coulter, Shang-A-Lang, and we re-recorded Saturday Night while we were at it. I don’t think anybody was considering re-releasing it, but I guess vague plans for an album were form­ing and the producers wanted to keep things consistent vocalist wise. Shang- A-Lang was a fantastic song. I knew straight away that it was a hit, possibly a number one. For me, it had everything: a buoyant, fun pop song with a great beat and chorus that people couldn’t help but hum or whistle. It also touched on gangs, juke boxes, blue suede shoes, dancing and rocking. It could have come out of the Brill Building, the New York song-writing fac­tory, that ten years earlier had produced Up on the Roof, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, Spanish Harlem and scores of others. Bill Martin has said that was his intention.

There have been several reasons put forward as to what Shang-A-Lang actually means. Bill has said he wanted to emulate the clanging noises of Glasgow’s shipyards, but Judy Garland had beaten him to it by using ‘clang clang’ in a song. He also said that Shang-A-Lang was a substitute swear word that he had used as a kid. For example, when his mother told him off, he told her ‘Aw, Shang-A-Lang’ instead of something like a phrase ending in ‘off’. Who knows? It may have been because he found something that rhymed with gang. Perhaps it didn’t go unnoticed by Bill and Phil that Mr Glitter did well with his rousing Do You Wanna Be in My Gang?

Bill Martin has also said he was referencing the Glasgow gangs, too. We knew all about gangs from Scotland. It was part of Scottish street life back then. Glasgow razor gangs, real or imagined, had been sending the tabloid press into apoplexy since the war. Indeed, some people thought we were a street gang. Yes, during our formative years graffiti declaring ‘B C R’ started appearing on walls around Edinburgh and some people believed this was the graffiti tag of a fearsome street gang. It was in reality Tam sending some young zoomer out at night with a spray can. It was an unsubtle way of spreading the word about us like he did with the David Cassidy fan club list he ‘found’ years later. You can imagine it. Two Edinburgh laddies in the park:

‘Are you in the bcr?’

‘What’s the bcr?’

‘What’s the bcr! They’re a gang, pal. Right nasty gang. They come oot at night dressed in short trousers and yellow and black stripy socks. If they catch you, they throttle you with a silk scarf until yer eyes explode…’

Some years later, when we were more famous, Tam sent us out, by then all in our tartan, with soapy water and brushes to clean off the graffiti or, at least, pretend we were. Of course, he rang the press to make sure they recorded it all for the newspapers the next day.

Shang-A-Lang, the song, has stood the test of time. In fact, a very prom­inent person when collecting his MBE recently from Buckingham Palace called for it to be made the Scottish national anthem. He described the incumbent one, Flower of Scotland, as a dirge. That person was Bill Martin.

Shang smashed the charts. This time there was no waiting around or biting of fingernails. The song was a hit. It might even have flown to the number one spot had it not been for The Rubettes with their song Sugar Baby Love. The Rubettes were the opposite of us: they had been made up of session musicians, brought together by John Richardson. The band Show­addywaddy had turned down Sugar Baby Love initially, and the Rubettes recorded, and then were brought together by, that song. They went on to enjoy a long and successful career. John Richardson is now a Hare Krishna devotee and goes by the name of Jayadev.

To give a flavour of the charts at the time, behind us was Sparks with This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us and, just slipping down the from top twenty, ABBA with their breakthrough Eurovision Song Con­test winner, hit Waterloo. We’d soon meet ABBA and they seemed a decent and happy pair of couples. Like us, they had suffered from being considered to be musically lacking for many years. If you had friends coming around to dinner you’d stuff your ABBA lps behind a cushion. They were the by-word for naff but a decade or two later they were allowed out of the closet and the public opinion shifted. ABBA were brilliant and supremely talented. Danc­ing Queen and Take a Chance on Me are classic songs. The fickleness of taste.

 

I Ran With The Gang: My Life In and Out of The Bay City Rollers by Alan Longmuir with Martin Knight is published by Luath Press, priced £14.99

Another Christmas recommendation: Made in Scotland: My Grand Adventures in a Wee Country by Billy Connolly, published by BBC Books, priced £20.00

The Christmas holiday is the ideal time for reflection, and it could be said that the essay is the perfect genre to aid that reflection. This month, David Robinson looks at St Andrews-based essayist, Chris Arthur, and wonders what the essay can do for us in these turbulent times.

 

Hummingbirds Between the Pages
By Chris Arthur
Published by Mad Creek Books

 

Of all the literary genres, there’s one that is in a bit of a hole. About ten years ago, you’d occasionally come across poets worrying in private whether the next generation had gone missing, and short story writers wondering out loud whether the same thing had happened to their publishers. You don’t hear that quite so much nowadays. But spare a thought, as the year runs out, for the one kind of writer whose publishing habitat has all but vanished and who has become as rare as a snow leopard. I am talking, of course, about the essayist.

I know only one writer in all Scotland who chooses to publish nothing but essays. Because British publishers routinely assume essays are box office poison, our home-grown essayists often have to find a publisher in America, where a whole variety of university magazines still make room for them. Even there, though, essays masquerading as creative non-fiction, memoir, even meditation, all get the writerly foot in the editorial door a lot more readily anything that stays true to the dreaded e-word.

That at least is what Chris Arthur, the St Andrews-based essayist, says in the introduction to his new book, Hummingbirds Between the Pages, and maybe you could even add the odd bit of nature writing to that list. In one sense, then, his entire oeuvre – eight essay collections in such an uncommercial genre – is the very definition of a lonely furrow.  In another, it’s the very opposite: unpredictable, meandering, tinged with wonder.

The title essay, for example, was inspired by something Arthur discovered in Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood. Writing about eighteenth-century settlers in Pennsylvania, she noted how they would press hummingbirds between the pages of heavy books, as if they were wildflowers, before posting them to relatives in Ulster or Scotland. Look, they were saying to those they’d left behind, you won’t have seen anything as perfect as this.

Robert Atwan, who founded the renowned Best American Essays annual anthology in 1986 and has been its series editor ever since, ranks Chris Arthur as “among the very best essayists in the English language today” and even though he doesn’t have a British publisher, he has won a shoal of awards in the US. When Atwan helped Joyce Carol Oates pick the ten best American essays since the Second World War (Baldwin, Mailer, Didion, Foster Wallace, Sontag et al) he said he made the task a lot easier by excluding non-Americans “so that such outstanding English-language essayists as Chris Arthur  … are missing”.

So precisely what are they – or we, assuming you haven’t yet read Arthur – missing?

Let’s start with what his essays aren’t. Confusingly, because it’s the same word, they’re nothing to do with what you or I might, once upon a time, have written for homework. Even at university, essays were usually intended to be answered in predictable ways that had everything to do with proving that you had assimilated facts and interpretations and nothing to do with originality and self-expression.

That, though, is how the true essay started, with Montaigne sitting down in his tower and trying – essayer, to try – to put down his own thoughts – in his own words, “to follow a movement so wondering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilise the innumerable fluttering that agitate it.” Some of those flutterings could easily be that of hummingbird wings in the opening essay of Arthur’s book in which he recalls the thrill, as an eight-year-old, of watching hummingbirds dart around him in the walk-through jungle aviary in London Zoo. The essays in his collection are, he says, all rooted in similar feelings – “all of them have stopped me in my tracks, glinting with the suggestion of meanings beyond the commonplace”.

Somewhere in the best of them there’ll be that same kind of wingbeat switch from, say, Arthur’s boyhood memory of that day at London zoo to mentioning the Scots-Irish of 18th century Pennsylvania. Then the essay will dart off again, perhaps into poetry, or Buddhism – Arthur took a PhD in religious studies – or maybe back into a slice of memoir about growing up in Northern Ireland. The point is: a good essay is always on the move, always searching out links and currents of thought, because if it doesn’t it’s dead on arrival in the reader’s mind – a series of dull factoids, not “a contour map of consciousness” or a Rough Guide to the essayist’s inner life.

In June, Arthur was one of the guest speakers at an international conference on the essay organised by Kirsty Gunn and Gail Low of Dundee University’s English Department. Held at Hospitalfield, Arbroath, it attracted an impressive roster of essayists, including Philip Lopate, Gabriel Josipovici, Dan Gunn and Kim Kremer (publisher of Notting Hill Editions, who – uniquely  – publish nothing but essays) and its aims were ambitious to match. Essentially, they boiled down to this: has the type of essay Arthur writes – individualistic, hard-thought – got any place within the academy or any future in journalism? What are its core values and how is it being developed?  Can it be taught in schools – and if so, how?

These are all massive questions, each worthy of a full-length essay in reply.  But it’s the last question that interests me the most – because the essays I most enjoy reading are by minds like Arthur’s (or, come to that, Richard Holloway’s or Kathleen Jamie’s) fuller and more wide-ranging than my own. And because such wisdom often comes with age, the heretical thought arises: can the essay ever attract the brightest minds of a younger generation? Can Arthur’s type of free-thinking essay really find its way into the university curriculum, alongside if not replacing the conventional type?

I don’t know the answer to that, but least the Dundee conference was a step in the right direction. Because in an age of empty popularism, when secularism has already squeezed out the reflective sermon and the Internet already bleached out so much long-form journalism, we need the contrariety, individuality, confidence and connectivity of the well-written essay more than ever.

 

Hummingbirds Between the Pages by Chris Arthur is published by Mad Creek Books, priced £21.75

Love this? You may love Waiting for the Last Bus: Reflections on Life & Death by Richard Holloway, published by Canongate Books, priced £14.99

It’s likely that we will have lots of films of derring-do to look forward to over the Christmas holidays. The Great Escape is a dead cert, surely? Still, if you prefer your adventures off screen, then BooksfromScotland can highly recommend the rebooted Richard Hannay thrillers by Robert J Harris. Here’s an excerpt from the latest, Castle Macnab.

 

Extract taken from Castle Macnab
By Robert J Harris
Published by Polygon

 

THE HUNGRY RIVER

How the ex-ruler of Germany came to be wandering among the peaks and glens of Denroy was a mystery of colossal proportions.

As the perceived instigator of the Great War, Wilhelm was the most hated man in Europe, perhaps in the world. To avoid being brought to trial for the atrocities committed in his name, he had been forced into permanent exile in Holland, forbidden to venture more than twenty-five miles from his estate at Doorn. It was as much as his life was worth to leave that refuge. Yet here he was – and by his own account he had not come alone.

A covert side-glance at my companion reassured me that he had not recognised me in turn – and why should he? At the time of our encounter, I was merely one more cog in a complex military machine. The Kaiser of Germany had more weighty matters on his mind than the face of a chance acquaintance at a period when the outcome of the war still hung in the balance.

At the time he had not struck me as a madman or a barbaric despot, as he was so often depicted. On the contrary, he seemed to me a man a shade too ordinary for his exalted position, who lacked the powers of intellect or wisdom needed to steer his country on a sane course.

Instead, through his own arrogance and ambition, he had uncaged a savage beast upon the world and he feared its rampage as much as anyone. My reflection then had been that I would not swap places with him for all the blessings of Heaven.

Whatever had brought him to Scotland, it was clearly a secret venture unsanctioned by conventional channels of diplomacy. I sensed a game being played for high stakes, and against all odds fate had placed me in a unique position to find out what it was.

I would have to tread carefully to avoid putting the Kaiser on his guard. I schooled my face to an easy smile and resumed our conversation. ‘So, Herr Hesselmann, are you in Scotland on business or to do a spot of hunting and fishing?’

‘For pleasure and relaxation, of course.’ He sounded quite genuine. ‘Shooting would be a pleasure, though it is years since I held a rifle. Now, however, I am hunting for those missing colleagues of mine. You say you have seen no one?’

‘Not a soul,’ I affirmed.

I noted that his English was quite perfect and barely accented. That was only to be expected, I supposed, given that his mother was an English princess, the daughter of Queen Victoria, and the young Wilhelm had been a frequent visitor to his grandmother’s court.

I decided to risk probing further. ‘Have you been long in Denroy?’

‘We arrived yesterday evening. We dined at eight and after drinks retired to bed. I confess I overslept this morning, as did my aide. I expect your Scottish air is responsible. When we rose we found the two who had accompanied us had disappeared, taking their car with them.’

‘Your missing friends are Swiss also?’

He blinked twice before replying. ‘They are indeed countrymen of mine. I sent my aide to the east to look for them while I explored to the west. Perhaps by the time we find our way back to the cottage they will have returned.’

To our left the glen dropped steeply to where the Shean river tumbled impetuously over a string-course of boulders. On the other side a jagged scar ran down the sheer hillside as though it had been defaced by a blunt and angry dagger. Down this defile a shimmering waterfall dashed headlong from the heights, racing for the torrent below like a frenzy of crazed hares.

‘I do enjoy your Scottish countryside,’ said my companion. Then he added in the tone of a guilty confession, ‘But what I am most looking forward to are some good Scottish scones. I had a Scottish housekeeper once who used to bake them fresh for me with jam and cream.’

Suddenly there was a disturbance among the tree-clad slopes ahead. Glancing upward, I saw a flock of startled rooks explode into the air just before three men hove into view on the road from the east.

The Kaiser gave a reflexive start at the sight then commanded himself. I realised how wary he must be of being recognised, but the great majority of people only knew him from old photographs in the newspapers. In those pictures his hair was darker, his moustache stiff and twisted upward, and he was always in a uniform bedecked with medals. No one who had not met him could possibly identify this modestly attired businessman with the imperious Prussian of old.

As the newcomers drew nearer, I saw they were dressed like huntsmen and all carried rifles. The foremost wore a patch over his right eye and a bitter scowl twisted the mouth beneath his bristling black moustache. At his heels came a large, flat-faced man with grizzled brown hair and a close-cropped beard beside whom walked a lad with a tangle of brown curls. He resembled the man at his side so closely, they were undoubtedly father and son.

Something in their purposeful stride sent a tingle of alarm down my spine. I stopped and placed my hand gently on the Kaiser’s arm to restrain him. He turned on me with an affronted glare and snorted peevishly. I realised he was not accustomed to anyone’s laying hands on him and immediately released my grip.

‘Those aren’t your friends?’ I enquired.

‘Indeed not,’ he replied. ‘I have never seen these men before.’

The leader of the strangers unslung the rifle from his shoulder and levelled it at us. ‘Gentlemen, you are trespassing on private land.’

‘As far as I am aware, this is no one’s property,’ I retorted.

The one-eyed man ignored my objection. ‘I must ask you to identify yourselves.’

‘My name is Richard Hannay,’ I told him. My sense of danger was growing, but I could see no alternative to holding our ground.

‘And I am Herr Hesselmann,’ the Kaiser informed him stiffly.

The glances passing between the three men told me they recognised the name.

‘And you are together?’ One Eye pressed.

‘Mr Hannay was kind enough to alter direction,’ said Wilhelm, ‘so that he might help me find my way.’

‘That won’t be necessary now.’ The lead huntsman shooed me off with a wave of his rifle. ‘You can carry on to wherever you were going, Mr Hannay. We’ll escort Herr Hesselmann to his destination.’

The Kaiser took a step back, sensing that something was amiss. He drew himself up with dignity and addressed the newcomers haughtily. ‘I do not believe that will be necessary. Your assistance is not required.’

‘I must insist.’ One Eye signalled his associates and they advanced on us with their guns at the ready. It was clear to me now that they knew exactly who Wilhelm was and that they intended him no good.

Snatching the alpenstock from the Kaiser’s fingers, I yelled, ‘Run!’

Perhaps for the first time in his life the former emperor proved as quick to obey an order as he was to give one and bounded off up the westward road.

One Eye grabbed the young man by the shoulder and propelled him forward. ‘After him!’

 

Castle Macnab by Robert J Harris is published by Polygon, priced £12.99

Another Christmas recommendation: The Return of John Macnab by Andrew Greig is published by riverrun, priced £9.99

To those currently working in publishing, we’re sure when you’re elbow deep in metadata spreadsheets, you might wish you worked in the industry at a simpler time. To get a greater glimpse into those days of gentleman publishing, BooksfromScotland recommends Dear Mr Murray, a collection of letters from the John Murray archive. You’ll find amongst these pages complaints from Jane Austen about a print delay, Lord Byron discussing his eventful love life, and Adrian Conan Doyle challenging a literary critic to a duel. Maybe metadata spreadsheets are less stressful after all!

 

Extract taken from Dear Mr Murray: Letters to a Gentleman Publisher
Edited by David McClay
Published by John Murray

 

The largely self-taught Scottish poet James Hogg, known as ‘the Ettrick Shepherd’, struggled to make a living as a shepherd and enjoyed only limited commercial success as a writer. Despite gaining admirers among literary circles, his lack of manners and argumentative nature often caused him diffi­culties. As a result he was always short of money and hoped that his friendships with John Murray II, Walter Scott and Lord Byron would boost his literary career.

Hogg, however, often caused offence to his fellow poets: with Byron by making crude and inappropriate jokes over his marriage and with Scott and Byron over their reluctance to contribute to his proposed poetical magazine. Hogg and Murray first met in Edinburgh in the autumn of 1814, with Murray encouraged to publish him upon his reciting part of his poem Pilgrims of the Sun (1815). Between the agreement to publish and the work appearing in print Hogg, desperate for money and news of Byron, wrote to Murray.

 

James Hogg to John Murray II, Edinburgh, 26 December 1814

Dear Murray

What the deuce have you made of my excellent poem that you are never publishing it while I am starving for want of money and cannot even afford a Christmas goose to my friends? I think I may say of you as the countryman said to his friend who asked him when his wife had her accouche­ment ‘Troth, man’ said he ‘she’s aye gaun aboot yet and I think she’ll be gaun to keep this ane till hirsel a thegither’. However I daresay that like the said wife you have your reasons for it but of all things a bookseller’s reasons suit worst with a poets board – I should be glad to know if you got safely across the Tweed and what number of the little family group you lost by the way betwixt Edin. and London and how everything in the literary world is going on with you since that time – Why do you never write to me? Have you ever seen Moore or talked to him about our projected reporting? What in the world is become of that unlucky perverse callan Lord Byron? I have not heard from him these two months and more. I have really been afraid for some time past that he was dead or perhaps even married and was truly very concerned about the lad – But I was informed the other day by a gentleman of the utmost respectability that he was very busy writing godly psalms to be sung in congregations and families and when I heard that I said, ‘If that be the case there’s no man sure of his life’ – I do not know where to find him else I would write him a scolding letter – I have nothing in the world to say to you only be sure to let me hear from you and tell me how you are like to come on with the copies of the Queen’s Wake which I sent you. It has been a losing business and you must get me as much for it as you can afford. I hope you will soon find occasion for sending me an offer for a fifth edition. I am interrupted so farewell for the present.

God bless you

James Hogg

 

Dear Mr Murray: Letters to a Gentleman Publisher is edited by David McClay, published by John Murray, and priced £16.99

Another Christmas recommendation: Letters of Note, edited by Shaun Usher, published by Canongate Books, priced £16.99

‘Tis the season to coorie in, and to coorie in in style, we should all have a look at Gabriella Bennett’s The Art of Coorie. It’s full of fabulous suggestions for making the best out of Scotland’s larder, our natural world, our traditions, our textiles – all the things that give us that warm, fuzzy feeling, despite our infamous weather! Here, especially for the festive season, are The Art of Coorie‘s tips on Christmas wrapping.

 

Extract taken from The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way
By Gabriella Bennett
Published by Black and White Publishing

 

 

TEN TIPS FOR COORIE GIFT WRAPPING

Jane Adams of Author Interiors

 

1 We like to repurpose old newspapers found under flooring we have lifted up or in cupboards and drawers in homes we are developing or decorating, especially for our book lover friends. For friends who like something more contemporary, we like offcuts or leftover wallpaper to make an unusual and luxurious gift wrap.

2 You can get quirky with your gift tags – such as a holly leaf with your loved one’s name written on it in metallic felt-tip pen. Use blackboard paint on one side of the cardboard and then write their name in chalk on it.

3 We love to bring the outside in with our Christmas decorating and wrapping, especially as Scotland has so many rich tastes, textures and scents. Posies of holly, ivy berries, and pine cones look stunning tied to presents. Dried fruits like grapefruit or orange look beautiful attached to a ribbon bow.

4 We make homemade marmalade as a Christmas tradition as a nod to the Dundee area where we live. If you have any oranges left over from making marmalade or fruit cake – cut them into slices and stick them in the oven at a low temperature so they dehydrate. For a more contemporary look, do the same with figs as they have a great texture and shape when dehydrated.

5 Try bleaching pine cones for a cool-toned vibe. Wearing gloves, bleach the cones, leaving them for less time if you prefer ashy grey or longer for white. Bleaching leaves to make leaf skeletons is another lovely addition to wrapping. You can also spray paint holly leaves and pine cones in metallic tones.

6 Think about inner wrapping as well – some tissue paper and maybe a few slices of dried blood oranges and grapefruit.

7 Consider how the gift will be received as that will affect how you dress it up. Adding a Christmas biscuit to a parcel is lovely, but not ideal if being sent in the post.

8 It’s about creating scents and feelings of Christmas. Think about the texture of your wrapping, how you want it to look and how you want it to smell.

9 Set aside time for wrapping. It’s all about stimulating an emotional response to Christmas. We live in a world where we are always pushed for time, so it’s lovely to set aside time to do something fun and thoughtful for others. Sit in front of the fire on the floor with all your materials set out. Have a hot toddy and slice of shortbread or tablet waiting at the side as you listen to your favourite Christmas songs.

10 Darker mornings and longer, colder nights draw out from November onwards and there is less inclination to go outside. Make use of the feeling to hibernate and make shared experiences such as the ceremony of gift wrapping as you cosy up inside during these winter months.

 

The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way by Gabriella Bennett is published by Black and White Publishing, priced £14.99

Another Christmas recommendation: The Story of Scottish Design by Philip Long and Joanna Norman, published by Thames & Hudson, priced  £24.95

 

Our second book brought to us from an independent record company comes from Scottish Fiction’s Beerjacket. Silver Cords is a beautifully-produced collection of music and short stories that anyone would be chuffed to find in their Christmas stocking. BooksfromScotland are lucky to share with you now the first single from the collection along with its corresponding short story.

 

Extract taken from Silver Cords
By Beerjacket
Published by Scottish Fiction

 

 

Cord

 

You put the heart-shaped knot

In my stretched-straight silver cord

Like a rope that leads to heaven

Our breath’s in pockets caught

Of our threadbare lived-in coats

It is the hope that lifts the living.

 

You’re the first word on my tongue

Till the last breath in my lung

Ours the years that make me young.

 

Shoots of life have shot

Through the houses that we bought

We left our shadows on them

Boots the hallways blot

But they’re proof that we have walked

The roof stops water falling.

 

You’re the first word on my tongue

Till the last breath in my lung

Ours the years that make me young.

 

You

Web winder

Fortune is not free

Only in dreams

Only in my dreams

Then I am not me

I’m you

Thread finder

It is as you believe

Only in dreams

Only in my dreams

Then I am not me

Eyes closed fast can see.

 

Peter Kelly – guitar, mandolin, vocal, footstomp

Julia Doogan – harmony vocal

Stuart MacLeod – tambourine

 

 

Picture us like paper dolls. Vulnerable but in it together.

Joined in purpose, everything that matters and all that matters.

The connections we have to each other are the stitches that join the seams of the world.

Maybe there is one connection in your life that stitches together your own world, the only real world there is.

No one will ever go to every corner and meet everyone in it, so what’s real? Only the immediate world of your family and friends.

And there will be one person in that immediate world whose breath is the wind, whose smile is the sun.

 

Shoots of Life

 

My wife powers our marriage and, for that matter, every tiny piece of engineering that makes our world together work. Children’s meals and clothes, bills, repairs to the house: everything.

Without her as the conductor, my orchestra would play flat and out of time, probably performing several different tunes at once before smashing their instruments over each others’ heads. She ensures that all parts of our lives synchronise in a harmonious and beautiful symphony.

Each moment she lives is a monument to her organisation and control. I see her at work, plotting and planning to resolve minor and major disasters before they find a means to occur. It is as if she has a clairvoyant ability which enables her to foresee the future and then tweak it to make it right.

This is not a claim I could make for myself. My part is always as the director of calamity, or at the very least, a strong supporting lead adding to the drama of every situation. She is calm in the face of challenge while I’m the storm that interrupts the picnic.

But we are two corresponding jigsaw pieces. Without the bonds that make the stories of our lives, we might as well be random atoms chaotically appearing and disappearing in space and time like briefly twinkling Christmas lights, disappointing fireworks or increasingly ominous birthday candles.

I’ve always believed that as people, the threads that tie us together don’t just connect us to each other, they connect us to ourselves and define the ‘selves’ that we claim as ours. The decisions we make are seldom made alone and we are seldom alone, even on our own.

We aren’t who we are, we’re who we are together.

Nothing in life is accidental. Everything falls perfectly into place, even when things seem wrong and perhaps especially then. There’s a comfort in accepting that everything good or bad is meant to be, just as it happens. Everything is connected and everything has a purpose, even the things that appear not to work properly. Maybe their purpose is to not work properly. Maybe the things that don’t work properly exist to allow the things that do to fix them.

She had assigned me the task of clearing out the old cobwebs that dressed the windows of the shed like tinsel.

I’ve always respected and feared spiders. They carry themselves with an authority. They dominate any environment they inhabit with their silver cords, trails of their prey streaked across their intricate cages of silk.

I was armed with a brush and, at first, I was quite comfortable to sweep my way through the maps and mazes the spiders had left behind them. For a moment, I imagined my own house being cast away in this manner and felt guilty, but then powerful again in the next instant. On inspecting the dizzying complexity of the patterns, I pictured myself as a spider knitting an infinite world of webs and trapping enemies to be ingested piece by piece.

Littered around the windowsill were the crumpled bodies of spiders whose numbers had come up. Strange, I thought, that something as apparently flimsy as a web could hold firm whilst a creature as feared as a spider would so easily succumb to mortality. All knotted in on themselves, they looked like they were trying to hide from the shame of their defeat. I know that feeling.

Just then, there was life. Movement. A spider shocked me as it glided suddenly into view and froze. I thought of myself multiplied in the spider’s vision as it angled to see me more clearly. I was secretly ashamed for feeling fear in the face of this tiny creature. What did I imagine it could do to me? The shock in my chest subsided but now I felt reluctant to continue sweeping away the cobwebs in its presence. You might think it ridiculous but I was flooded by guilt at the idea of destroying the networks of web created by this spider and its ancestors as it watched.

As if rushing to protect the web from the thoughts in my head, life burst through the spider and it suddenly shot across the cord towards the centre of the web. My shame turned to horror as I registered the unfortunate victim suspended in the middle with its arms and legs paralysed and pinned.

It was me.

It was me and it was not me. Every detail reflected me exactly in a tiny replica. The proportions of my body and the trapped creature were the same but in absolute miniature. Looking upon its face was like gazing into a mirror through the wrong end of a telescope. I saw its arms and legs strain against the hold of the web and the exasperation creep over its face as it realised the futility of fighting against its inevitable fate. It knew it would die here in the terrible grip of a spider.

Grotesque images invaded every corner of my imagination as I pictured myself held captive in its chelicerae before disappearing into its shocking mouth, head first, feet kicking ridiculously. The panic forced my hand as I smashed at the web in helpless desperation to free myself from the enemy. I vibrated with animal fury, striking out over and over.

Finally I stopped frozen in a gasp as I looked down at my web-covered fingers, outstretched like they were afraid to be seen together in their guilt.

I could see no sign of my enemy, presumably thrown into a far corner of the shed, definitely no longer a threat. But I couldn’t see my small self either. My eyes scattered around the windowsill, scanning for movement amongst the dust and dead spiders. There was no sign of him. My memory was a freeze-frame of the panicked expression on the face of the little me. What had I done? In my rage, what had I done?

Sickened by my actions and disturbed by the thought of myself – my small self – lost somewhere, tiny and vulnerable, I returned to the house. She could tell right away that something was wrong and I am a hopeless liar, even when lying is the right thing to do.

“What’s the matter with you, Steven?” she asked. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“No, I’m fine,” I replied, a little too abruptly. “Are you okay?”

“You’re acting weird,” she said. Now I don’t know about you but when someone says I’m acting weird, I find it impossible to act normally and overcompensate or try to laugh it off. I picked up a letter from the kitchen work surface and examined it without the composure to actually take in any of the words. I was acting weird.

Eventually, she gave up on enquiring further, probably deciding that she didn’t care much about my strange mood as there were other, more important matters in need of attention. She left me alone in the kitchen, still holding the letter, still unable to read a word of it. The face of the little me was frozen there inside my head, an image of utter terror.

Now when I rescue spiders from my house, I talk to them on the way out the door. It’s okay, I say, I’m not like the others.

https://scottishfiction.bandcamp.com/album/silver-cords

 

Silver Cords by Beerjacket is published by Scottish Fiction, priced £15.00

Another Christmas recommendation: Book of Scotlands by Momus, published by Luath Press, priced £8.99

A very interesting development at the tail end of 2018 is that Scottish record companies are now getting in on the publishing act, so we’ll be featuring them both in this issue. First up are the lovely people from Last Night From Glasgow, who have collaborated with Stephen Watt – poet-in-residence at Dumbarton FC, Hampden Collection poet-in-chief and recently appointed Makar of the Writers’ Federation – on a collection laid out like one of BooksfromScotland’s favourite gifts to receive, a lovingly created mix-tape: one side is dedicated to Stephen’s own poetry, the other side contains poems from some of Stephen’s musical heroes. Here is Stephen Watt on putting MCSTAPE together.

 

MCSTAPE
By Stephen Watt
Published by Last Night From Glasgow

 

The solitary joyride which all poets manoeuvre often undertakes a journey originating from pain or loss which leads them to expel demons through print or microphone. After this, one can finally loosen up and begin to savour the things which matter to them: Love, magic, science, stilt-walking…..

When I first began performing, I put immense pressure on myself to try and memorise my writing. It wasn’t something I was especially remarkable at doing. Slams made me anxious. Other poets would laugh off their mishaps, but I would crumple. All the confidence I had fabricated would slip away into a frustrated, floundering muddle on stage. My friend David – who would be there at my first ever performance in Café Rio in 2010 and later become my Best Man in 2017 – remarked “You’re poets, not rock stars. Holding a book in front of you looks great on camera – it shows exactly what you are”. Exactly what you are. It was at this point when I relaxed, accepting my status as a bard. But still something nipped at the back of my mind. Rock star I ain’t – but that connection to music has been there all my life, and so has the DIY punk-ethic.

A book of poems written about all those incredible gigs I’ve attended, heroes I’ve worshipped, record stores I’ve dwindled in, and venues I’ve pogoed in would bring an energy of its own. Scotland loves its live music and has a rich history to tap into. I already had my poem “Wet Midweek Barras Gigs” as a starting point in 2014, but what publisher would take on such a notion? And what would make my poems so special compared to any other young(ish) writer with their own stories to tell?

 

Stephen Watt – Wet Midweek Barras Gigs

 

In 2016, a crowdfunded record label called ‘Last Night From Glasgow’ (LNFG) was formed. They were entirely not-for-profit, with all money raised going back into the bands and artists on their label. It was an entirely selfless, avant-garde, positive breath of fresh air. One friend, Murray Easton, was a founding member and it was as a reviewer for the punk site Louder Than War when I first attended a LNFG gig in Mono Music Café. Here was a foundation of true music lovers who wanted to support emerging talent, with a small but honourable 200 membership base.

Through Murray, primary discussions with LNFG were positive. Co-founder Ian Smith’s approving outlook on the idea was assured when the prospect of collaborating with musicians associated with Scottish music was proposed. I’m the antithesis of a rock star, but music is my lifeblood. I would take it upon myself to hunt down contacts, e-mails, social media pages, and seek people who were interested. There would be many who were unable to get involved, of course, due to other commitments or others who were simply out of reach. But what became fascinating was the number of musicians I was dragging out of their comfort zones. “I can’t write poetry” or “I’ve not written poetry since school” was often the response. My opinion was that I was not looking to find the country’s almightiest wordsmiths in music but rather find creative types willing to take an experience of their own, be brave, and lend fresh voices beyond my opinions – after all, Scotland’s music community spirit is a glorious gift and one which has appeared recently in the support for Vic Galloway’s “Rip It Up” pop exhibition and films such as “Big Gold Dream” and “Teenage Superstars”. We show a lack of ego. A show of supporting our friends and peers. And several of those bands’ members stepped forward – Altered Images, The Bluebells, BMX Bandits, The Soup Dragons.

And then it became obvious that I shouldn’t only seek musicians but also actors, authors. If time permitted, the book could have added a further hundred names and poems but it was cleverly conjured up by LNFG to produce 33 (RPM) poems by me, add in another 12 contributors making it 45 (RPM) poems – and then bring in musicians and members on the label to produce a truly contemporary, innovative body of work. This wasn’t a literary market we were gunning for – it was a music market. We included a hidden track/poem in the book. We produced a double-cover, minus blurbs you would usually find on a book sleeve – recording vocals on to tape and then setting them on fire, hammering them, exploding them. The ‘Screamadelica’-influenced cover was no accident. LNFGb1 would shortly become known as ‘MIXTAPE’ until I felt the Scottish slant wasn’t obvious enough, and we turned it into ‘MCSTAPE’. The launch would be in a well-known Glasgow music basement, the 13th Note bar and café. I would read my poetry before bands at events organised by the record label. We chased music outlets, radio stations, magazines. “It shows exactly what you are”, echoed at the back of my mind.

At the time of the book being complete, I had another idea. As my greatest hero John Cooper-Clarke was a renowned punk poet and much of my favourite music originated from that genre, I contacted the Joe Strummer Foundation with the concept of producing a short poetry collection celebrating the Clash frontman’s anniversary, welcoming punk-lit from poets, musicians and authors – similar to the MCSTAPE concept. Soon, I had followed the same blueprint for contacting suitable contributors; people like John Robb, Jah Wobble, Pauline Black, and Cooper-Clarke himself. The collection “Ashes To Activists” is earmarked for publication on Joe’s 16th anniversary, 22 December 2018, in a PDF format – free to all who download from the website.

It was never about money. It’s always about passion.

It’s about taking something you love then making it happen.

Hopefully, it shows exactly what I am.

 

http://shop.lastnightfromglasgow.com/product/mcstape-stephen-watt-stephen-watt-special-guests

 

MCSTAPE by Stephen Watt is published by Last Night From Glasgow, priced £7.50

Another Christmas recommendation: Neu Reekie! Untitled One, published by Polygon, priced £12.99

The festive season is a time for friends and family, but, let’s be honest, it’s also about indulgence. It’s a time to unashamedly treat yourself, and if there’s better way to feel a little bit luxurious than sipping on a cool glass of champagne, then please let BooksfromScotland know! But for those who want to know a little more about what they’re imbibing, let drinks specialist Davy Zyv show you the way.

 

101 Champagnes & Other Sparkling Wines to Try Before You Die
By Davy Zyv
Published by Birlinn

 

Champagne is delicious.  This is very important.  It’s scrumptious and magnificent. We love its flavour, we love its fizziness. We love the sense of drama and celebration it brings to any occasion. It’s the perfect drink to share with friends and family over the festive season.

I’ve been hooked on wine since I was 12 and taking my first sips of rose from my mum’s glass at my grandfather’s house near Beziers.  I remember thinking why, if this is made from grapes, why does it smell and taste of raspberries?  That stuck with me – how do you metamorphise those flavours?  It was the first time I realised I had a discerning palate.  I wasn’t academic at school and left at 16 to enrol on a chef’s course.  A wine expert came to talk to us and explained the role of wine in food.   That was a turning point:  I was so excited that  I left the kitchen behind to study wine.  At Villeneuve’s basement shop in Edinburgh’s Broughton Street I sold countless bottles of sparkling wine to customers wanting to celebrate life’s milestones. But it wasn’t until I started as a sommelier at the double Michelin starred Le Gavroche in London that I had the chance to taste some of the most exquisite and expensive champagnes, and a passion for life really started.   The clientele was discerning and could easily spend thousands on lunch, so I had to be at the top of my game.  They were always surprised to hear me speak because they were expecting a French or Italian accent, and instead heard a Scottish one.   More recently I have been wine development manager for the world’s second largest wine retailer, and now Champagne and Italian wine buyer for the world’s most famous vintner.  Earlier this year I was sworn into the ancient Ordre des Couteaux du Champagne as a Chevalier.

I spend a lot of the year travelling, meeting wine producers and hear great stories, particularly about champagne.   The region, sitting on vital trade routes, has had a turbulent history from Napoleonic War to the First and Second World Wars .  There was heavy looting of Champagne’s cellars by the Nazis and at one point there was danger that the German thirst for champagne they would drink the region dry . When writing my book, I wanted to tell some of those stories, introduce new people to its flavour, to explain why it’s so expensive, how it can complement food – but also to recommend other sparkling wines. We have never had so much choice in finding our favourite fizzer. Many champagne makers have taken their trade all around the world, finding new methods, grapes and climates to produce fine examples from Australia, California and South America.  And the English sparkling wine business is booming. Many wines are now beating champagnes in blind tastings and awards.

The UK is historically one of the largest markets for champagne and sparkling wine in the world.  We love bubbles.  For the book I write about my 51 favourite champagnes, many are significant to champagne’s success.  The other 50 are sparkling wines which I have discovered in the course of my 13 years in the wine industry, and have painstakingly tasted each and every bottle.

The vast majority of champagne is bought in the eight weeks before Christmas, and now is the time to look out for offers in the supermarkets.   I have two tips for champagne season, not on when you drink fizz, but how. If you have decent champagne on Champagne Day or at Christmas, don’t serve it too cold. This hides the flavour, so you will enjoy it better if you let it sit on the table for 10 minutes before serving. Finally, every bottle of champagne is at least two years old, and some are closer to 10. Making champagne is one of the most complex, labour-intensive and time-consuming methods of making wine there is. It would be a shame to undo all that time and hard work by not serving it correctly. Please, do not drink good champagne out of flutes. The shape of these glasses actually restricts your enjoyment of the champagne, hiding all those delicious flavours which take so long to produce. Best keep to normal white wine glasses. Cheers!

 

Three champagnes and sparkling wines for the festive season

 

Billecart-Salmon Brut Reserve

This family-run producer is a fraction of the size of many other famous houses.  What they lack in size, they deliver on quality and value.   The current owners are sixth generation, and they taste every morning with their grandfather Jean Roland-Billecart, now in his 90s, but still the boss in the blending room. Harmonic fizzy luminosity, very moreish.

 

Aldi Exquisite Collection Cremant du Jura

Aldi buy wine with German efficiency, using their economies of scale to customers’ benefit; the value is stonking. There are some serious stars in their range, and this cremant from Jura is one of them.   It’s 100% chardonnay and made in the same way as many great champagnes.  But you can buy three bottles for the price of one bottle of champagne.

 

Champagne Comte de Senneval

Champagne at £10 a bottle? Thank you Lidl for passing on value to customers who may not have afforded champagne before now.   Made for Lidl by cousin company to Lanson champagne houses, this comes from good stock.  A soft, quite floral style of champers which your Christmas dinner guests will knock back with abandon

 

101 Champagnes & Other Sparkling Wines to Try Before You Die by Davy Zyv is published by Birlinn, priced £14.99

Another Christmas recommendation: Gin Galore by Sean Murphy, published by Black and White, priced £12.99

The National Museum of Scotland’s current exhibition, Embroidered Stories is on now and runs until 21st April 2019. As ever, they have produced a beautiful book to coincide with the exhibition, which is a fascinating social history as well as a stunning collection of needlework.

 

Extract taken from Embroidered Stories: Scottish Samplers
By Helen Wyld
Published by NMS Enterprises Ltd – Publishing

 

 

Agnes Spence
Monifieth, Angus, c.1826

Double hemisphere world maps were often included in atlases, and one of these was probably the basis for Agnes Spence’s work. Samplers representing the whole world, like this one, were less common than maps of the nation or county where the maker lived. Note the host of names for the Caribbean islands, reflecting their strategic and economic importance to the British Empire. Australia at this time was named New Holland, and ‘Van Diemans Land’ refers to the island of Tasmania; both were also British colonies in the 1820s.

Agnes’ parents, Andrew Spence and Marjory Isles, were married on 22 November 1807 in Monifieth parish, Angus. Agnes was baptised on 27 June 1816, one of nine siblings. Her father’s occupation is listed as a wood merchant in the 1841 Census. A tombstone in Dundee records that Agnes died in 1832,
aged just fifteen.

Caption: Sampler and details of double hemisphere map
Agnes Spence, c.1826, silk on wool, 496 x 466mm
© Private Collection of Leslie B. Durst

 

Katharine and Margret Sheriff
Athelstaneford, East Lothian, c.1770

Katharine and Margret Sheriff were sisters, born in the village of Athelstaneford, East Lothian, in 1753 and 1755 respectively. They made near-identical samplers featuring the Ten Commandments and an unorthodox version of the coat of arms of Great Britain.

The rose and thistle springing from a single stalk symbolise the union of the crowns of England and Scotland. The position of the lion supporter on the left indicates that this was a form of the arms as used in England (in Scotland the unicorn appears on the left). This could mean the arms were copied from a coin minted in England.

Unusually the shield itself is incorrect: it does not show the House of Hanover, which should be included from the accession of George I (1714) to the death of William IV (1837). Instead we simply find the arms of France (three fleurs-de-lys), Scotland (a lion rampant), Ireland (a harp) and England (three lions passant) in the four quarters. This arrangement is itself irregular as, more typically, France and England would appear together in the first quarter.

The omission of the arms of Hanover could be read as a statement of support for the exiled Stuarts, though by 1770 this seems highly unlikely. Perhaps the girls were copying an old coat of arms; or perhaps they just simplified the image to make it easier to stitch – the Hanoverian quarter would have required a far greater level of detail.

Katharine and Margret had six brothers and sisters, but Katharine is the only one whose later life can be traced. In 1775 she married Robert Scott, a minister in nearby Haddington, and the couple had five children.

Caption: The coat of arms of Great Britain
As used in England under George III, with England and Scotland in the first quarter, France in the second, Ireland in the third, and Hanover in the fourth. Taken from William Maitland, The History of Edinburgh, 1753.
© National Museums Scotland

Caption: Samplers of Katherine and Margret Sheriff
Katharine Sheriff, c.1770, silk on wool, 361 x 312mm
Margret Sheriff, c.1770, silk on wool, 361 x 312mm
© Private Collection of Leslie B. Durst

 

 

 

Embroidered Stories: Scottish Samplers by Helen Wyld is published by The National Museums of Scotland, priced £9.99

Another Christmas recommendation: Scottish Plant Lore: an Illustrated Flora by Dr Gregory Kenicer, published by RBGE, priced £25.00

Books for kids always go down a treat on Christmas day, especially as there is always such a bounty to choose from. Our friends at Floris have an excellent range of books that celebrate the festive season and Ali Begg, their Sales & Marketing Assistant, writes for BooksfromScotland on his favourite selection.

 

The nights keep drawing in, there’s a nip to the air, and it’s hard to believe that December has arrived. At this time of year, nothing feels better than a cosy evening spent snuggled up with a great book, and the great Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod feels like the distillation of all that is wonderful about books and reading in the winter months.

We’re big fans of this season of book-gifting here at Floris Books, not least because it gives us the opportunity to wax lyrical about the work of some of our wonderful Nordic authors and illustrators. So, in the spirit of the season, please enjoy this round-up of some of our favourite books from across the Nordic region.

 

Ollie’s Ski Trip – Elsa Beskow

Swedish national treasure Elsa Beskow is the country’s best-loved children’s book illustrator. Sometimes called the ‘Beatrix Potter of Sweden’, her charming artistic style takes the reader back to an idyllic Sweden at the turn of the last century, often helped along with a splash of magic.

Beskow produced a wide array of gorgeous picture books, but the suitably wintery Ollie’s Ski Trip, first published in 1907, is a favourite at this time of year. It sees six-year-old Ollie being given his first pair of real skis, and dashing out as soon as the snow begins to fall. He heads off into the woods and meets sparkling Jack Frost, who shoos away damp Mrs Thaw. Jack Frost takes him on an adventure to the palace of King Winter, and Ollie has a wonderful time in a huge snowball fight! But will Mrs Thaw return too soon and melt all the snow?

 

Tomten and the Fox – Astrid Lindgren

Illustrated by Eva Eriksson

Astrid Lindgren is undoubtedly Sweden’s most famous children’s author; her books have sold over 145 million copies worldwide and have been translated in to over 90 different languages. Best known for her books about Pippi Longstocking, she also wrote a number of well-loved picture books, including this story of a mischievous fox and a wise, kindly old tomten (a traditional Swedish gnome character).

It’s a cold winter’s night and a hungry fox is creeping through the snow.

He sees a hen house and hopes to grab a couple of chickens, but he’s forgotten about the old tomten who guards the farm… This classic Swedish tale is brought to life by acclaimed illustrator Eva Eriksson, who is based near Stockholm and won the Astrid Lindgren Prize in 2001.

 

Otto and the Secret Light of Christmas – Nora Surojegin

Illustrated by Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin

Moving from Sweden to Finland, this charming story book was created by mother and daughter duo Nora and Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin, whose detailed, delicate illustrations and gentle, episodic storytelling capture the true spirit of Christmas.

One day Otto, an elfin adventurer, finds a postcard on the seashore showing pictures of beautiful sparkling lights in the night sky with the words, ‘The light of Christmas!’ If this ‘Christmas’ can brighten even the gloomiest Finnish winter, Otto decides he must find it. So he heads north, trudging through dark forests and skiing towards the fells of Lapland, in search of the secret light of Christmas. Will he ever find the mysterious light he’s looking for, and will Christmas brighten Otto’s winter?

 

The House of Lost and Found – Martin Widmark

Illustrated by Emilia Dziubak

Martin Widmark is a bestselling children’s author in Sweden, where he has published over 100 different titles, including this moving story of loss and hope. Full of uplifting sentiment and atmospheric illustrations from the award-winning Emilia Dziubak, this book will bring cheer to even the darkest and coldest of wintery nights.

Niles is old, and lives alone in a house full of dust and memories. One day, a little boy appears on his doorstep and asks him to take care of his potted plant. At first, Niles is grumpy at the prospect but, as the plant begins to grow under his care, he finds the seeds of hope begin to grow within himself once more…

 

An Illustrated Treasury of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales

Illustrated by Anastasiya Archipova

Last, but certainly not least, it’s nearly impossible to think about Scandinavian children’s books without thinking of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, whose fairy tales have delighted children and adults alike for nearly two centuries.

This treasury collects Andersen’s best-loved tales and includes The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen, Thumbelina, The Princess and the Pea and The Emperor’s New Clothes. Beautifully adorned with illustrations from Moscow-based artist Anastasiya Archipova, it makes a perfect addition to any bookshelf.

 

Find our full collection of Nordic children’s books on our website.

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