THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Reassesses Scottish textual practice in the context of the natural and post-natural landscapes

Covers a range of the relationships between landscape, literature, and culture

Explores the lived relationship between form, content, and consciousness

Provides a phenomenological study of the intertwining of self and world, subject and landscape

Landscape Poetics is an interdisciplinary study that seeks to place Scottish writers in relation to their landscape, by investigating how the self is entwined in place. By examinining the writing and practice of particular modern and contemporary authors in the light of environmental thought, the study explores their lived, organic connection to the landscape. Landscape Poetics presents an argument that the relationship between author and world is expressed through the language of vibrant and engaged experience. Shepherd, MacCaig, Jamie, Clark and Finlay are seen as reinventing the perception of the landscape by proposing that the subject is no longer involved in the act of objectification, but is instead an embodied self that enters place, perceiving it more fully.

Volume 3 of the new authoritative edition of Katherine Mansfield’s complete correspondence

Provides accurate transcriptions that shed new light on the everyday, intimate world of Mansfield as a letter-writer

Presents all Mansfield’s letters to John Middleton Murry from 1912 to 1918, foregrounding their years of intellectual apprenticeship and the impact of war, political upheavals and ill-health on their social and cultural environment

Provides meticulous explanatory notes and rich contextual information

Offers extensive attention to the cultural and socio-political context of the correspondence

Unlike the first two volumes of this new edition of Katherine Mansfield’s letters, which encompassed a dazzling variety of correspondents, this third volume focuses exclusively on letters to John Middleton Murry, chronologically arranged, from the day when he first became her lodger in 1912 through to the week after the Armistice in November 1918, when they were newly married. It is no exaggeration to say that over the course of these six years, their entire world was turned upside down. By the time the volume closes, they are married but already increasingly estranged; they have both become professional writers but grapple with increasing economic precarity; Europe lies ravaged by war; and the devastating diagnosis of tuberculosis has been pronounced, not, ironically, for Murry whose fragile health had preoccupied them for two years, but for Mansfield herself. This volume of letters documents the whole spectrum of changes, against a vivid historical and socio-cultural backcloth and contains entirely new, insightful and extensive annotations. A second volume of letters between the pair completes the edition.

Explores British cinematic representations of masculinity

From the new man to the metrosexual, British society from the 1990s to the 2000s was pre-occupied with questions about masculinity, and more specifically with the idea that it was somehow ‘in crisis.’ The first book-length study of British cinematic representations of masculinity in this period, this fascinating study offers a feminist analysis of key tropes in this era, including the New Lad, fatherhood and masculine violence. Positioning these representations within the specific context of British manifestations of postfeminism and neoliberalism, the book explores the shifting representations of masculinity in popular British cinema and offers a detailed analysis of important recent developments in gender culture. With case studies of films like Brassed Off (1996), The Full Monty (1997), Trainspotting (1996) and About a Boy (2002), this book is a fascinating insight into an understudied period of British cinema and culture.

Case studies include

:Brassed Off

The Full Monty

All or Nothing

Archipelago

Trainspotting

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

The Football Factory

TwentyFourSeven

My Name is Joe

Bullet Boy

When Saturday Comes

About A Boy

My Son the Fanatic

East is East

Nil by Mouth

Naked

Enduring Love

Bronson

The first ever edition of Nan Shepherd’s correspondence, featuring two hundred and fifty letters

The first ever edition of Nan Shepherd’s correspondence

Includes all available letters to and from Shepherd sent over a career of 60 years

Helpful annotations help the reader navigate the details of Shepherd’s world

Recognised now as one of the most important voices to emerge from Scotland’s literary ‘Renaissance’ in the 1930s, the full extent of Nan Shepherd’s considerable cultural significance is revealed only in the letters she sent and received over the course of her long life and extraordinary career. Including letters from Neil Gunn, Hugh MacDiarmid, Jessie Kesson, Helen B. Cruickshank, Agnes Mure Mackenzie and many more, this edition documents Shepherd’s emergence as a celebrated novelist in the 1920s and 30s, her quieter years editing the Aberdeen University Review, and the composition of what would, eventually, be her most famous work, The Living Mountain. With an introduction, annotations and biographical sketches, Nan Shepherd’s Correspondence brings you into Nan Shepherd’s world as one of the most influential literary figures of her generation.

A collection of proverbs in the original Scots, and translated into English covering family, work, money, self-improvement and food and drink amongst other topics. Scots proverbs tell it like it is, and provide advice for a myriad of situations. This pocketsize volume would make an excellent souvenir or a gift for any occasion.

Ah want tae check she’s awricht. Ah kin luik there fur Brodie an aw.

Burds are meant tae fly.

Brodie goes missing. Being a bird with a bad wing, Iona is sent into a worry. Her mammy is busy trying to get her ready for school and the snaw is settling in. But Brodie must be found.Running through the garden and exploring Mad Billy’s farm, Brodie couldn’t have gone far. After all, she was a hoolet thit couldnae fly.

A fantastic book from award-winning Scots author Emma Grae, exploring themes of confidence and celebrates the idea that it is okay to be different. Meet all the different animals we encounter on the search for Brodie in this bonnie wee book.

There is an untapped market for an original children’s book in Scots and Emma is keen to fill it with great stories for kids aged 7-10 years old. With a snowy setting, it will make a great gift this Christmas for any child in Scotland.

What do we mean by ‘Scottish literature’?

Why does it matter?

How do we engage with it?

Bringing infectious enthusiasm and a lifetime’s experience to bear on this multi-faceted literary nation, Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, sets out to guide you through the varied and ever-evolving landscape of Scottish literature.

A comprehensive and extensive work designed not only for scholars but also for the generally curious, Scottish Literature: An Introduction tells the tale of Scotland’s many voices across the ages, from Celtic pre-history to modern mass media. Forsaking critical jargon, Riach journeys chronologically through individual works and writers, both the famed and the forgotten, alongside broad overviews of cultural contexts which connect texts to their own times. Expanding the restrictive canon of days gone by, Riach also sets down a new core body of ‘Scottish Literature’: key writers and works in English, Scots, and Gaelic.

Ranging across time and genre, Scottish Literature: An Introduction invites you to hear Scotland through her own words.

A stunning new reissue edition of Excession – a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.Now it is back.Praise for the Culture series’Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday’Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian’Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman’Compulsive reading’ Sunday TelegraphThe Culture series:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtOther books by Iain M. Banks:Against a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available:The Culture: The Drawings – an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

A stunning new reissue edition of Inversions – a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.In the winter palace, the King’s new physician has more enemies than she at first realises. But then she also has more remedies to hand than those who wish her ill can know about.In another palace across the mountains, in the service of the regicidal Protector General, the chief bodyguard, too, has his enemies. But his enemies strike more swiftly, and his means of combating them are more traditional.Spiralling round a central core of secrecy, deceit, love and betrayal, Inversions is a spectacular work of science fiction, brilliantly told and wildly imaginative, from an author who has set science fiction alight.Praise for the Culture series’Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday’Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian’Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman’Compulsive reading’ Sunday TelegraphThe Culture series:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtOther books by Iain M. Banks:Against a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available:The Culture: The Drawings – an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

A stunning new reissue edition of the third Culture novel from Iain M. Banks – one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances’ foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks or military action.The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought.The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman’s life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine intelligence could see the horrors in his past.Praise for the Culture series:’Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday’Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian’Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman’Compulsive reading’ Sunday TelegraphThe Culture series:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtOther books by Iain M. Banks:Against a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available:The Culture: The Drawings – an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

A stunning new reissue edition of The State of the Art – a collection of short stories of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.The first ever collection of Iain M. Banks’s short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, The State of the Art. This is a striking addition to the growing body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast. The other stories in the collection range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks’s staggering talent.Praise for the Culture series’Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday’Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian’Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman’Compulsive reading’ Sunday TelegraphThe Culture series:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtOther books by Iain M. Banks:Against a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available:The Culture: The Drawings – an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

Following the first volume of Bill Hare’s exploration Scottish Artists, Scottish Artists in an Age of Radical Change, this new volume, Scottish Art and Artists in Historical and Contemporary Context will expand on the invaluable contribution to the cultural development of modern and contemporary Scotland.

Joan Eardley, Alan Davies, the Boyle Family, Ken Currie, Anthony Hatwell, Doug Crocker, Jack Knox, Lys Hansen, William Turnbull, Iain Robertson, Douglas Gordon and John Kennedy – are just some of the artists who Bill Hare explores in both their historical and contemporary contexts. From body politics to the Athenian way to Scottish artists in Venice, this book will reveal the importance and intellectual power this generation of Scottish artists have had over decades of time through a compilation of in-depth essays and interviews.

A stunning new reissue edition of Against a Dark Background – a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilisation based around the planet Golter. Now she is hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes that she is the last obstacle before the faith’s apotheosis, and her only hope of escape is to find the last of the apocalyptically powerful Lazy Guns before the Huhsz find her.Her journey through the exotic Golterian system is a destructive and savage odyssey into her past, and that of her family and of the system itself.Praise for the novels of Iain M. Banks:’Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday’Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian’Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman’Compulsive reading’ Sunday TelegraphBooks by Iain M. Banks:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtAgainst a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available:The Culture: The Drawings – an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

A stunning new reissue edition of Feersum Endjinn – a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.Count Sessine is about to die for the very last time…Chief Scientist Gadfium is about to receive the mysterious message she has been waiting for from the Plain of Sliding Stones…And Bascule the Teller, in search of an ant, is about to enter the chaos of the crypt . . .And everything is about to change . . .For this is the time of the encroachment and, although the dimming sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of Serehfa Fastness, the end is close at hand. The King knows it, his closest advisers know it, yet sill they prosecute the war against the clan Engineers with increasing savagery.The crypt knows it too; so an emissary has been sent, an emissary who holds the key to all their futures.Praise for the novels of Iain M. Banks:’Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday’Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian’Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman’Compulsive reading’ Sunday TelegraphBooks by Iain M. Banks:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtAgainst a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available:The Culture: The Drawings – an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

A stunning new reissue edition of The Hydrogen Sonata – a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, the End Days for the Gzilt civilisation.An ancient people, organised on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they’ve made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilisations: they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new and almost infinitely more rich and complex existence.Amid preparations though, the Regimental High Command is destroyed. Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont appears to have been involved, and she is now wanted – dead, not alive. Aided only by an ancient, reconditioned android and a suspicious Culture avatar, Cossont must complete her last mission given to her by the High Command. She must find the oldest person in the Culture, a man over nine thousand years old, who might have some idea what really happened all that time ago.It seems that the final days of the Gzilt civilisation are likely to prove its most perilous.Praise for the Culture series’Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday’Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian’Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman’Compulsive reading’ Sunday TelegraphThe Culture series:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtOther books by Iain M. Banks:Against a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available:The Culture: The Drawings – an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

A stunning new reissue edition of Matter – a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.In a world renowned within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one man it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one – maybe two – people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, it means returning to a place she’d thought abandoned forever.Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has become an agent of the Culture’s Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy.Concealing her new identity – and her particular set of abilities – might be a dangerous strategy. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else’s war is never a simple matter.Praise for the Culture series’Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday’Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian’Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman’Compulsive reading’ Sunday TelegraphThe Culture series:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtOther books by Iain M. Banks:Against a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available:The Culture: The Drawings – an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

A stunning new reissue edition of Look to Windward – a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war.It led to the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported.Now, eight hundred years later, the light from the first of those ancient mistakes has reached the Culture Orbital, Masaq.The light from the second may not.Praise for the Culture series’Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday’Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian’Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman’Compulsive reading’ Sunday TelegraphThe Culture series:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtOther books by Iain M. Banks:Against a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available:The Culture: The Drawings – an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

A stunning new reissue edition of The Algebraist – a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year.The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilisation. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars.Seconded to a military-religious order he’s barely heard of – part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony – Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years.But with each day that passes a war draws closer – a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he’s ever known.Praise for the novels of Iain M. Banks:’Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday’Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian’Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman’Compulsive reading’ Sunday TelegraphBooks by Iain M. Banks:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtAgainst a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available:The Culture: The Drawings – an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

A stunning new reissue edition of Surface Detail – a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters.Lededje Y’breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture.It begins in the realm of the Real. It begins with a murder.And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.Praise for the Culture series’Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday’Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian’Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman’Compulsive reading’ Sunday TelegraphThe Culture series:Consider PhlebasThe Player of GamesUse of WeaponsExcessionInversionsLook to WindwardMatterSurface DetailThe Hydrogen SonataThe State of the ArtOther books by Iain M. Banks:Against a Dark BackgroundFeersum EndjinnThe AlgebraistAlso now available:The Culture: The Drawings – an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks’ Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

It is time to bin – once and for all – the nonsense that Gaelic was never spoken in Glasgow. In fact, Glasgow’s place-names tell us that Gaelic has been spoken in Glasgow for around a thousand years. Showcasing new research from the University of Glasgow, this illustrated guide to Glasgow’s Gaelic namescape reveals how place-names are a key to unlocking Glasgow’s hidden past and takes the reader on a journey of discovery the length and breadth of this great modern city ? from Yoker in the west to Daldowie in the east, via Boclair, Carmunnock and many other places in between.

The truth about Glasgow’s past, present and future dispels myths and throws up countless surprises about Glasgow’s deep Gaelic roots.