Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Master of Ballantrae
,
Weir of Hermiston
. Nineteenth-
century tales of intrigue and adventure.
Ì
Alan Warner
Morvern Callar
. Bleakly humorous story
of a supermarket shelf-packer from Oban who finds her
boyfriend has committed suicide in her kitchen. It'll grip
you.
The Sopranos
is the story of five teenage convent choir
girls who go to Edinburgh for a competition, full of an
explosive mixture of adolescent sexuality and naivety. Its
sequel,
The Stars in the Bright Sky
, sees them off on holiday.
The Dead Man's Pedal
is a teenage boy's rite of passage in
small town Scotland in the 1970s.
Ì
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh Omnibus
. A compendium
including
Trainspotting
,
The Acid House
and
Marabou Stork
Nightmares
, all of which can also be found as separate
titles. Welsh trawls through the horrors of drug addiction,
sexual fantasy, urban decay and hopeless youth but,
thankfully, his unflinching attention is not without
humour. His latest,
Skagboys
, is a prequel to
Trainspotting
.
POETRY
Robert Burns
Selected Poems
. Scotland's most famous
bard (see p.165). Immensely popular all over the world, his
best-known works are his earlier ones, including
Auld Lang
Syne
and
My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose
.
Douglas Dunn
New Selected Poems 1964-2000
. A writer
of delicately wrought poetry, ranging from the intensely
private to poems involved with Scottish issues.
Kathleen Jamie
The Queen of Sheba
,
Jizzen and The Tree
House
. Although often set in Scotland, her work has a wider
significance; its tone is strong, almost angry, and its
themes both personal and universal
. Findings
is a prose
journal of her travels around her native Scotland.
Jackie Kay
The Adoption Papers
,
Other Lovers
and
Life
Mask
. Her poetry explores being black, Scottish and gay
and deals with personal relationships in an accessibly
intimate way.
Fiere
is the poetic counterpoint to her
memoir
Red Dust Road
.
Ì
Liz Lochhead
Bagpipe Muzak
. In a strong
straightforward style, coupled with shrewd observations,
Lochhead speaks with immediacy on personal
relationships. Some of her best work is in
The Colour of Black
& White: Poems (1984-2003).
Ì
Norman MacCaig
Selected Poems.
Justly celebrated
for its keen observation of the natural world, MacCaig's
work remains intellectually challenging without being
arid. His poetry, rooted in the Highlands, uses detail to
explore a universal landscape.
Hugh MacDiarmid
Selected Poems
. Immensely
influential, not least for his nationalist views and use of
Scots, MacDiarmid's poetry is richly challenging. His poem
A Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle
is acknowledged as a
masterpiece of Scottish literature.
Ì
George Mackay Brown
Collected Poems
. Brown's
work is as haunting, beautiful and gritty as the Orkney
islands that inspire it.
Travellers
, published posthumously,
features work either previously unpublished or which had
appeared only in newspapers and periodicals.
Sorley Maclean (Somhairle Macgill-Eain)
From Wood
to Ridge: Collected Poems
. Written in Gaelic, his poems have
been translated in bilingual editions all over the world, and
deal with the sorrows of poverty, war and love.
McMillan and Byrne (eds)
Modern Scottish Women
Poets
. The work of more than a hundred women writers of
the twentieth century, some of whom have sunk into
undeserved oblivion.
Edwin Morgan
New Selected Poems
. A love of words and
their sounds is evident in Morgan's poems, which are
refreshingly varied and often experimental, commenting
on the Scottish scene with shrewdness and humour.
Edwin Muir
Collected Poems
. Muir's idyllic childhood on
Orkney at the turn of the twentieth century remained with
him as a dream of paradise in contrast to his later life in
inhospitable Glasgow. His poems are passionately
concerned with Scotland.
Don Paterson
God's Gift to Women, Landing Light
and
Nil
Nil
. A writer whose work increasingly commands respect
for its moving honesty.
Iain Crichton Smith
Collected Poems
. Born on the Isle
of Lewis, Crichton Smith wrote with feeling and
sometimes bitterness, in both Gaelic and English, of the
life of the rural communities, the iniquities of the Free
Church, the need to revive Gaelic culture and the glory of
the Scottish landscape.
HISTORY, POLITICS AND CULTURE
Ì
Neal Ascherson
Stone Voices
. Intelligent, thought-
provoking ponderings on the nature of Scotland and the
road to devolution, interspersed with personal anecdotes.
Bella Bathurst
The Lighthouse Stevensons
.
Straightforward account of the fascinating lives and
amazing achievements of Robert Louis Stevenson's family,
who built many of the island lighthouses round Scotland.
Colin Bell
Scotland's Century - An Autobiography of the
Nation.
Richly illustrated and readable account of the social
history of Scotland, based on radio interviews with people
from all walks of life.
Tom Devine
The Scottish Nation 1700-2000
. The best
post-Union history, from the last Scottish Parliament to the
new one.
Ì
David Howarth
The Shetland Bus.
Wonderfully
detailed story of the espionage and resistance operations
carried out from Shetland by British and Norwegian
servicemen, written by someone who was directly involved.
