Published under the Faber New Poets initiative and funded by Arts Council England, this is Rachel Curzon’s first collection of published poems. The poet, born in Leeds in 1978, studied English at Oxford and now teaches at a boys’ school in Hampshire. She won the Eric Gregory Award in 2007 and her poems have been Read More
Since his six years as Rector during the 1990s, Stephen Fry has had many kind things to say about Dundee University. Given that the University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1995 and named its student association bar after his novel The Liar, the feeling is clearly mutual. It is no surprise then that the Read More
Queen of Katwe, directed by Mira Nair of Monsoon Wedding fame, tells the real-life story of chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi. Growing up in the Katwe slums of Uganda, she meets chess coach Robert Katende and discovers she has a talent that could offer her a way out of poverty. So far, so rags-to-riches. But this Read More
The Parting Glass is a collection of 14 sonnets by Northern Irish poet, Neil Young, long resident in Scotland. True to its title, each sonnet is a farewell to a beloved family member or a friend, a toast to memories – private and public, and a nod to the present that will soon be lost. Read More
I must admit I felt a little strange looking in on what looked like an ancient muslin flower which might have fallen from Miss Havisham’s veil…I immediately felt it could be the core of a Rhona book. This is how the author describes how None but the Dead was “born”. Lin Anderson is an exponent Read More
Dirt Road, James Kelman’s latest novel, opens at the outset of a journey; Murdo, a sixteen-year-old accordionist, and his father, Tom, are travelling from Scotland to visit relatives in Alabama. Where one might expect feelings of excitement, the anticipation of an adventure, there is instead a solemn atmosphere. Murdo’s mother has recently passed away from Read More
In Staunin Ma Lane, Holton has selected classical Chinese poems from the 11th century BC to the 14th century AD, some of them well-known to generations of Chinese schoolchildren, for improvisation and translation into Scots, with English “glosses”. Holton states in his useful Afterword: “if you expect to find dictionary definitions of Chinese words in Read More
Deemed by publisher Freight Books as a ‘vital analysis of the state of the nation following the SNP surge at the 2015 general election’, Iain Macwhirter’s Tsunami: Scotland’s Democratic Revolution is a unique insight into the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum and its aftermath. Considering Macwhirter’s first-hand experience in the political arena (his work as a Read More
Dizza Castle is a collection of poems by Iraqi poet Salahi Niazi, selected and edited by his friend David Andrew. This collection introduces Niazi’s work, which is originally written in the poet’s native Arabic to an English-speaking audience. Considered to be one of the pioneers of Modern Iraqi Arabic poetry, Niazi is a hugely prominent Read More
In Brussels in 1511, figures are sculpted from the snow that has fallen for weeks. They include commissions sculpted by artists and the subjects Charon, Pluto and assorted Devils. Winter has brought the beauty recorded in Breughel’s playful paintings to the southern Netherlands. It also destroys. It kills. This dichotomy is central to Peter Davidson’s Read More