In this recent graphic novel, the cream of British and European writers and artists have collaborated to explore life in Scotland thirty years into the future, with each paired writer and artist being given one chapter. The intricately detailed wraparound cover by Tom Kindley shows the flooded landscape of the Edinburgh of the future: the Read More
“Where is the land which has neither arms, money, care, physic, politics, nor taxes?” asked Lachlan Maclean in 1838; “that land is St Kilda”. Whether socialist, anarchist, noble savage, or beggar, the natives of this most remote Hebridean archipelago have almost invariably been ill-represented in literature, cast variously as semi-mystical beings or as peoples uncorrupted Read More
Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk is no ordinary memoir. But then buying a goshawk as a fledgling, raising it in a front room and training it to hunt wild game is no ordinary pastime. Part grief memoir, part nature study, part biography of the writer T.H.White, the book cannot be classified into any one Read More
“Roy Jenkins was probably the best Prime Minister Britain never had”, contends John Campbell in his recent biography of the erstwhile Labour statesman, Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life. With a half-century parliamentary span, matched only by William Gladstone and Winston Churchill, Campbell evokes a career which left an indelible mark on British politics, equalled by Read More
Do No Harm is a memoir of medical cases and personal anecdotes by the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, who was made a CBE in 2010. While it may seem unsurprising that someone who saves lives on a regular basis is honoured for his work, the failure rate also detailed in Do No Harm is staggering. One Read More
Hebridean pastorale and tribute to the democratic nature of the Scottish state education system, wartime memoir and plea for the liberalisation of the Free Presbyterian Church, this story of a boy born in 1914 begins on an isolated croft in the Bays of Harris and ends with his appointment to the Chair of Practical Theology Read More
When Tim Clarkson writes of the Cumbrian people, he refers neither to the natives of Cumberland, nor modern Cumbria, but to the “North Britons” of the former kingdom of Strathclyde. From Govan, its cultural and political centre, the Cumbrian realm extended southward beyond the Solway Firth, leaving indelible marks that remain today. Clarkson’s latest offering, Read More
Football is always said to be “the beautiful game” or a “religious cult” and now there is a book that wants to prove both of those statements correct. David Peace’s previous works tend to focus on the darker side of the north of England, masculinity and the neoliberal individualism that was seen in the 1980s; Read More
Touching, funny, pensive, self-aware, honest. Michel Faber’s discussion of his latest novel, The Book of Strange New Things was all of these. Following the story of Peter Leigh, a Christian missionary who leaves his loving wife Beatrice behind spread his faith to the alien world of Oasis, Faber’s novel is a fabulous study of love, Read More
This is an edited transcript of an interview with Michel Faber with headings inserted for ease of reading and navigation. The video of the complete interview can be accessed by clicking the above image. A review of The Book of Strange New Things is available HERE. Alex Henry’s review of Michel Faber’s reading at the 2014 Dundee Literary Read More