PAGE 22 • VARIANT • VOLUME 2 NUMBER 13 • SUMMER 2001 As it never was Peter Kravitz

In March 1979 the people of Scotland were asked being put back in (in the case of and read out during the meeting. whether they wanted their own parliament sepa- anglicised Scots), or left in (in The value of such encourage- rate from England. The majority said yes. However, the case of others). Derek in ment and criticism at an early a last minute clause added to the bill stated that Kelman’s story ‘Events in yer stage of a writer’s career cannot 40% of the total electorate had to be in favour.This life’ says, on turning on the TV be overemphasized. Leonard’s took non-voters to be saying no. Governments get one morning, that ‘it was only “The Good Thief’ had already elected on less. the Scottish accents made it appeared in the first issue of In 1980 I started reading manuscripts for the interesting’. Eck in John McRay’s Scottish International back in Edinburgh publisher Polygon. The backlist consist- play Dead Dad Dog has the January 1968. When he had tried ed mostly of books about Scottish failures. There answer: “lt’s not ma accent it’s to publish poems in Glasgow was one on the failure of the breakaway Scottish your ears.” In a nice reversal, University Magazine the printer Labour Party, another on the Scottish Daily used a transcrip- declined because of the lan- News—a failed attempt at newspaper publishing. tion of upper class Oxbridge guage. A few years later a type- And there were books about failures that failed to English for ‘The Distant Cousin setter wanted ‘foreign language appear. Someone was commissioned to write a of the Queen’ section in rates’ for some of his other fan’s diary of the Scottish team’s failure in the Something Leather. Here, your is Glasgow poems. Leonard was Argentina World Cup of 1978. ‘yaw’, poor is ‘paw’, literature is probably the most established Polygon was also due to publish Neal ‘litritcha’, here is ‘hia’, nearly is writer attending the Hobsbaum Ascherson’s Devolution Diaries written during the ‘nialy’ and Shakespeare is group. Six Glasgow Poems and A referendum debacle, in which he referred to the ‘Shakespia’. Priest Came on at Merkland Street were published post-referendum years as ‘the hangover of ‘79’. In The sudden appearance in print of many of to some acclaim in 1969 and 1970. J. B. Caird (one some circles it was known as the ‘deferendum’ due these writers has been called a boom by many of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools in Scotland) to the lack of nerve exhibited by the electorate. In commentators. In reality, however, it was more the ended a talk to the Association for Scottish the end Ascherson decided they were too frank result of a process: Alasdair Gray, Jeff Torrington, Literary Studies in 1972 with the question: “Is and instead deposited them in the Public Record Bill Douglas and wrote for more there a possibility in fiction—as has been done in Office in Edinburgh under a ‘Closed’ mark. than a decade before being published in book form verse by and others—for the phonet- Around the time I started at Polygon, publishers in Scotland or England. Perhaps it took the failure ic rendering of Glasgow speech in the way released a flood of histories, companions, dictionar- of the Devolution Bill in 1979 to bring them to a Raymond Queneau has used Parisian speech in ies and encyclopedias of Scottish literature. In wider public. There is, after all a school of thought ‘Zazie dans le Metro?’” Like most people, he was most cultures these reference works might have that says that when the politics of a country run not to know that over in Glasgow James Kelman had quite a long shelf-life, but the publication of aground, the people look for self expression in cul- was doing just this. work by Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and others ture. The public acceptance or censorship of ver- When Kelman and Gray first met at in the early 1980s rendered the volumes that had nacular Scots has always been a symptom of Hobsbaum’s group they did not particularly like excluded them obsolete almost as soon as they political feeling in the country. In reaction to the each other’s writing, but warmed to each other per- were published. In retrospect they were marking Act of Union with England in 1707, there was a sonally. Gray later acknowledged him for helping the end of a former era in Scottish literature and renewal of interest in the vernacular, followed by a the first chapter of Lanark read smoother. He the beginning of a new one. reaction in Edinburgh around the middle of the included a drawing of Kelman on the frontispiece Anyone looking for the country’s authors in a eighteenth century when a guide book on how to of Book One of Lanark while printing his story Scottish bookshop at that time would have been excise Scotticisms from speech became popular ‘Acid’ in one of the footnotes to plagiarisms in the pointed towards reprints of Neil Gunn and Eric amongst the literati. Its stated aim was ‘to put novel. Gray had been working on Lanark since the Linklater. Publishers were more interested in res- young writers and speakers on their guard against 1950s. When he completed one of the four books it urrecting dead writers as opposed to looking for Scotch idioms’ and its influence is still obvious comprises he sent it to the literary agent Spencer new ones and grants from the Scottish Arts many generations later in the properly annunciat- Curtis Brown, who rejected it in 1963. An editor at Council encouraged this. When on behalf of ed speech of Miss Jean Brodie. One exception was Quartet bought an option on Lanark for £75 after Polygon I sent them Kelman’s second novel A Robert Burns, whose writing was applauded in the reading a half-complete version in 1972. When Chancer, they deemed it unworthy of a grant 1780s by the same people who had set about Gray finished his work four years later it was towards publication costs. They had received a removing Scottish words from their vocabulary. turned down because it was ‘too long’. Two other complaint from a Conservative Member of In Glasgow during 1971 some writers had begun to London publishers offered to publish it if he split Parliament, Alick Buchanan-Smith; one of his con- meet every two weeks in a group co-ordinated by it into two books. During this time Gray made a stituents had picked up Kelman’s previous novel , a lecturer in the English meagre living selling plays to television and radio. The Busconductor Hines, in an Edinburgh bookshop, Department at the university. This was the fourth In between he would go back to painting. He did and was shocked that taxpayers’ money was subsi- time he had organised such a group. Besides an murals in restaurants and churches, and for more dising such language. Those who claimed to repre- earlier one in Glasgow there had been groups in than a decade made portraits of Glasgow citizens sent culture had lost their collective nerve. London and in Belfast (to which Seamus Heaney for the People’s Palace Museum. Finally, he offered There was the publication of the long-delayed brought his poems) in the late 1950s and early Lanark to the Edinburgh publisher Canongate in New Testament in Scots in 1982 and the Concise 1960s. Here Gray and Kelman met each other and February 1977, who accepted it a year later.They Scots Dictionary in 1985. These became surprise (to Tom Leonard and for the first time. went on to publish it in 1981. Lanark had been the bookshops) best-sellers and were products of Other writers at the group included the poets twenty-four years in the making. decades of work W. L. Lorimer’s New Testament in Donald Saunders, Aonghas MacNeacail and Robin In 1987 Gray used the advances of two books to Scots, like Gray’s Lanark and Kelman’s Not Not Hamilton, and the science-fiction writer Chris organise a touring exhibition of the painters John While The Giro and other stories, were completed Boyce. Each would submit a piece of writing in Connolly, Alan Fletcher, Carole Gibbons and long before publication in book form. Lorimer first advance which would then be copied, circulated Alasdair Taylor, whose work he felt had been had the idea of translating it in 1945, began in unjustly neglected. earnest in 1957 and completed it in 1966. It took Kelman had been writing since about 1967 and by until 1983 to raise sufficient interest and funds to 1971 had enough stories for a book. Through secure publication. He uses different forms of Hobsbaum he met the American writer Mary Gray Scots to show different authors in the New Hughes. She got a publisher in Maine interested in Testament and when the Old Testament is quoted the manuscript of An old pub near the Angel his he uses Old Scots. The book’s raciness and hybridi- first book of stories. It was published in 1973 by ty made the attempts by various writers and acad- Puckerbrush Press and was little noticed in emics in the decade before to sort out an agreed Scotland or England. His work was starting to form of Scots laughable. appear in magazines and occasionally in the Later on in the 1980s books and pamphlets Scottish Short Stories annual volume. By the mid- came out glossing Glasgow speech such as Stanley 1970s Kelman had another collection of stories Baxter’s Parliamo Glasgow and Michael Munro’s ready, was completing one novel and was well The Patter, which topped the Scottish best-seller underway with another. charts for months and went into several editions. A good deal of co-operation amongst these writ- Words that were being taken out of speech and ers in the West of Scotland began at this time; writ- print in the past couple of centuries were now ing circulated in manuscript and addresses of VARIANT • VOLUME 2 NUMBER 13 • SUMMER 2001 • PAGE 23

hard-to-come-by literary magazines were put on—in his words to a reporter at the time— in world literature of the doppel- exchanged. The best of these was Scottish ’the first poetry reading to take place at Paisley gänger or double. Since James International which lasted from 1968 to 1974. At Town Hall since W. B. Yeats in 1924’. Among those Hogg’s Confessions of A Justified the beginning of the 1970s it ran extracts from on the bill were Sorley MacLean, Iain Crichton Sinner and Robert Louis Lanark and published Alan Spence’s stories. Two Smith and Aonghas MacNeacail. Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr poets—Edwin Morgan and Robert Garioch—were In the absence of interest from publishers or Hyde many Scottish writers have on the board of the magazine. Morgan sponsored agents, authors in the west of Scotland continued explored this theme. Yet, what is Alasdair Gray’s application to the Scottish Arts to link up. More and more readings were organ- remarkable about so much Council for money to finish Lanark (he received ised. Here Kelman met Jeff Torrington, who had Scottish writing of the past fif- £300 in 1973). been a shop steward at the former Talbot/Chrysler teen years is how the double has Many of the new writers from the West of car plant at Linwood. Torrington was in the middle disappeared. There is very little Scotland found Morgan’s poetry an inspiration as it of writing Swing Hammer Swing, part of which splitting. Some of the characters took in urban life (especially Glasgow) and Kelman passed to me in 1983. It led to several may be struggling to recover embraced the new. These were themes not often Torrington stories appearing in Edinburgh Review. from damage but they are whole. found in combination at that time. Scottish Torrington told me that when he first attended one They may be alienated from the International was strange for a Scottish cultural of Kelman’s writing groups in Paisley Kelman sug- values of society, but they are magazine in several respects. Guided by its editor gested that he knock all the stained glass windows not alienated from themselves. Bob Tait, it treated Hugh MacDiannid as a poet out of his prose, referring to the adjectives and They may be angry, but this amongst equals instead of installing him high on a adverbs. But Torrington’s favourite writers include comes out as rage and is not left throne. It also tried to cover Glasgow comprehen- Vladimir Nabokov and Ray Bradbury and as he buried to form cycles of bitter- sively for the first time. enjoyed using these words they remained. When ness and depression. They fight In 1970, the Glasgow Herald did two features on Liz Lochhead ran a writing group in Alexandria, madness and avoid suicide: Thomas Healy entitled ‘From the Pick to the Pen’ north of Glasgow, she met Agnes Owens who gave Patrick Doyle in Kelman’s A and ‘Labourer Who Writes Stories’. They reported her the story ‘Arabella’. Lochhead showed it to Disaffection; Roy Strang in that Healy ‘whose most recent story—The Gray and Kelman who loved it and soon became Welsh’s Marabou Stork Traveler—reflects his experiences as a navvy on a friends with the author. Several years on, in 1982, Nightmares; Jock McLeish in hydro-electric site in the Highlands, has won at the Gray passed me the typescript of the novel Gray’s 1982, Janine; Joy Stone in age of 28, a Scottish Arts Council bursary of £500.’ Gentlemen of the West by Agnes Owens, which was Galloway’s The Trick is To Keep This allowed him to work on a novel of Glasgow in published at Polygon. Breathing; Helen Brindle in AL the 1950s. Some stories appeared in an anthology I also heard about Janice Galloway from Kennedy’s Original Bliss and of new writers put out by Faber, who took an Kelman. He had been judging a short story compe- Ralph in Iain Crichton Smith’s In option on the novel but never published it. Nothing tition and photocopied some of her entry for me. I The Middle of The Wood. For these more appeared in book form. Until in 1988, maybe went on to publish several stories in Edinburgh characters sanity is not given, aware of the work we were publishing, he sent Review and her novel The Trick is To Keep Breathing but won. Then they are whole, Polygon his novel It Might Have Been Jerusalem.He at Polygon. Later, Kelman was to bring Torrington not split people. had been writing for more than twenty years with- and McLean to the attention of his publisher at For his Radical Renfrew antholo- out having a book accepted. In his second book, Secker & Warburg. Galloway published the first gy Tom Leonard compiled a the- Rolling, his hero has a love affair with a schoolboy work by Irvine Welsh as one of the editors of New matic list of contents which in Glasgow, gets dysentery in Madrid and ends up, Writing Scotland. He went on to be published by could be a thumbnail history of via Germany and Australia, in a marriage of sorts. The Clocktower Press and then in Kevin Scotland. The first five of the six- After publication, Healy was berated for creating a Williamson’s Rebel Inc. McLean suggested Welsh teen sections are religion, alco- character who made everything secondary to and later Alan Warner to the same editor at Secker hol, emigration, employment and drink. Many Scottish reviewers appear to seek & Warburg. There is a common strand here of writ- unemployment. Institutionalised redemption from books by Scottish writers. They ers using their own reputations to bring to people’s religion still has a powerful hold approach them with different critical apparatus to attention the work of other writers. Just look at the on Scotland. Monty Python’s Life that which they might bring to, say, an American cover puffs and you’ll see how one writer praises of Brian is still banned from writer. Like the councillors of Glasgow they prefer another who in turn introduces another new every cinema in Glasgow and in happy endings to hard-won self-determination. writer’s work. In his ‘diplags’ and ‘implags’ in the the early 1980s Glasgow In 1974, Bill Douglas wrote the novel My margins of Lanark, Gray uses a satire on academic University Union denied stu- Childhood to raise money to allow him to complete footnotes to admit he has plagiarised sentences or dents permission to form a Gay his trilogy of films My Childhood/ My Ain Folk / My parts of sentences from the work of Kelman, Society. In Alan Sharp’s A Green Way Home, but it never found a publisher.The Lochhead, Leonard, Spence and McCabe. This was Tree in Gedde, Moseby began to manuscript resurfaced nearly twenty years later. In an unselfish support network proving the validity understand what being West 1975 William Mcllvanney, after winning the of Ezra Pound’s comment that no single work of art Coast Scottish meant, with its Whitbread Prize for Docherty, said he wanted ‘to excludes another work of art. Tom Leonard made a preoccupations with guilt and write a book that would create a kind of literary huge magic marker banner of this phrase and put sex and sin. Twenty-five years genealogy for the people I came from.’ Meanwhile, it along one wall of the room where his writing later, in The Trick Is To Keep Kelman was doing exactly this and getting rejec- groups met in Paisley. Breathing, Janice Galloway sums tion slips from London publishers who slammed up the prevailing ethos of the door on Scottish writers of fiction just as quick- Scottish schooling: ‘apportion ly as they had opened it. Not being published in blame that ye have not blame book form, whether in Edinburgh or London, Scotland will be free when the last Church of Scotland apportioned unto you.’ meant they had to build their own links with read- minister is strangled by the last copy of the Sunday Post There are more antecedents ers and other writers to avoid complete neglect. of these themes in the work of Tom Nairn (1970) If publishers in Edinburgh and London had Glasgow writer Ivor Cutler. In their blinkers on when it came to manuscripts When I see one of these Free Church ministers on the Life In A Scotch Sitting Room Vol from new Scottish writers, the work was not sitting street in Lewis, I feel like walking across the road and 2 his mother smells burning: in drawers. Magazines and small presses evolved to hitting him in the face. “Who’s been playing with the plug the gap and they had an influence dispropor- Iain Crichton Smith (1989) tionate to their size. For a couple of years from matches? asked Mother, looking into 1978 Kelman, Gray, Leonard, Lochhead, Spence Most of the themes in these works—the art of the box and shaking the contents. I and others distributed booklets of their work as keeping a fragile hold on sanity, struggles against looked through a hole in my plate. the Glasgow Print Studio Co-operative with the moral intolerance and the causes and effects of You could have boiled a kettle on my help of its director Calum Mackenzie. In 1979 drinking too much—would have made sense to cheek ALL the children were busy Kelman began the first of two periods as Writer-in- another Glasgow writer, R D. Laing. His work has looking guilty. It was our custom.” Residence for Renfrewshire District Libraries. In been an influence on some of the writers refered Not that long ago children in an interview with the Glasgow Herald at the time to here. What many of them have in common with Scottish schools were still being Kelman said “I wanted to help ordinary people to him is rage, intelligence, humour and a curiosity punished by the tawse. The become aware that books and writers are not and frustration about the central role of guilt in Concise Scots Dictionary defines it sacred and unapproachable. Most people have the Scottish psyche. Laing’s first book The Divided as Self published in London in 1959 after he left something in them worth writing about if only they “a whip with tads; the lash for a Glasgow, is a psychological look at the everyday realised it, and I intend to have workshops in every whipping top; a leather punishment occurrence of split personality. He felt that guilt local community to encourage people to both read strap with thongs (since 1983 rarely develops when anger is not expressed but sent and write.” In May of that year, five days after and only in certain regions); also a inward and two selves are created. Scotland can Margaret Thatcher’s first election victory, Kelman child’s word for penis.” lay some claim to being one of the best purveyors PAGE 24 • VARIANT • VOLUME 2 NUMBER 13 • SUMMER 2001

Schools can oppress their teachers as much as their whenever the character moved about the city, the blinding all over the place. You can’t use language pupils. Teachers appear in contemporary Scottish Glasgow place and street names had been like that in public; if I spoke like that I’d be f-ing fiction as people for whom sanity is no longer a tippexed out on the manuscript. hounded out of office.’ given. Ralph in Iain Crichton Smith’s In The Middle “I’d like you to think about reinstating these names.’ This is not that different from those who only of The Wood, Joy Stone in The Trick is to Keep want a rosy image of their city written or painted ‘Are you sure?” Breathing, Patrick Doyle in (“He just or filmed. A standard criticism from this direction wanted something different. To not be a teacher ‘Yes.’ in Scotland was trotted out during the 1990 Year of perhaps”) are all burdened with the pressures put ‘It’s just that the publisher in London that almost took Culture and then for the film of Trainspotting and on the country’s educational system. Whether the book said if I took them out it would have more goes something like this: ‘Yes I’m sure the because of Calvinism or Catholicism, Scotland has universal appeal.’ book/film accurately represents life as it is lived for had hangups in abundance—especially around sex Needless to say he was delighted to reinstate them. a proportion of the population, but to put this out and drink. Then there is anger.Then there is guilt as art or entertainment makes me feel uneasy. The about this anger.Then the depression that follows In December l990, the Scots Magazine—a favourite book/film seems to condone all that is bad about when anger is internalised. Nowhere is this clearer read among Scots abroad—published an article by our society. He needn’t have written it because we than in the rage of Scottish men. A good deal of Maurice Fleming entitled ‘Scotland the Depraved’. see it every day in our streets and estates’. contemporary Scottish fiction shows the pressure In it he called for a return to the values of the Many newspapers still put in asterisks or dash- put on Scots men to be real hard men. In Marabou comic classics of Compton Mackenzie and more es or blanks when they take exception to what is Stork Nightmares, in my opinion Irvine Welsh’s best publicity for writers who could celebrate Scotland simply language. The Glasgow Herald would print book so far, Roy Strang is abused by his racist as opposed to those he labels ‘the terrible two- stories in censored versions—removing the words uncle. A few years later he helps commit a gang some’: Kelman and Welsh, joined by Duncan from view and leaving nothing in their place— rape. Strang has been ‘running away from sensitivi- McLean. He describes his targets as ‘desperate to even after guarantees to the author.These writers ty: a fucking schemie, a nobody, shouldnae have plumb even deeper depths of depravity’. These were too important for the paper to be seen to be these feelings because there’s fucking naewhair for writers, he said, ‘appear to view Scotland with ignoring them but that didn’t stop them doctoring them tae go.’ undisguised and malicious disgust [portraying the the language. Several anthologies published with In the 1970s two plays dealt with this theme place as] a nation of drunks, drug addicts and the school market in mind have obviously gone out overtly. Tom McGrath wrote The Hard Man about dropouts.’ of their way to pick a Kelman story or a Leonard convicted murderer Jimmy Boyle and Bill Bryden’s In 1992 the Daily Record printed the headline: poem with no language they don’t like in it. The play Benny Lynch tells the story of the Glasgow SEX SHOCKERS ON SCHOOL’S READING LIST radio stations in Scotland still omit words without boxer who lost it all to drink William McIlvanney’s and continued with reference to ‘dirty books’ and bleeping them: “Well,’ they seem to be saying, novel The Big Man traces the life of a man who ‘classroom porn shockers’. In response to the action ‘would you prefer not to have your story broadcast loses his job in contemporary Ayrshire and turns to of a retired chemistry teacher on the Johnstone at all?’ bare-knuckle fighting to earn a living. Even the High School board five books were removed from The Scots Magazine got one thing right and that title of his collection of short stories—Walking the library’s shelves for sixteen- to eighteen-year- is the connection between the so-called culprits. Wounded—tells us that we are entering the arena olds. The books were A Chancer and Greyhound for Duncan McLean has said, only half jokingly, that where damaged men do damage to each other and Breakfast by James Kelman; The Color Purple by he sees himself as the missing link between Lewis have damage done to them. It is as if only a Alice Walker; The Cider House Rules by John Irving Grassic Gibbon and Kelman. McLean may come decade, not centuries, has elapsed since the wars and Perfume by Patrick Suskind. The reason given from rural Aberdeenshire but he has written about with England. The word ‘manliness’ occurs very was that they contained obscene language and/or life in and around Edinburgh in a way that would regularly in Thomas Healy’s fiction and it is not depictions of rape and/or child abuse and/or vio- simply not have happened unless he had come surprising that his most recent book A Hurting lence. As a follow-up the paper had sent copies of across Kelman’s Not Not While The Giro and The Business, is a memoir of being a lifelong boxing fan pages from these books to the Strathclyde Region’s Busconductor Hines. Some Scots do not believe a in Glasgow. In the novel Gentlemen of the West by Director of Education who commented I am book is worth reading unless it has been praised in Agnes Owens: shocked and appalled... and taking urgent steps to London. It often has to be published there as well. “Proctor’s answer was to hurl a glass through the mirror ensure that they are not available to children any- Bill Forsyth said his film Gregory’s Girl was not behind the bar. My mother gave a moan of fear.This where in the region.’ given a proper cinema release in Scotland until it excited Paddy’s chivalrous instincts. He hurried up to The next day, under the headline had the seal of approval from London. Many jour- nalists, broadcasters and academics north of the Proctor and smashed a lemonade bottle on the counter CLEAN UP AT PORN SCHOOL over his head.” border poured scorn on Kelman’s experimentation The director of education commented: “It was and use of language until A Disaffection was short- The main character of the book, Mac, describes the utterly unacceptable that such filth should ever listed for the Booker Prize. scars on his face, saying ‘they were status for me’. have become available in the first place.” Whereas Kelman looked to America and Owens presents violence as a straightforward fact Subsequently, Robert Gould, the Leader of Europe for a literary tradition, McLean, together of everyday life, with little comment or judgement. Strathclyde Region, told the school to take all post- with Gordon Legge, Alan Warner and Irvine Welsh Violence and anger (and fondness, which can 1970 grown-up fiction off the shelves to be vetted. and to a lesser extent Janice Galloway and A. L sometimes make the switch hilarious) come out in He was later quoted in a paper as saying “I’m not Kennedy—have been influenced by Kelman and language too. Most violence between people never much of a reader. No one talks like that, f-ing and Gray, in part for their tenacity and in part for for- results in a fight but remains in language. Kelman mal and technical breakthroughs in their use of has given the example of writing about a few men language. McLean says, “When The Busconductor in a pub. You can either write using the dialogue Hines came out in 1984 it just blew my mind. It was that they might actually use or you can write using the voice. For the first time I was reading a book language they wouldn’t use. If you do the latter about the world I lived in. I didn’t know literature then you end up censoring their whole existence. A could do that.” Welsh also credits Kelman with writer has to make other decisions, such as: Does “setting the whole thing out so that people like the narrator use the same language as the charac- myself can have more fun.” A. L Kennedy has said ters? In the prose of some writers mentioned here, that people like John Byrne, Tom Leonard and there is no such split. In 1988 a magazine for James Kelman “made my generation of writers English teachers in Scottish schools printed a possible ... gave us permission to speak ... made us review of Gentlemen of the West which concluded more ourselves—gave us the reality, life and digni- that the book’s “usefulness as a school text is ty that art can at a time when anything other than unfortunately limited by the realistic inclusion in standard English and standard address was the dialogue, of language associated with ‘bouts of frowned upon.” drinking and occasional houghmagandie’”. The reviewer finished by warning teachers that ‘the The Busconductor Hines, Kelman’s first published parents of your average S grade candidate would novel did not reach the Booker Prize shortlist. certainly be moved to protest.’ However, Richard Cobb (the chairman of the Censorship can take many different forms. I judges), did express his shock that ‘one of the nov- came across a peculiarly misguided example when els seemed to be written entirely in Glaswegian’ as I was editing Towards The End, a novel by the if that was enough to pass judgement on it. Anne Glasgow writer Joseph Mills published in I989 by Smith, editor of the (then Edinburgh-based) Polygon. The job of an editor is to understand the Literary Review said of it, ‘Who wants to read 300 author’s intention and play devil’s advocate to both pages about the life of a busconductor where noth- the writer and to his or her own instinctive ing much happens anyway?’ When Kelman won the response. Although I didn’t like some of Mills’s Booker Prize for How Late It Was, How Late, Simon florid metaphors, what made the book compelling Jenkins of The Times said the Booker Prize judges was its attention to detail, its focus on the particu- were glorifying a noble savage, a glib and conde- lar lived moments of the protagonist’s life. Yet, VARIANT • VOLUME 2 NUMBER 13 • SUMMER 2001 • PAGE 25

scending way of sidelining work that disturbs. Ever thought about emigrating? Brown. James Leslie Mitchell used the pen-name The Edinburgh Magazine once described Burns Emigrating? Course. Lewis Grassic Gibbon. Robert Sutherland called as ‘a striking example of native genius bursting himself Robert Garioch. Thomas Douglas Whereabouts? through the obscurity of poverty and the obstruc- Macdonald wrote as Fionn MacColIa and Morris tions of laborious life.’ The same sentiments in Any fucking place! Blythman as Thurso Berwick. If such a distancing more modern language greeted many of these And in How Late It Was, How late, Sammy Samuels mechanism was necessary for them to write in a writers on their first publication. More than a few tells his son Peter: free way, others sought geographical space. There of them have been described in profiles as coming was Alexander Trocchi (who had written Young I’m thinking of heading. from non-literary backgrounds, using Leith or Adam and some hack pornography under the pseu- Grangemouth or Gorbals or whatever argot, Aw da. donym Frances Lengel) in Paris and New York, W. S. dialect, patois or demotic. Most critics go to extra- Back to England Graham in Cornwall. Muriel Spark in New York ordinary lengths to avoid using the word ‘lan- Da. and Rome, Alastair Reid in New York and the guage’. The result is that writers are marginalised Dominican Republic and Alan Sharp in Los Trying to get a job and that ye know? outside a constructed literary canon, built by those Angeles and then New Zealand. who think middle class people in the English home In 1983 a book was published in France entitled MacDiarmid had a memorable face off with counties have no accent whatsoever. Similarly, L’Ecosse: une nation sans stat. A year later, Invisible Alexander Trocchi during the International when Alasdair Gray gets described as ‘eccentric’ Country by James Campbell was published in Writer’s Conference at the 1962 Edinburgh critic and reader can collude in not taking his London. He visits his native Scotland to discover Festival. This was organised by the publisher John political or historical arguments seriously. why he had left the place a couple of years before. Calder who invited seventy writers from twenty In 1985, Douglas Dunn concluded his Glasgow He gave it that title—which infuriated reviewers in countries. Trocchi had lived outside Scotland for Herald review of Kelman’s A Chancer with a plea Edinburgh and Glasgow at the time—because he many years and was familiar to the authors attend- for a good middle class novel set in the west of felt that at the heart of the place was a political ing from France and America but was little known Scotland. Things have come a long way from the void. These were the years immediately after the in the country of his birth. The debate came to an day when Neil Gunn, writing in the same newspa- ‘failure’ of the referendum on devolution. operatic climax when he said that anything that per nearly fifty years before, wrote that ‘Glasgow Campbell wrote that ‘in this queer stagnation, had any merit in the Scottish Literature of the pre- needs a working class novel written from the prospects for a thriving modern literature are pret- ceding twenty years had been written by him. inside’. Elsewhere, in his Oxford Book of Scottish ty dismal’. Allan Massie’s novel, One Night in MacDiarmid countered by calling him ‘cosmopoli- Short Stories, Dunn talks of the ‘bruising candour’ Winter, came out in the same year as Campbell’s tan scum’. Trocchi replied, ‘I am only interested in of Kelman and McLean. His argument is that just travel book. In it, Ebenezer exclaims that Scotland lesbianism and sodomy’. as in the nineteenth century many Scottish writers is a ‘withered culture’. He says, ‘Let Scotland be as Americans, including William Burroughs and escaped into writing kailyard independent as they wish, it will Henry Miller, lined up in support of Trocchi and (cabbage patch) stories of rural not alter the fact that there’s lit- East European Communist Party writers backed idylls, so now unfortunately, the tle ... to keep talent here. Of MacDiarmid. On the surface this could be read as emphasis on urban working-class course a political framework Trocchi the internationalist versus MacDiarmid the stories can appear to be as exag- would retain a few—but how nationalist, or modernist versus traditionalist. Yet gerated as the agrarian stresses many?’ MacDiarmid had experimented with language in of the past.’ He goes on to refer Both echo the 1936 essay ‘Scott his poetry and drawn on sources from all over the to Alasdair Gray’s “eccentric, and Scotland’, where Edwin world. Maybe their differences were more cultural astonishing intelligence” ... “the Muir argued that the writer who and generational: beatnik and bard, heroin and politicised demotic challenge of wants to stay in Scotland and malt whisky, black polo-neck and tweed tie. Thirty- James Kelman” and “feminist add to the culture ‘Will find five years on the division seems to endure with purposes of Janice Galloway.” there, no matter how long he Irvine Welsh calling Trocchi ‘a Scottish George Best These are writers from a may search neither an organic of literature’ and MacDiarmid ‘a symbol of all country where more people community to round off his con- that’s perfectly hideous about Scotland.’ The prob- leave or die than stay or arrive. ceptions nor a literary tradition lem may lie not so much with MacDairmid as with Scotland’s biggest export in the to support him! Any writer work- those that cling only to his aura. nineteenth and twentieth cen- ing in Scotland today certainly For most of the twentieth century, there was turies has been people. The net has the community and tradition such a lack of debate in Scottish letters that emigration that has been hap- to draw on for support. Alasdair MacDiarmid would start arguments with himself pening for most of this century Gray has said that during the changing his mind from month to month as if only stopped abruptly at the end of 1950s and most of the 1960s the to open up areas to debate. In making all this noise the 1980s. Now less Scots are leaving and more are only writers living in Glasgow he knew were Joan he was being more deliberate than most thought. coming back. The Public Record Office in Ure and Archie Hind. In the years that have passed He once wrote that what Scottish literature need- Edinburgh has so many archives and exhibitions a lot has changed. An outsider reading some of the ed most was bulk. MacDiarmid spoke at times as if on the theme of emigration that it should consider new writing coming out of Scotland could be for- he was the country personified, the embodiment of changing its name to The Museum of Those That given for thinking that independence had already the spirit of Scotland. At the age of seventy-two he Went Away. Jim Sillars, the main force behind the come. Cultural self-determination is assumed like told his friend George Bruce that he felt his job breakaway nationalist Scottish Labour Party in the never before in the nation’s history. had always been Maybe it’s because of size that Scotland works late 1970s, has made the point that “going to ‘to erupt like a volcano emitting not only a flame but a well as a literary centre. People can meet face to Canada or Australia or Rhodesia or into the armed lot of rubbish’ forces was an accepted fact of life. If you wanted to face relatively easily. Through the Hobsbaum get on then you had to get out.” group, the Print Studio Press, readings at the Third He certainly kept his foot in the door when those The Scots, like the Jews and the Irish, are a Eye Centre, and the small magazines, writers met outside were trying to slam it shut. small nation dispersed all over the world. They one another frequently for mutual support and dis- form a higher-than-average proportion of agreement. This happened more in Glasgow than Interpreters, mediators, football managers, athlet- in Edinburgh. Some hostility between the two ics coaches and translators. Great writing was cities remains even though they are only 45 min- found at the margins amongst Scottish translators utes apart by train. Glasgow is a large city, but at like Willa and Edwin Muir (Kafka), C. K. Scott- any one time there tended to be half a dozen pubs Moncrieff (Proust), Alastair Reid (Borges), Hamish where people connected with literature could meet Henderson (Holderlin and Gramsci), Stuart Hood for a chat. This helped to create a context outside (Pasolini, Buzzati and Busi) and Edwin Morgan the institutions of higher education and away from (just about everyone). the distractions of London, where writing could be Emigration is a theme that appears in the fic- talked about in full seriousness. tion of many contemporary Scottish writers. In Thomas Healy’s It Might have been Jerusalem,Rab is looking for somewhere to live and a job and the “There is very little written, acted, composed, surmised conversation turns inevitably to where to go to and demanded in Scotland which does not in some achieve his aim: ‘tae London,’ he tells his friend. strand descend from the new beginning he made.” Renton in Trainspotting says: ‘Ah huv tae get oot ay Leith, oot ay Scotland. For good. Right away, no jist Leader, The Scotsman, 9th September 1978, after the doon tae London fir six months.’ The impossibility death of Hugh MacDairmid of staying and the difficulty of leaving is a constant Scottish writers often employed an alias. Hugh refrain in Kelman’s fiction. In A Chancer John asks MacDiarmid was born Christopher Murray Grieve, Tammas: George Douglas published as George Douglas PAGE 26 • VARIANT • VOLUME 2 NUMBER 13 • SUMMER 2001

A by-product of this massive three men stood in a small open space created by the ‘Glasgow’s Miles Better’. The latter was trying to effort to hold Scottish literary attention of the other customers. One had a sombre point out that Glasgow was smiling again (the culture up and protect it from all pouchy face and upstanding hair which seemed too like decline of heavy industry made for cleaner air but comers was firstly to prioritise thistledown to be natural, one looked like a tall sarcastic massive unemployment) and that it was miles bet- poetry at the cost of fiction, and lizard, one like a small sly shy bear.“Our three best since ter than Edinburgh. When the slogan was booked secondly, to prioritise Burns,” a bystander informed me,“barring Sorley of by an ad agency for the side of Edinburgh’s MacDiarmid in front of every- course.” maroon buses, the capital’s politicians refused per- body else. After his death it was I nodded as if l knew what he meant then went out and mission at the last minute. not always easy to get close to bought a picturecard view of the castle.’ While many Glasgow writers see themselves as his work. MacDairmid’s own natives of that city first and of Scotland second, words about Burns in ‘A Drunk In his painting Poet’s Pub (also the title of an Eric the city’s burghers have been far from happy to Man Looks At the Thistle’ could Linklater novel) Alexander Moffat merged three take them on board. A member of the Festivals well be applied to himself: drinking places—Milo’s Bar,The Abbotsford and Office during Glasgow’s year as European City of the Cafe Royal—into one. It formed the centre- ‘Mair nonsense has been uttered in Culture was asked by a journalist why so few writ- piece of the 1981 exhibition ‘Seven Poets’ and he ers were involved. He told him that: his name put MacDiarmid in the middle of a single canvas Than in ony’s barrin liberty and with lain Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown, ‘The writers were too difficult to work with’. Christ’. Edwin Morgan, Sorley MacLean, Norman MacCaig A piece in the New York Review of Books by expatri- Young male disciples and syco- and Robert Garioch. In hindsight this mythic com- ate historian Gordon Craig took the side of the phants created an aura around bination marked the end of an era where poetry writers. This was followed swiftly by a long letter his life and work which meant eclipsed prose, Edinburgh lorded it over Glasgow from Glasgow City Council leader Pat Lally rub- you inevitably came to it with and women were left outside the pub of Scottish bishing his argument. When the city fathers have massive preconceptions either in literature. The idea that you could fit Scotland’s included them it has been in a belittling fashion. favour or against. A cultural best writers round one table is inconceivable now. In 1995 Glasgow’s Department of Performing Arts magazine—Cencrastus—was Yet a sincere attempt was made in 1995 when the distributed a lavish colour brochure consisting of named after one of his poems New Yorker sent Richard Avedon to Glasgow to folding out posters in four languages. I picked up and a book of tributes was pub- capture Scotland’s best in a single posed team shot my copy on the Gourock ferry. The section entitled lished called, not surprisingly, at the Clutha Vaults, a pub in the East End of ‘Glasgow People’ is so awful it is worth reproduc- The Age of MacDiarmid. For writ- Glasgow. In the sixteen years between Moffat’s ing in its entirety: ers interviewed in the early painting and Avedon’s photograph the public land- Glaswegians prefer life lived on the verge of the surreal. 1980s an early question would scape of Scottish writing has changed beyond Theirs is a gallows humour - exuberant, extravagant, be, ‘What do you think of recognition. grotesque but sparkling like the sun on frosty glass. As MacDiarmid’s poem about or A few months later the New York Times maga- Ken Dodd put it ‘the trouble with Sigmund Freud was essay on... ?’ Especially after the zine had a reporter set up a similar scene in that he never had to play the Glasgow Empire on a ‘failure’ of the devolution refer- Robbie’s Bar in Leith. The piece appeared with the Saturday night’ It could have changed history. headline ‘the Beats of Edinburgh’ and the sub- endum his legacy was a lifeboat Look at some of the people GLASGOW has produced. for young men. Now, his halo has headline ‘from the margins of Scottish society James Watt receded and it is possible to comes a new, beer-soaked, drug-filled, profanity- appreciate his writing free from laced, violently funny literature.’ Lord Lister Lord Kelvin Tobias Smollett James Bridle encumbrances. It is hard to exag- James Kelman Jimmy Maxton Billy Connolly gerate the influence of his per- Liz Lochhead Charles Rennie Mackintosh sonality on those around him. Scotland doesnae mean much tae Glesca folk Peter Howson At his funeral Norman MacCaig Robert McLeish,The Gorbals Story (1948) said that MacDiarmid would SOME TEAM! as Glaswegians might say! But walk into his mind ‘as if it were a There was no feeling of being Scots. I was from Greenock Glaswegians are prone to talk about themselves in a town and he a torchlight proces- and that was different even from being from the Port or language that could bamboozle visitors. sion of one.’ Seven years later Greenock or Glasgow. During this promotional hubbub Edwin Morgan when signing a copy of his own Bill Bryden (1977) commented that ‘it’s much harder to write about collected poems he at first wrote James Kelman’s autobiographical note to the Three central Glasgow today, which has had its face lift- ‘Hugh MacDiarmid’, crossing it Glasgow Writers anthology (published by ed—this doesn’t give rise to feelings from which out just before he reached the Molendinar Press in 1976) reads: poems come.’ A lifetime of being ignored, spoken end of the surname. He was a for, used and abused and patronised would be hard I was born and bred in Glasgow standing stone that cast a large enough for one person to bear.The city of Glasgow shadow. For several decades I have lived most of my life in Glasgow was done in by England and Scotland... and by the Scottish literature appeared to It is the place I know best burghers of Glasgow. the world as a group of male My language is English On the frontispiece of Book One of Lanark, poets sitting round a table cov- Alasdair Gray rewrote the Glasgow city motto. ered in malt whiskies in The I write Instead of Abbotsford Bar in Edinburgh. A In my writings the accent is in Glasgow ‘Let Glasgow flourish by preaching the word’ writer only got admitted if one I am always from Glasgow and I speak English always of them died. And if you weren’t Always with this Glasgow accent it reads a poet you might as well wait at ‘Let Glasgow flourish by telling the truth.’ the door. For three decades or This is right enough more Scottish Literature was In 1982 his story ‘Not Not While the Giro’ was pub- The truth about Glasgow is that it has the highest Scottish Poetry, and Scottish lished in Penguin’s first Firebird anthology. density of lung cancer, heart problems, suicides poetry was claimed by Contributors provided sixty- or seventy-word and alcohol use in western Europe. In Jeff Edinburgh. The poets met in author biographies. He wrote: Torrington’s story ‘The Sink” Brogan tells Jordan Edinburgh in one of three liter- that his neighbour has been sent home from hospi- James Kelman is a citizen of Glasgow. In the pages that tal as incurable: ‘Liver’s like a chunk of cardboard. ary bars after a reading. The follow about a third of the writers are from Glasgow. atmosphere is best captured in a An alky. Telling you, if they cremate him he’ll burn When my first issue as editor of Edinburgh Review came for a fortnight!’ In Torrington’s novel Swing classic, often reproduced, photo- out at the end of 1984, the reviewer in the Times Literary graph of Hugh MacDiarmid, Hammer Swing Burnett suggests to Clay that a Supplement said that there were so many writers from Gorbals House of History should be erected. Clay Sydney Goodsir Smith, Norman the west of Scotland it should be renamed the Glasgow MacCaig and Douglas Young, cig- muses to himself that ‘at Sales Points patrons Review. If there was a scepticism of centralised power in would be able to purchase wee model slums that arette in one hand, malt in the London, there was barely less suspicion of the power that other.The scene has become tinkled “I Belong Tae Glesca” when their roofs Edinburgh presumed itself to have.To much of the were raised.’ something of an archetype—also outside world Glasgow was still a city of murderers and appearing in a novel, a painting drunks. and being echoed by more recent photographs of writers. In This image had started to change through new rep- Alasdair Gray’s 1982 Janine Jock resentations of the place by writers and artists. The Fuckin failures in a country of failures. It’s nae good McLeish goes into a basement city fathers sought to accelerate the process by blamin it oan the English for colonising us. Ah don’t hate bar in Hanover Street for a pie paying public relations experts vast amounts of the English.They’re just wankers.We are colonised by and a pint: money to dream up rapturous tautologies like wankers.We can’t even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy ‘Glasgow’s Glasgow’ and ‘Glasgow European City culture to be colonised by. No.We’re ruled by effete ‘The bar was crowded except where of Culture’ and ‘What’s Glasgowing On’ and arseholes.What does that make us? The lowest of the VARIANT • VOLUME 2 NUMBER 13 • SUMMER 2001 • PAGE 27

fuckin low, the scum of the earth.The most wretched, part of Scotland claims as its own, buy copies of they sat in a hotel overlooking Ben Loyal and the servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae The Field and Country Life in the month of August hills of Sutherland, Rosie asked him why English creation. Ah don’t hate the English.They just git oan wi (the month the shooting season begins). Then look governments have been so unwilling to hand the shite thuv goat. at the Scots Magazine with its ads for Burns paper- Scotland back to the Scots. The official ticked the Ah hate the Scots. weights, cassettes of music with titles like ‘Blood in reasons off on his fingers: the Heart’ and, understandably for a country that from Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (1993) ‘One, oil.Two, gas.Three, fish. Four, water. Five, land.The oil so many people leave, articles on tracing your and gas are self-explanatory, even The Scottish National Party used this monologue Scottish ancestry by CDROM. They make odd bed- now. Fish might not mean much to by Renton for a recruitment form in September fellows. What they have in common is a desire to the British but it is a superb 1996. The Commission for Racial Equality received keep Scotland as it was. Or as it never was. bargaining counter in Europe.Water a complaint about it from a Labour Member of will be important one day. I suspect. Parliament and it was referred to a lawyer who And as for all this [gesturing to the said that they might be in contravention of the hills] well, this is our, how shall I say As a nation we have what the Germans call eine Malicious Publications Act. The editor of Chapman, it, breathing space.That bit of elbow unbewaltigte Vergangenheit—a past with which we one of Scotland’s literary periodicals that comes room that every country should haven’t completely come to terms. (In this we are quite out most in favour of devolution and indepen- have.’ dence, has said, unlike the English, who have come to terms with their There were clearances of anoth- ‘I’m not a patriot, Scotland’s a rotten country.’ history so well that they have largely forgotten it.) er sort in the 1960s when plan- Hamish Henderson in the Scotsman (1966) This berating of Scotland from within shows a new ners and developers bulldozed self-confidence. Scottish writers are more comfort- We have to become independent so that we become tenements and sent the people able criticising their own country than ever before. more Scottish and less anti-English. up into modern but damp flats This can only come from a degree of cultural secu- Dick Gaughan (1995) or to the new towns like rity, moving beyond the see-saw of self-love (in the England player: You Scotch are just a shower of bloody Cumbernauld, Glenrothes or form of blind patriotism) and self-loathing. This animals. Scotland player: Aye, and don’t you bloody well East Kilbride. In Swing Hammer was not the case twenty years ago. forget it. Swing Jeff Torrington writes During 1995, Mainstream Publishing had a run- that: (conversation reported between players at a Rugby away success with the guidebook Scotland the Best. international) ‘Whole tribes of Tenementers had A year later Canongate, another Edinburgh pub- gone off to the Reservations of Scotland continues its fight for statehood in an era lisher, released its sequel Scotland the Worst,a Castlemilk and Toryglen or, like the where nations are breaking up into ethnicities, clear sign of cultural health. Frank Kuppner sent a bulk of those who remained, had satellite broadcasting and internet communication cycle of poems called ‘Albanian Folk Songs’ to the ascended into Basil Spence’s “Big mock national boundaries, and individuals are London Review of Books. The Scots-born editor Stone Wigwam in the Sky”’. asked why he was writing about a distant south- united more by their enthusiasms than by the eastern European country and he had to point out colour of their passports. Yet its intellectuals are This was a time when—in the that Alba was the Gaelic for Scotland. An inter- broadening their parameters to cope with this. The words of Burns Singer—Glasgow viewer once asked him, ‘Kuppner—that’s not exact- historian Angus Calder says that you can be count- felt it was too big for its own ly a Scottish name is it?’ To which he replied, ‘Well, ed as Scots if you support one of the country’s boots and set about shaving it is now.’ sporting teams. What nationality does that make a down its foot to fit. Muriel Gray in her speech on being elected Chicago Bulls fan in Aberdeen (or Moscow for that Scotland missed out on the Rector of Edinburgh University said: ‘I am no matter)? great nation-building of the nine- staunch defender of the couthy heedrum hodrum In 1994 a new cultural journal was launched teenth century because the mid- brand of marketable mock Scottishness.’ She called Scotlands. Its editorial foreword described dle classes had such a good called her production company Gallus Besom. the magazine as an atlas to the plural identities economic deal out of being There used to be another called Big Star in a Wee that form contemporary Scotland. When Alan England’s junior partners in the Picture. When Duncan McLean was part of the Warner was interviewed in the style magazine I-D empire. As the empire fell apart Merry Mac Fun Co theatre company in the mid in a feature on young talent to watch for in 1995 he and former colonies won their 1980s they wrote plays with titles like Macattack said, ‘There are many Scotlands within Scotland. I independence, the Scots lost the and Psychoskanter. wanted to capture the strangeness of the one I foundation of their British identi- In the Highlands on the road to Fort Augustus know.’ This embracing of the plurality that is ty. This led to the first real elec- there is a grey concrete litter bin on which some- Scotland is a characteristic of the new writing com- toral impact of Scottish one has written in huge black letters the words ing from the country which goes way beyond a Nationalism in the late 1960s. TARTAN TOURS BOX OFFICE’. Football fans, table in The Abbotsford Bar. Scotland would have been given rugby fans and pipers busking on Princes Street in The relationship between Scotland and England back to the Scots by now had it Edinburgh or Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow now is still commemorated from Jedburgh to Orkney in not been for the discovery of paint the Braveheart-trademark St Andrew’s Cross the annual ‘Ba Game’. In a cross between the run- North Sea oil. As the oil on their faces as a humorous and powerful rather ning with the bulls in Pamplona and the Eton wall depletes, so does Scotland’s than nationally obedient gesture. ‘Roam the globe, game, a leather ball is moved through the streets. chance of self-government not the glens’ screamed a recent advert for the The ‘ba’ is said to represent an Englishman’s head. increase. There is a strange newspaper Scotland on Sunday. Football matches between Scotland and England dynamic at work here, though. In 1981 Barbara and Murray Grigor organised at Wembley were war by another name. Major The Scots have Scottish national- an exhibition called Scotch Myths. They gathered pitch invasions followed the Scottish victories of ism, the Welsh have Welsh ephemera—from shortbread tins to whisky bot- 1967 and 1977. The Scottish National Party wanted nationalism, but English nation- tles—which showed the whole range of representa- to use footage of these in a political broadcast but alism is about being British. tions of Scottish-ness. A recent promotional were refused permission. Scotland entered the Union postcard from the British winemerchants Oddbins Scottish business embraced the Union because with England in 1707 as some would have fitted nicely into their polemic. It high- it offered access to riches to be mined, picked and people enter an arranged marriage—without lights a range of rare malt whiskies ‘bottled from exploited in the foreign lands throughout the enthusiasm. David Black has said that precious and dwindling collections, each has been British empire. The Scots were the empire’s most ‘She recognised in her partner qualities she needed to nurtured to perfection and carefully selected. Most loyal administrators, engineers, teachers, doctors develop in herself, qualities of stability and tolerance.’ and key missionaries, like David Livingstone. The are unlikely to be seen again.’ This combines the Now it may be too late for marriage guidance. As image and reality of the Scot as the trusted subal- two recurrent myths of visitors to rural Scotland. this relationship nears its end, the two countries tern lives on in characters like Scottie, the loyal On the one hand it has some of the last stretches require a course of separation counselling. The servant in Star Trek As the empire began to of wilderness left in Europe and somehow by peat place can no longer be described, in the words of decline, the English aristocracy, accelerating a bog through highland spring water we can sample one Scot who edited an anthology in the early process that began with Queen Victoria building this purity through a malt. On the other hand with 1980s, as ‘a nation which has lost much of its origi- Balmoral, turned ever larger parts of rural more tourism and development you are less likely nal culture and invented or romanticised more.’ Scotland into the huge sporting estates which still to be alone, or in the words of the Oddbins promo For the first time in centuries of insecurity and constitute a third of the country’s landmass. People ‘So small is each bottling that this may represent strife, Scotland has begun to stop defining itself by were evicted from their homes for the sake of your first and last chance to see, let alone taste, what it is not—England—and is with good humour sheep and sport. What would the population of them.’ The reverse of the postcard has a Ralph facing up to what it is, both bad and good. Future Scotland be now if the Highland Clearances had Steadman drawing of three men with red hooked generations will applaud the contribution which never happened? noses and beards leaning over a malt potstill, with the writers played in this process. the faces of two more like them wafting ghostlike While travelling around Scotland in 1995, the into the air above the boiling pot. journalist George Rosie had a chance meeting with A version of this text appears in the introduction to For an insight into the competing myths that a senior English civil servant from Whitehall. As the Picador Book of Contemporary Scottish Fiction