LITERATURE
‘I WENT ON MY WAY REJOICING’ The celebrated writer Muriel Spark described herself as a hoarder of documents and friends. Alan Taylor remembers the literary legend with an insatiable zest for life as the National Library launches a campaign to buy the last tranche of her archive
ike a character in one later, charged a king’s ransom of her own novels, for a jacket. Muriel Spark had a But then, as I soon learned, chameleon quality. Muriel was interested in any- BrowsingL through photographs thing and everything. A decade of her that are part of the ago, I persuaded her, over a National Library of Scotland’s bibulous supper in Prague, to sprawling Sparkian archive, you make an appearance at the can’t help but remark how often Edinburgh International Book her appearance radically Festival. The night before she changes, how she can look was due on stage she stayed in dowdy one minute and Melrose where in the local book- extraordinarily glamorous shop she said she’d found a title the next. that had kept her up all night. Although she purported to It was a Reader’s Digest DIY hate having her picture taken, manual, she said, in which there she certainly knew how to pose. was advice on how to wire plugs, At times, she might look like a change tyres, hang wallpaper, harassed secretary to whom and get yourself out of quick- you would never give a second sand. It was all manna to Muriel, glance; at others, she has the self-composed air of who was not at all domestically inclined. As far as a film star to whom there is nothing more natural I could tell, she couldn’t boil an egg or make a cup than constantly being on camera. Writers are not of tea. I’m sure she knew how to but she didn’t feel supposed to be like this, or so we’re led to believe. she had to. Her job was to write, which she did They are meant to be careless of their appearance, daily with religious application. haphazard in the way they dress, indifferent to style and fashion. They’d rather read the New LITERARY GOLD Statesman than browse through Vogue. As her papers in the Library show, her interest in Not Muriel. When I first met her, in 1990, in the all aspects of life was intense. Like most writers, Tuscan town of Arezzo, she arrived by Alfa Romeo she was a constant note taker and addicted to the with her companion, the artist Penelope Jardine. paraphernalia of a writer’s life. Wherever she went Then 72, Muriel had taken her own dictum – why she collected pens and pencils and notebooks, and make a dull day even duller? – to heart, and wore her pockets were always stuffed with bits of a dress that would cheer up a sabbath on Lewis. It paper on which she jotted down anything that was like the floor of a tropical forest covered in took her fancy. She always had a poem “on the yellow, black and white leaves. Her hair was red, go”, and would add to it whenever inspiration or as it had been when she was a girl growing up in inclination struck. She eavesdropped shamelessly Edinburgh and before it was bleached under and what she overheard often found its way into Rhodesian skies when she was in her early her books. Not the least of her talents was the twenties, and around her neck she wore a canary- ability to transform the seemingly mundane and yellow scarf and a string of pearls. I mentioned cliched into literary gold. A particular favourite of that I had tried with only phrasebook Italian at my mine is the phrase, “As we go through this command to buy a suit in Florence. If I had told her evening and into tonight,” which is repeated I had been diagnosed with a terminal illness she several times in her valedictory novel, The couldn’t have shown more concern: “Let’s ask Finishing School. Muriel heard it nightly as she that dishy waiter who is the best sarto in Arezzo.” listened to the weather girl on Sky News. In that Duly summoned, the waiter recommended context, it seems insignificant. In Muriel’s hands, a tailor which, it transpired when I sought it out however, it is transformed into poetry and
18 | DISCOVER NLS | Winter !"#$ The archive takes you on a journey from Muriel Spark’s childhood in Edinburgh (left) to international literary success
“One thing I have always known about my well-ordered archive is that it would stand by me, the silent, objective evidence of truth”
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KELMSCOTT PRESS The works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited by F. S. Ellis: Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1896. Sold for £33,650 September 2014
E D I N B U R G H LO N D O N GL A S G O W WW W . L Y O N A N D T U R N B U L L . C O M
Read between the lines. Experience WWI through the diary of Field Marshal Earl Haig.
!e National Library of Scotland. Discover the world in one place. www.nls.uk
The National Library of Scotland is a registered Scottish charity. Scottish Charity No. SC011086.
20 | DISCOVER NLS | Winter !"#$ LITERATURE LICIA CARLETTI SSFAGGIONI, MALCOLM COCHRANE MALCOLM CARLETTI SSFAGGIONI, LICIA philosophy. It reminds me of another of her “I don’t know exactly why I married this man favourite tropes: “I went on my way rejoicing.” That seems in some curious way to sum her up; rather than any of the younger boyfriends who she was the kind of person who looked always to took me to dances. It was a disastrous choice” find joy in life. Before she could do that, however, she CURIOUS QUARTERS was assiduous in her research. “Send By any standard, her archive is immense and is, me everything you’ve got on Mary as yet, not fully catalogued. When it is, it will Queen of Scots,” she once faxed me. At surely add to our understanding of this endlessly the time she was contemplating The fascinating artist. “There just seem to be so Finishing School. In it, one of the many camps around this woman,” says Sally students is writing a novel of which the Harrower, the Library’s Curator for Manuscript subject is the ill-fated queen. Who and Archive Collections. Sally has recently knows whether what I sent Muriel was returned from the Val di Chiana, Italy, where she of any use. On another occasion, when packed up many boxes of papers that were kept she was embarking on Aiding and in the rambling 14th-century rectory Muriel Abetting, published in 2000, she wanted shared with Penelope Jardine. to get her hands on everything to do Open any of these boxes and out fall passports, with Lord Lucan. After that book letters, restaurant receipts, food ration cards, appeared she received letters from benefit books, demands from the tax man. Here many curious quarters. One in her are letters from John Updike, Iris Murdoch and archive is from a Lady Bowman, whose Graham Greene, who used to send Muriel money husband was part of the Clermont Club in the days before she found fame. Clockwise, from top set which, it was widely assumed, had helped “At my ripe age,” writes the Irish short story left: Muriel Spark Lucan make his getaway after the murder of his master Sean O’Faolain, “I can say that I have been near her home in children’s nanny. Lady Bowman’s supposition is thinking of you night after night.” Patricia Tuscany, Italy; Alan that the dissolute lord was incapable of murder and Highsmith, best known perhaps for her Ripley Taylor with Sally had hired a hit man to kill his wife. Muriel’s polite thrillers, writes to ask if Muriel is interested in Harrower, the reply makes clear that this is a theory of which she “acquiring a black cat”. That was like offering a Library’s Curator was aware but had dismissed as unlikely. child the keys to a chocolate factory. Muriel of Modern Literary Her method was to read as widely and deeply as adored cats and, in some ways, thought of herself Manuscripts; possible on the ostensible subject of a novel and as one. “I pounce,” she once said, when asked to Spark as a pupil; then, when she was satisfied that she could do no describe how she starts on a new novel. and in London, 1947 more, she would indeed “pounce”. In the Library’s
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collection are many of the famous spiral-bound notebooks she purchased in bulk from James Thin, the much-missed Edinburgh bookseller and stationer. These she reserved for her novels, which she wrote in a long, looping, generous script, just four or five words to a line, each line double spaced, the verso page left blank. When things were going well she wrote quickly, as if taking down dictation. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, for example, was written in a matter of weeks. “She composed symphonically,” wrote her biographer, Martin Stannard, “refrains of speech patterns interlocking like music.” When a critic compared her method to Mozart’s, Muriel did not disagree.
THE JOURNEY BEGINS Her life was not without its travails, however. Born in Edinburgh in 1918, her upbringing was typical of the period. Her parents were not well-to-do but neither were they on the breadline. Her mother, Sarah Camberg, was of the kind that stood out in exactly why I married this man rather the school playground. While the mothers of than any of the younger boyfriends Muriel’s classmates were socially conservative, who took me to dances,” Muriel wrote Sarah liked to put on a bit of a show, dressing much later. “I will probably never know. flamboyantly and tippling more than was probably It was a disastrous choice. Unbeknown good for her. Among the formative influences on to us, the poor man had mental Muriel were the socially divided Edinburgh of the problems, not obvious at this time.” 1920s and 1930s and Miss Christina Kay, her The unreliability of men is a recurrent inspirational teacher at James Gillespie’s Girls’ theme in Muriel’s work. Her personal School. In due course, in The Prime, Gillespie’s motto, she said, ought to be “Beware of would become Marcia Blane’s, and Miss Kay would men bearing flowers”. Throughout her metamorphose into the charismatic but ultimately life she found men guilty of betrayal, malign Miss Jean Brodie. disloyalty and dishonesty. Often, they When she was 19, Muriel decided to leave the Clockwise, from top were a distraction or a nuisance, capital. She longed to widen her horizons, to see left: Alan Taylor with getting in the way of her work, causing her the world. “Perhaps,” she reflected in Curriculum part of the archive; distress and stress, making importunate Vitae, her autobiography, “that is why I got passport images of demands and false claims. One such was her engaged to Sydney Oswald Spark.” He was 13 Muriel Spark; Taylor former lover and literary collaborator, Derek years her senior, a teacher who was leaving in the Grassmarket, Stanford, who sold her letters to him and, shortly for Southern Rhodesia. Whatever the Edinburgh, realm of when she became well known, wrote a book reason, it was one of those decisions taken in Miss Jean Brodie; about her which “was, of course, packed with haste and regretted at leisure. “I don’t know and Spark factual errors. These are some of the errors COCHRANE LIBRARY/MALCOLM MEMORIAL EVANS/MARX MARY
22 | DISCOVER NLS | Winter !"#$ “Almost every letter received, every note I have made, every appointments book, lists of names, my correspondence – all and everything I have conserved” that scholars and students have been taking as fact ever since.” Ironically, however, it is thanks to Stanford and others, such as those she feuded with at the Poetry Society in London after the war, that Muriel began to amass the collection the Library has gradually accumulated over the years. “I became aware,” she wrote, “of the value of documentary evidence, both as a means of personal defence against inaccuracies and as an aid to one’s own memory.” From 1949 until her death in 2006 she threw away virtually nothing on paper. “Almost every letter I have received, every note I have made, every cheque book, every book of accounts, every appointments book, lists of names and addresses, my correspondence with publishers and agents throughout the world, with The Muriel income tax departments, accountants, lawyers, turf accountants (I like racing when in England) – Spark all and everything, I have conserved in a vast archive ... After more than 50 years, this collection campaign has amounted to a social history in itself. One FUNDRAISING thing I have always known about my well-ordered archive is that it would stand by me, the silent, The Muriel Spark archive is truly objective evidence of truth, should I ever need it.” extraordinary, containing everything from precious manuscripts, ADMIRERS IN HIGH PLACES fascinating correspondence with What is clear from the piles of boxes transported leading literary figures, photographs from Italy by Sally Harrower is that Muriel was and newspaper cuttings, to used not exaggerating. She was one of life’s hoarders. train tickets and shopping receipts. Her instinct was to keep anything and everything The National Library of Scotland that might prove useful at a later date. She had a holds many authors’ archives but none has so deliberately and tenacious regard for facts and faith in the carefully preserved such a complete record of their life. endurance of paper. She abhorred mistakes and The Library is beginning a fundraising campaign to buy the knew how hard they were to correct once they last tranche of this archive and to catalogue its entire were in print. Worse, though, were lies, which she contents. This will require significant resources. It already has said hopped about like fleas, “sucking the blood of hundreds of brightly coloured boxes, all carefully transported the intellect”. Truth, which has “its own dear to Scotland from Muriel Spark’s villa in Italy. Until there is a beauty”, was what she sought, which, with the full catalogue of what is in all these boxes, though, much of passage of time, is never easy to nail down. the detail of her archive – and the remarkable stories it tells – Therein lies the incalculable value of the will remain undiscovered and inaccessible. Library’s Spark collection. Leafing through it, you There is an estimated four years’ work involved in begin to get a sense of who this remarkable painstakingly opening every box and listing the contents, woman was and how she came to write the books before reboxing everything in safe and secure storage. On she did. She is flighty, flirtatious, feisty, fastidious, completion, it will bring the day-to-day world of Spark back to famous. She is a sophisticated, fun-loving woman life through the listing and describing of this comprehensive of the world who was “Scottish by formation”. She collection. It will be the guide that researchers, scholars, had friends and admirers in high places – Jackie students and readers need to discover the detail of how one of Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Gore Vidal, the King the most significant British writers of the post-war period and Queen of Greece – but was no more impressed worked and lived. by them than she was nameless shopkeepers, The Library needs to raise £250,000 to complete this project. bellhops, ticket collectors and air stewardesses. Our aim is to raise the money and catalogue the archive by As the years progressed, she was still eager to 2018, the centenary of Spark’s birth. With your help we can travel and was always happy to dine out with showcase her life as it was lived. friends in Cortona or Orvieto or Florence. But the daytime hours were reserved for writing. Nothing For more information about the campaign, please email the was ever allowed to get in the way of that. National Library at [email protected] or call 0131 623 3733
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MAPPING TIME Wealth and destitution, culture and crime, medieval and Georgian streets – the history of Edinburgh is being mapped in an absorbing book, as its co-author Christopher Fleet explains
dinburgh is one of the most As this expanded in the 19th century attractive cities in the world, to include lithographic printing, the with a unique topography, Edinburgh map publishers architecture, townscape and Bartholomew, and W & AK Johnston, culturalE life. Historically, it has also became justly world famous. been a city of contrasts that go beyond Edinburgh’s importance as a centre the striking differences between its of map production also reflected its medieval Old Town and Georgian New unique academic, intellectual and Town. It has at times been a place of political background. Mathematicians, danger, disease, destitution, violence geographers, sociologists, engineers, and injustice. Maps capture these geologists, physicians, public health themes and disparities in a direct, officials and town planners all created revealing manner. - and used - maps as part of their work. In a lavishly illustrated book, Edinburgh: Mapping the City, my MAPPING THE SPEED OF SOUND FOR co-writer Daniel MacCannell and I THE TIME GUN, 1879 !LEFT" have selected 71 maps of Edinburgh A 5ft 6in (1.7m) time ball was from 1530 to the present, underpinned constructed in 1852 on top of Lord by stories of the political, commercial Nelson’s Monument on Calton Hill, but and social life of Scotland’s capital. it was only in 1861 that a gun was also Our definition of maps has been set up on Mills Mount Battery in the deliberately broad, including views, castle to synchronise with the ball. profiles, plans, sketches and even an Charles Piazzi Smith, the Astronomer aerial photograph, focusing on their Royal in Scotland, was the main common purposes and meanings. scientific brain behind the time ball This 1879 map reveals We have selected maps promoting and its connection to the castle by how it was believed the accomplishments of the people who electric cable. This striking map aims the sound from made them, especially those who lived to show the number of seconds after the One O’Clock Gun and worked in the city. Several leading the Edinburgh One O’Clock Gun was would be carried across surveyors were based in Edinburgh, fired that its sound would be heard Edinburgh, and, right, the which from the 18th century became a across Edinburgh. The smoke of the oldest printed view of centre of expertise in engraving. gun, which is still fired today, could be the city, from the 1530s
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seen immediately. Stand on Calton Hill, though, and you would hear the sound about four seconds later, while in Leith and Newhaven, a couple of miles away, it would be heard 11 seconds later. In reality, the speed of sound was influenced by wind direction, air temperature and atmospheric pressure, contrasting with the neat concentric circles shown here.
EARLIEST PRINTED VIEW OF EDINBURGH, 1530s !PAGE 25" This woodcut, based on a drawing by exiled Scottish Lutheran theologian Alexander Allane (1500-1565), has strong claims to being the earliest surviving printed view of Edinburgh. It first appeared in the 1550 Latin edition of Cosmographia, an encyclopedia of the world by the German cartographer Sebastian Münster. While initially unrecognisable as Edinburgh, this view from the north shows several buildings - primarily monasteries and churches - in correct relation to one another, besides a stylised representation of the castle and the dormant volcano Arthur’s Seat. Allane drew the sketch from memory after fleeing persecution in 1530s Scotland. Influential and popular, Cosmographia gave literate European society its first visions of Edinburgh. “Edinburgh’s importance as a centre of map production also reflected its unique academic, intellectual and political background”
EAST END OF PRINCES STREET, 1819 !RIGHT" This beautifully-engraved graphic by Robert and James Kirkwood flattens all the elevations of New Town buildings into a conventional overhead plan, compressing three dimensions into two. This area, where the Balmoral Hotel now stands, attracted major litigation from the 1770s, culminating in a House of Lords decision a year before this map was published. The issue was whether the south side of Princes Street could be built on. The resident tailors, mechanics and a major coach builder here formed an interesting social contrast to the other New Town residents. This detail also shows how the newly widened North Bridge, following an Act of 1816, opened up the view to Register House, designed in the 1770s as an elegant store for Scotland’s public records. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT PROPAGANDA POSTER, 1923 !RIGHT" WRITER This map is a powerful example of cartographic Christopher Fleet propaganda, as well as illustrating the importance is a Map Curator of the temperance movement at the height of its at the Library. influence. While all maps ‘lie’ in the sense that He is co-author of they select and distort the reality of the world, Scotland: Mapping some do this better than others; Bartholomew’s the Nation clever selection of this particular part of Edinburgh, and their stark red symbolisation
26 | DISCOVER NLS | Winter !"#$ on a plain background of streets, creates a striking graphic with a clear message. Under the Temperance (Scotland) Act of 1913, voters in local wards were allowed to hold a poll on whether their area remained ‘wet’ or went ‘dry’. If more than 10% of voters supported the latter, a formal poll was then held with three options: No Change; a 25% limitation in licences to sell alcohol; or No Licence, the abolition of all licences. This poster was displayed at polling stations across Edinburgh on 1 December 1923 - although in the event, its promoters failed to convince the majority and, by Main map: The East application in Scotland of the latest principles of a 2:1 margin, Edinburgh voted to stay ‘wet’. End of Princes Street military engineering. Nevertheless, the Board of in 1819 before Ordnance – responsible for defending Scotland’s DESIGN FOR REFORTIFYING EDINBURGH CASTLE, construction of the forts and royal castles following the parliamentary 1710 !ABOVE RIGHT" Balmoral Hotel; union of 1707 – struggled with costs, and the work Military concerns were paramount in the mapping above, 1710 plans for was never finished. The castle was nearly taken of Edinburgh before the mid-18th century. This the refortification of by Jacobite forces during the 1745 uprising, striking manuscript plan of Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh Castle; provoking a major strengthening of defences. orientated with west at the top, shows draft left, propaganda for designs for impressive external defensive works the Temperance Edinburgh: Mapping the City, by Christopher Fleet on its vulnerable side facing the town. Movement in 1923 and Daniel MacCannell, is published by Birlinn in Theodore Dury, the Chief Engineer in Scotland, association with the National Library of Scotland, called this work “le grand secret”. It illustrates the £30. See page 9 for a chance to win the book
Winter !"#$ | DISCOVER NLS | 27 Treadmills, tightropes and tea The author Alexander McCall Smith has written a love letter to his home city. He tells Kathleen Morgan how he managed to draw breath to write this intimate history - and why he avoids looking down
y the time Alexander McCall Smith and had a tooth dressed. So I find the early hours sits down for a mid-morning cup of tea of the morning pretty useful.” B in the library of his Victorian home, he The 68-year-old former professor of medical law has already taken his daily 10,000 whose novels have attracted a global readership steps on the treadmill and been to the dentist. seems distinctly unfazed by deadlines. His ability Shortly, he will settle back into his 1,000 to produce four or five books a year, write for words-an-hour routine, hurtling through one radio, tour extensively and, most recently, of the novels due for publication in 2015 – the collaborate with the writer and historian Ben next Isabel Dalhousie novel, or perhaps the Macintyre on an opera about the spy Anthony latest instalment of his 44 Scotland Street A Work of Beauty Blunt, is impressive. He also inspired – and is tales. Recently published are his adaptation of reveals Alexander chairman of – the Great Tapestry of Scotland, the the Jane Austen classic Emma, and the latest McCall Smith’s love 143 metre-long artwork touring the nation. in his Botswana-based series, The No 1 Ladies’ for his home city “If I started to think about it I could become Detective Agency. traced through worried, but I don’t,” he says. “I sometimes use the Now there is A Work of Beauty, a tome tracing maps and pictures example of walking on a tightrope – I can’t of Edinburgh’s history – and his love affair with the course walk on a tightrope.” He giggles. “But you city – through an array of personally-chosen look ahead and don’t look down.” archive photographs, illustrations and maps. When you are one of the world’s best-loved novelists, it LOVE LETTER seems, time is of the essence. A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith’s “I was up about half past five this morning,” Edinburgh is engagingly personal, described by he says, sitting at the window of his family home the writer as a love letter to the city. It involved in Merchiston, Edinburgh. “I have been doing a bit McCall Smith trailing through the archives of the of writing of the two radio plays I do each year for Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical the BBC based on the Botswana books, and I’ve Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). Although it is been to the gym. I’ve done my 10,000 steps today a history of the capital, the narrative and captions
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the Firth of Forth from the New Town in the Scotland Street novels, or the curious world of Botswana’s finest female private detective. “In my books, place is one of the main characters,” he says. “You don’t need to describe it in detail. A few brushstrokes are all that’s needed. Scotland can be described in a paragraph.” This sense of place is hardly surprising. He was born in Bulawayo in the former Rhodesia, where his father was the colonial public prosecutor. He moved to Edinburgh at the age of 18 to study law, “In my books, place is one of the making the city his home, though his first job was main characters. You don’t need as a law lecturer in Belfast. He later taught in to describe it in detail. A few Swaziland, helped found the law school at the University of Botswana, and has been a visiting brushstrokes are all that’s professor in America and Italy. needed. Scotland can be His grandfather, George McCall Smith, was a Highlander who worked as a GP in Edinburgh and described in a paragraph” Perth before emigrating to North Island, New Zealand, where he established a system of free medicine. McCall Smith visited the hospital his grandfather had set up in Hokianga for the first time last summer. The largely Maori community which had taken George to its heart a century before embraced Alexander with equal gusto. “It was the most moving experience,” says McCall Smith, describing how he and his wife Elizabeth, a retired GP, were warmly welcomed. “My grandfather was a great hero in that part of New Zealand. He was a devoted doctor who made it his business to look after these people.”
BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY As a writer, McCall Smith is able to satisfy his wanderlust, meeting his readers on the international book tour circuit. “It’s interesting to see the feeling for Scotland abroad, which I see all the time,” he says. “I meet a lot of readers of the books all over the world, and it’s interesting that Scotland has a place in the heart of a lot of people. are infused with the writer’s personality and There are things in Scotland that are capable of steeped in his memories. chiming with people elsewhere.” In one section, McCall Smith remembers He has been described as having a benign studying as a postgraduate student in the writing style – no one dies in his Scotland Street National Library. “The reading room on George IV novels, set in a gently bohemian quarter of the Bridge was a magnificent place to work,” he New Town. He tackles the accusation head on: “If explains now, surrounded by his own library of you present the world as irredeemably flawed, books at home in Merchiston, Edinburgh. that encourages a nihilistic view and people would “So many libraries have become bustling, noisy say, ‘Why bother to go on?’ The correspondence places but the reading room of the NLS remained we get about my Botswana books is very moving, quiet and calm. I always had the feeling that time and I take it seriously.” He adds, “If you look at my somehow stopped or at least proceeded at a Glimpses of books you’ll find the sorrows of this world are different pace once one was seated at one of those Edinburgh from the there, though not necessarily centre stage.” long tables. It was remarkable to have such a rich RCAHMS archives While international in his outlook, McCall Smith collection of books at one’s fingertips.” and, above, the is obviously grounded by his beloved Edinburgh. After being asked by RCAHMS to write A Work 44 Scotland Street Its landmarks are his emotional touchstones. of Beauty, McCall Smith was uncharacteristically novels are set in Arthur’s Seat, the “higgledy-piggledy” medieval flummoxed at first. “At the beginning I wasn’t sure the city’s New Town Old Town, the reassuringly uniform Georgian New what they wanted,” he says. “When I realised they Town, Edinburgh Castle - and the backdrop to his wanted something personal, where I could write student days, the National Library. about my feelings for the place rather than just the history, everything fell into place and it was a sheer pleasure to write about Edinburgh.” A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith’s Edinburgh is published by McCall Smith gives his readers an intense sense RCAHMS and Historic Scotland Books. Visit www.rcahms.gov.uk/rcahms- of place – whether it’s the reading room of the books/a-work-of-beauty. The Great Tapestry of Scotland is at Stirling
GORDON HERALDTERRIS/THE AND TIMES GROUP National Library in A Work of Beauty, the view to Castle from 31 January-8 March. Visit www.scotlandstapestry.com
Winter !"#$ | DISCOVER NLS | 29 P. B . F. A . BOOK FAIRS St Andrews in SCOTLAND 2014/2015 4-8 March
December ‘14 Sat 6 EDINBURGH An Archipelago of Poetry Radisson Blu Hotel, 80 High Street, Royal Mile, & Edinburgh EH1 1TH 10.00am-5pm. £1 Unfinished Business March 2015 Fri 6 and Sat 7 EDINBURGH PREMIER FAIR (with ABA) 60 poets 90 events Radisson Blu Hotel, 80 High Street, Royal Mile, Edinburgh EH1 1TH poetry · drama · music · exhibitions Fri 12pm-7pm, Sat 10am-5pm. FREE talks · discussions · workshops May 2015 Sat 30 SCOTTISH BORDERS The Corn Exchange, Market Square, Melrose Simon Armitage Sinéad Morrissey TD6 9PN 10am-5pm £1 Carolyn Forché Bill Manhire Ian Duhig June 2015 Sat 20 Paul Durcan Kei Miller Glyn Maxwell EDINBURGH Radisson Blu Hotel, 80 High Street, Royal Mile, Edinburgh EH1 1TH www.stanzapoetry.org 10am-5pm. £1 [email protected]
PBFA, The Old Coach House, 16 Melbourn St, Royston, SG8 7BZ Tel: 01763 248400 email: [email protected] For up to date fair details www.pbfa.org
In the Company of Nurses Waverley The History of the British Army Nursing Service in the Great War Edited by P. D. Garside Yvonne McEwen
‘Based on impeccable research, Walter Scott’s !rst novel, as he Yvonne McEwen’s marvellous book originally intended it to be read contains an engrossing human story covering individual achievement, This edition of Scott’s Waverley professional di"erences and medical marks the bicentenary of the advances, as well as the remarkable !rst publication of the novel. It way in which the nursing services as presents the authoritatively edited a whole rose to the staggering and text produced by Peter Garside unprecedented challenges of the for the Edinburgh Edition of the Great War.’ - Keith Je"ery, Queen’s Waverley Novels, together with a University Belfast new short introduction, making the anonymous novel that enraptured This important volume tells the its !rst audience again readily much-neglected story of the accessible to readers. Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service during WW1.
November 2014 June 2014 Hb: 978-0-7486-7911-9 Hb: 978-0-7486-9787-8 QQtb QQtb
First www.euppublishing.com Classic World War Literature
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Make the most of your National Library With a collection of available on the internet to more than 15 million customers resident in printed items, two Scotland, although additional conditions may million maps, 32,000 apply in line with our films, three miles of licence agreements. Your manuscripts, and first port of call to access the Library’s licensed thousands of photographs, digital collections is getting around the Library https://auth.nls.uk/ldc requires a little navigation The shop at the George IV Additionally, recent Bridge building sells legislation has given books, stationery and gifts the Library and the other LIBRARY LOCATIONS five legal deposit libraries Films HOW TO JOIN making your request for the in the UK the legal right to Scottish Screen Archive To use the Library’s Reading required material in advance collect, store and preserve 39-41 Montrose Avenue Rooms and order items from of your visit to the Library. the nation’s memory in the Hillington Park the collections, you need to Requests can be made in digital age. There will be a Glasgow G52 4LA hold a library card. This can person, by telephone on mixture of electronic Tel: 0845 366 4600 be obtained by completing 0131 623 3820 or 3821, or by content available including Email: [email protected] the online form at https:// email to [email protected]. websites in the UK domain auth.nls.uk/registration. If you have a library card, web archive, and articles/ Maps Simply follow the steps on books can be ordered in chapters from e-books and Causewayside Building the website. advance via the online e-journals. This material 159 Causewayside On your first visit to the catalogue on our website. can be viewed on Library Edinburgh EH9 1PH Library, you should go to More information about computers within the Tel: 0131 623 3970 Registration where staff will pre-ordering is available at reading rooms if you are a Email: [email protected] take your photo and produce www.nls.uk/using-the- registered user. Mon-Fri 9.30am-5pm a library card for you. You library/reading-rooms/ (Wed 10am-5pm), will need proof of identity and general/preorders VISITOR CENTRE Sat 9.30am-1pm confirmation of your address. The Visitor Centre at the Examples of acceptable ID ONLINE George IV Bridge building Other collections and address confirmation can The Library has a vast was opened in 2009. George IV Bridge be found at www.nls.uk/ range of electronic It features an exhibition Edinburgh EH1 1EW using-the-library/library- resources, including digital space, a shop selling Tel: 0131 623 3700 cards/evidence-of-identity versions of reference works, books, stationery and Email: [email protected] massive full-text facsimiles gift items, a café and PC Mon-Fri 9.30am-8.30pm VIEWING MATERIAL and business databases (see terminals with access to (Wed 10am-8.30pm), If you know what you are the next page for a list). Library catalogues and Sat 9.30am-1pm looking for, we recommend Many of these resources are other digital facilities.
FOCUS ON mostly non-fiction items frequent programme of that provide an invaluable events and outreach Scottish Screen record of the lives of Scots activities. Alongside this, Archive across the generations. DVD compilations pick out An online access particular highlights, Preserving more than catalogue allows you to including the works of 100 years of history on film search for titles available the great Orcadian and video, the Scottish to view, hire or buy, and filmmaker Margaret Tait, Screen Archive is the build a personal list of and portraits of life, love, nation’s definitive screen favourites using work and leisure in collection of moving the ‘my films’ feature. Scotland that, in many images. From newsreels The Scottish Screen cases, have disappeared. Film still from Seawards to amateur footage and Archive also casts its own the Great Ships, 1960 documentaries, the archive curatorial eye over the For more information houses more than 32,000 collection and has a go to ssa.nls.uk MALCOLM COCHRANE MALCOLM
Winter !"#$ | DISCOVER NLS | 31 Find this striking Soviet poster, Digital published around 1928, in the Library’s digital collection. resources Visit http://digital.nls.uk/ The Library’s licensed soviet-posters digital collections are a superb research tool, with more than 300 million items, of which more than 80% is available remotely
ART AND LITERATURE an archive of printed The Library’s digital ephemera; collections relating to art The Making of the Modern and literature include World; 19th-Century UK Oxford Dictionary of Periodicals Part 1: Women’s, National Biography (ODNB); Children’s, Humour and India, Raj and Empire; Leisure/Sport; British Sabin Americana, Literary Manuscripts 1500-1926; Online c.1660-1900; The Scotsman Digital Naxos Music Library; Archive 1817-1950; Oxford Music Online; Times Digital Archive; Perdita Manuscripts – Waterloo Directory Women Writers, 1500-1700; of English Newspapers and Scottish Women Periodicals 1800-1900 Poets of the Romantic and Who’s Who (and Who Period; Was Who). SCRAN Digital Materials; SUR Digital Archive and REFERENCE WORKS AND Times Literary Supplement CATALOGUES Historical Archive. Credo Reference gives you access to 400 BUSINESS high-quality reference Online resources for This arresting 1920s poster was used by books from a range of the businesses, including the Soviet government to tell the public world’s leading publishers. BCC Research Reports; Early American Imprints, COBRA – The Complete of predicted increases in social welfare Series 1 – Evans, 1639- Business Reference and industrial production 1800; Early English Adviser; Books Online The Economist Historical Sage Journals; HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, 1475-1700 (EEBO); Archive 1843-2009; ScienceDirect E-books; GENEALOGY 18th-Century Collections Factiva; SpringerLink; Karger You can access Online (ECCO) Parts 1 and 2; FAME; Hoovers; Journals; Standards 17th and 18th-century Oxford English Dictionary Insider 500; Infobase and the extensive Burney Newspaper Online and Oxford Key Note Market Research Web of Science. Collection; Reference Online. Reports; 19th-century British Mint Global; GOVERNMENT AND Library Newspapers; ACCESSING MATERIAL Mintel Market Research OFFICIAL 19th-century UK All collections can be Reports; A wealth of political Periodicals Part 2: accessed on the Library OneSource Global Business information can be viewed Empire: Travel and premises and more than Browser; online, including Anthropology, Economics, 80% is available outwith Orbis and ReferenceUSA. House of Commons Missionary and Colonial; the Library by anyone Parliamentary Papers – British and Irish Women’s resident in Scotland. SCIENCE AND includes reports of Letters and Diaries; SOCIAL SCIENCE committees and outside The British Newspaper The full text of articles or bodies on public affairs; Archive; references are available in Public Information Online British Online Archives; To register to use resources such as and The Making of Modern InfoTrac Custom the licensed digital Cambridge Journals Online; Law – Legal Treatises Newspapers; collections visit https:// Brill Journals Collection; 1800-1926. John Johnson Collection: auth.nls.uk/registration
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“Chapbooks and cheap pamphlets are often dirty, badly printed and appallingly illustrated but they tell us much about how life was lived in Scotland of the past and can be marvellously entertaining”
the Crowns in 1603 to the Union of the Parliaments in 1707. Around 10 years ago I discovered in the collection the only surviving parliamentary diary of this period. At that time, historians Dr John Scally with believed no such diary existed. an inspirational However, within the Library’s 1915 edition of manuscripts, there was a book the Treasure Island catalogue described as an account of the Scottish convention of estates. The entry was misleading and it was, in fact, the parliamentary diary of James, First Duke of Hamilton (1606-1649), one Treasure trail of the most powerful politicians of the As he takes the helm at the National Library, Dr John Scally is time. Reading his account of the parliament of 1648, written in his own rediscovering a wealth of material in its world-class collections, hand, is as close to history as you can from precious medieval manuscripts to cheap pamphlets get. I am currently editing the diary and hope to publish it before too long. ibraries are special places. exciting for a young librarian and that Although I adore the many beautiful When I was seven years old joyous sense of discovery has never medieval manuscripts and early L a new library opened near left me. printed books in the Library, I also have my home in Paisley, starting I could talk all day about the a great regard for manky items that a lifelong love of libraries that has amazing things in the collection and have survived. Broadside ballads, grown and intensified over the years. not even scratch the surface, but l’ll chapbooks and cheap pamphlets are Now I am Scotland’s National Librarian focus on a few things that are often dirty, badly printed and and I could not be more thrilled. particularly special to me. One of my appallingly illustrated but they tell us The beating heart of the National favourite books is a relatively cheap much about how life was lived in the Library is the legal deposit privilege edition of Treasure Island from 1915 Scotland of the past and can be which allows us to claim a copy of with a striking cover of three marvellously entertaining. every book published in the UK. We are menacing pirates (shelfmark: J.173.C). I I find the films in the Scottish Screen the only library in Scotland that can do came upon the book in the Library Archive a wonderful source of this and, through legal deposit and the stacks while researching for a Robert information and memory. I recently collections that have been built around Louis Stevenson exhibition in 1994. It discovered a film of Scotland’s victory it, we tell the country’s story. I like the featured in my book that accompanied against Czechoslovakia at Hampden idea we are a guarantor for Scotland’s the exhibition Pictures of the Mind: the Park in 1961, a football match my father people. You pay your taxes and we Illustrated Robert Louis Stevenson. The attended which has nice personal guarantee that each successive cover is the work of a little-known memories for me. It also reminds me generation is represented in our Edinburgh artist, John Cameron, and how important it is that the National collections. Every period of the past seems to be his only surviving work. Library continues to act as Scotland’s can be excavated using our collections. Pictures of the Mind is full of the great memory bank by collecting, preserving My second library job was at the book illustrators of the last 150 years, and making accessible as many National Library which I joined in 1993 but Cameron trumped them all. aspects of our life and culture as as a trainee curator. Working with The National Library attracts possible, from masterpieces of these wonderful collections, getting researchers from all round the world literature, to historical documents, involved in exhibitions, accessing the because of the richness of our diaries, documentary films and more. strongrooms, purchasing new historical archives. I have a special Libraries are special places and this
MALCOLM COCHRANE MALCOLM collection material - it was all hugely interest in the period from the Union of one is more special than most.
Winter !"#$ | DISCOVER NLS | 33 LAST WORD
Portrait of David Roberts, by Robert Scott Lauder and, right, The Temple of Isis at Philae, Upper Egypt, painted by Roberts himself
Roslin”. Rosslyn Chapel and Roslin glen remained among his favourite sites. Roberts’s reach was wide. By 1842, he had shot to international fame with the publication, as lithographs, of drawings made during his celebrated travels through Egypt, Sinai, Syria and the Holy Land. More than any other artist, Roberts made the romance and exoticism of the Near East available to a wide public through original oil paintings and published reproductions. He brought Egypt, Petra and Palestine into the Victorian drawing room and library. He was also an important force in making Spanish subjects fashionable – in recording Iberian architecture and scenery he expanded traditional British cultural and artistic horizons. Roberts also painted in the Low Countries, France and Germany but, remarkably for an artist, left exploration of Italy until the 1850s. Gregarious and affable, Roberts was well liked and connected. Friendships in art and society are reflected in his correspondence. The artist David Roberts The National Library, which has collected his letters and papers since 1935, is the first port of call for anyone began as a humble house studying the life and world of Roberts. The greatest accumulation of his papers is there, ranging from single painter. Now, 150 years after letters acquired for their subject interest to important groups of correspondence with old Scottish his death, his legacy endures cronies, individual patrons, contemporary artists and fellow he art world lost one of its on picturesque topography and travellers. His manuscript Eastern most distinguished and architectural subjects. He exhibited Journal, of 1838-39, is frequently T colourful figures when frequently at the Royal Academy, consulted. David Roberts died in becoming a full Academician in 1841. Roberts scholars hope it might, one London on 25 November 1864. Although London became the centre day, be possible to publish a complete Born into poverty in Stockbridge, of his artistic world, Roberts never edition of his letters and journals. If so, Edinburgh, in 1796, Roberts climbed forgot his roots, frequently returning the National Library collection will the artistic ladder from humble house to Scotland to paint and socialise. almost certainly be the key source. painter to theatrical scenery artist. At the end of his life he was working In this he achieved great success and on views of the Thames, but in his THE WRITER his ability enabled him to move to mind Edinburgh remained “the queen Dr Iain Gordon Brown is a Fellow London, where he worked at the Theatre of cities”. Wherever he was, often in of the National Library of Scotland Royal, Drury Lane. During this time he locations rather more exotic, he would and the Library’s former Principal turned to easel painting, concentrating say he painted views “on the spot, à la Manuscripts Curator
34 | DISCOVER NLS | Winter !"#$ As we grow older we all want to keep doing the Let’s make Scotland things we love, remain independent and have a fulfilling life. However, as we age we may a place where we face new challenges - perhaps even loneliness, isolation, discrimination or poverty.
all love later life. That’s why Age Scotland is here. We are dedicated to helping everyone make the most of later life. We improve the quality of life for thousands of older people every year by providing life-changing information and advice. We support local groups where older people can come together and be part of a community. Where we find disadvantage and unfairness we stand up and speak for those who need us.
With your help, we can make Scotland a place Age Scotland where we all love later life. When you visit your Dept D-NLS solicitor, and you have taken care of your loved Causewayside House ones, please remember Age Scotland in your will 160 Causewayside - even a small gift can make a massive difference. Edinburgh EH9 1PR
www.agescotland.org.uk [email protected] 0845 833 0200 Charity No: SC010100
Age Scotland, part of the Age Network, is an independent charity dedicated to improving the later lives of everyone on the ageing journey, within a charitable company limited by guarantee
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