The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / From Tom Newlands to Robert Louis Stevenson via Jackie Leven and the Kingdom of Fife

From Tom Newlands to Robert Louis Stevenson via Jackie Leven and the Kingdom of Fife

by 14 Comments

The main purpose of this thread is to ask a question. Have any of you read, ONLY HERE, ONLÝ NOW, the magnificent debut novel of Scottish writer, Tom Newlands?

Lucy Popescu in the GUARDIAN described ít very eloquently as a visceral coming-of-age tale. A teenage girl with ADHD dreams of a new life in Glasgow in a rich and vivid debut novel examining belonging, poverty and rage.

My research to find out a little more about the writer and the Kingdom of Fife where the book is set have led me down several interesting rabbit holes, not least the music of Jackie Leven who was born in Kirkcaldy. So this seemed like a good chance to ask another question.

Do you have any other favourite Scottish writers and musicians, ancient or modern, who the rest of us ought to know about?

First though a story about a recent brief literary encounter on the Green Line Metro last Friday.

As you may have realised, I am a great fan of reading circles. To my delight, last Friday morning I found myself taking part in an impromptu literary discussion on the train home to Bagarmossen.

I’d been to the preposterously named, PRETTY SMILE DENTIST, and as soon as I got onto the train, I whipped out my copy of the Newlands novel out to continue reading.

In my haste, I dropped my ENGLISH BOOK SHOP bookmark on to the floor. The lady sitting opposite picked it up. I thanked her and asked if she and her husband knew of the EBS.

Not much good to me, he replied. I’m French.

That got me talking about my favourite Stockholm bookshops, our book circle and about Tom Newlands. He then mentioned that one of his favourite books was by a Scottish writer, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
It was a travel book that I’d never heard of. TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CEVENNES from 1879. It is one of RLS’s early works and describes a hiking trip he made in South-Central France in the company of Modestine, a rather stubborn donkey.

Wikipedia revealed it to be a cult classic. So much so, that the STEVENSON TRAIL is now a major tourist attraction, You too can hire a donkey and walk in the great man’s footsteps.

Have any of you read it or even heard of it? I’ve now ordered a copy from the library.

My new, well-read, pals got off at Slussen. She was Swedish and they’d been married 50 years.
Amazing how much one can squeeze into a conversation between Fridhemsplan and Gamla Stan.

I should point out it is not common practice for Stockholmers to chat with complete strangers on the Metro. Who knows what kind of bampot you might be talking to?
Thank goodness I wasn’t reading TRAINSPOTTING.

If you haven’t read ONLY HERE, ONLÝ NOW, I suggest you pop down to your local book shop and treat yourself to a copy. And while you’re there, why not buy some Robert Louis Stevenson?

0

Comments

    • Completely agree @Pyramid. i am a big fan.

      But where does Jackie fit in here? Paul Du Noyer’s excellent obituary for Jackie made me think of Cora’s home town and provided a lot of useful background.

      https://www.pauldunoyer.com/the-jackie-leven-obituary/

      HERE ARE SOME QUOTES.

      Little about the big man is straightforward. He was a born raconteur and the tales could be as tall as he was. Perhaps he built the character of “Jackie Leven” like a house, and then decided to move in. He was actually born Alan Moffatt, in Scotland in 1950. He grew up in the Pictish region that he called “the Kingdom of Fife” – the river of Leven was never far away – but his parents were English, with Romany and Irish ancestry. He claimed to be the first child ever expelled in Scotland over drugs. For a while, in Kirkcaldy, he was a schoolmate of the future Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

      Though Leven was fond of a sherbert, his real love was bars, and he used to list his favourites on every album sleeve. A special interest were the haunts of old working men whose lives had lost meaning since the closure of mines, mills and factories. (Poortoun, a 1997 song, draws on images of Fife.) The young men of such places were even harder hit, neither workers nor warriors. The crime novelist and fellow-Fifer Ian Rankin was drawn to this dimension of Leven’s work. He pictured his great creation, the Edinburgh detective John Rebus, consoling himself at night with these songs. “Not only did I like, it,” he told me when I interviewed both men for The Word in 2004, “but I thought Rebus would like it too: stories about disappointed hard men. Guys who are like stone on the outside but if you chip away for long enough you’ll get to what makes them humane.”

      Leven once told me that bars were “important places, where I’ve had splendid moments of reverie. You’re allowed to think about your life. When I was a boy Ted Heath came to our school and I was introduced to him. He said, What do you want to be when you grow up? I said, I’d like to be one of those wee men you see standing outside the pubs in a wee flat cap. To his credit, Ted Heath just laughed. But the headmaster didn’t.”

      Deborah Greenwood, Jackie’s partner for the last 15 years of his life, offers a valuable insight here: “He told me that when he was younger, he used to wait for his dad outside the bars; that’s what men did in Scotland in the 1950s, they went to the pub. And there was a real yearning there for something. The idea that that’s where the men were, that’s where the big thing happened, you were going to get this big mystery revealed to you, in a bar. It was about this Congregation of Men.”

      Do read the whole article. A fine portrait of the great man.

  3. I learn something every day. Ian Rankin is also a Fifer.

    He grew up in a council house in the mining village of Cardenden.

    https://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/18979251.cardendens-ian-rankin-recalls-stealing-jotters-young-lochgelly-mental/

    “Where I grew up was very much like a tribe, a coal-mining village. Most of my uncles were coal miners.

    “My dad wasn’t, he was the youngest of five boys and the only one who didn’t go down the mine. He worked in a grocers’ shop instead.

    “It was all council housing, everyone knew everyone else, I had an uncle and aunt over the back fence, various cousins spread around the place, it was like a clan.

    “It was an odd upbringing if you felt different. So the fact I was writing, reading, scribbling poems and song lyrics from a young age, I basically hid that from friends and family alike.

    • As was former British PM, Gordon Brown, who went to school with Jackie and made a beeline for him when OH accompanied Ralph McTell to some kind of Downing Street soiree

  5. As my ‘nom de site’ suggests, I am a Fifer – born and bred in St Andrews – so I guess I should try to contribute. In my youth, there was a clear difference between East Fife – golf, the University, farming and fishing – and West Fife – coal mines, shipbuilding, industry and the manufacture of linoleum! My perspective is skewed to the East; I spent less time in the West.

    There was always a busy music scene. In the folk boom of the 60s/70s, the St Andrews Folk Club, based in the back bar of the Star Hotel, was a popular venue and I can remember evenings with the likes of Rab Noakes, Barbara Dickson – who was then a folkie – the High Level Ranters and many others.

    Being a university town led to visits from a diverse range of artistes – often from the more classical end of the musical spectrum. Unfortunately, my underdeveloped musical taste buds meant that much of this passed me by. However, I do have vivid memories of a magical evening in the Younger Hall with Stephane Grappelli, then playing with Diz Disley.

    To me, these were precious exposures to the wider world of music beyond the radio and record player. Small town Scotland in those days could be a stultifying environment and visits from ‘big name’ bands were rare events.

    Latterly, of course, Fife has become a popular base for artists of every shape and hue. The fishing villages of the East Neuk have a burgeoning arts scene, with the likes of King Creosote, KT Tunstall – who went to school in St Andrews – and Phil Jupitus, who is an artist these days and no longer a comedian, all being based there. Also schooled in St Andrews were the memorably named – but now largely forgotten – Dogs Die In Hot Cars!

    Whilst a university environment attracted and encouraged many authors to St Andrews, often their fields of interest tended to the academic and there was little literature to rival the likes of Rankin and McDermid. But, put the two halves together, and the Kingdom of Fife has been a hotbed of talent.

  8. Scottish authors I have enjoyed recently –
    Douglas Stuart – Shuggie Bain
    Calum McSorely – Squeaky Clean(debut novel)
    Andrew o Hagan – Our Fathers
    Doug Johnstone – There’s a series of 6(I think)books set in Edinburgh about the Skelf family. The family business is private investigation and undertaking! Plenty black humour.

    Can’t really imagine anyone being interested in these Fife musicians/songwriters, but I am a folkie sometimes and I love the stories.
    John Watt – The Keltie Clippie, Pittenweem Jo. Humorous singalongs often heard in folk clubs.
    Matt Armour – Generations of Change, Shores of the Forth. About the demise of industry in Fife.

    Between the Forth and the Tay, or maybe it’s the Tay and the Forth is an excellent cd of songs about Fife, mostly written by Fifers. I don’t know if it’s available to stream anywhere, as I don’t really stream. It’s folk music again.

Leave a Reply