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

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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?

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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.

    • Novels and some folk music. Thanks a lot @bigstevie.

      You’ve really opened up some interesting doors there.

      The only name I knew is Andrew O’Hagan.

      Our book circle read his MAYFLIES and enjoyed it a lot.

      I particularly enjoyed the first half about the young guys going down to Manchester in July 1986 to see New Order and The Smiths at the G Mex centre.

      https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/12/mayflies-by-andrew-ohagan-review-a-bittersweet-tale-of-friendship

      Great quote – these fierce young men are really “as soft as Tunnock’s Teacakes, sentimental as sherbet”

      • Squeaky Clean sounds right up my street.

        https://callummcsorley.com/2023/05/01/t-l-huchu-on-squeaky-clean/

        I do enjoy Tartan Noir.

        Doug Johnstone sounds like a real Renaissance man.

        Before becoming a writer, Doug studied physics at the University of Edinburgh and completed a PhD in nuclear physics. He also spent four years as a systems engineer, mathematically modelling airborne radars and missile-guidance systems. Doug is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, and has released five albums with his band, Northern Alliance, as well as solo material. He is also one of the co-founders of the Scotland writers’ football club, for whom he plays in midfield.

        https://www.rlf.org.uk/writer/doug-johnstone/

        But Brookmyre and Rankin praise him and he sounds rather promising.

        https://crimefictionlover.com/2012/03/hit-and-run/

        • Squeaky Clean is an easy read. The comings and goings of a car wash basically. Some west of Scotland parlance.

          Doug Johnstone is easily read too. Set in Edinburgh, though sometimes moving across the bridge to Fife. I really enjoyed the first few. Obviously there has to be black humour in the undertaking business, but I felt as the series went on it became too much for me. Sometimes I feel authors just churn books out. 2 a year sometimes. Maybe that’s just me though. The books are all stand alone novels, but they run together better if read in order. Skelf family series that is.

    • Brilliant work, @hubert-rawlinson

      Googled and discovered that

      Dunfermline was the de facto capital of the Kingdom of Scotland between the 11th and 15th centuries.[2] wikipedia and that Robert the Bruce is buried there.

      I started to suspect that almost every writer and musician in Scotland was from Fife but of course that is not the case.

      For example, Alan Warner, the writer of Morvern Callar is from Oban on the west coast.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Warner_(novelist)

      He attended Oban High School and left it at sixteen years old, after which he started working on the railways as a shunter.[1] His interest in reading was sparked when he was fifteen, after he bought three novels whose covers suggested stories with a sexual dimension: Charles Webb’s The Graduate, André Gide’s The Immoralist and Albert Camus’ The Outsider. He explained in an interview with the Scottish Review of Books in 2011: “I had presumed novels were an art form which only happened elsewhere and had died out in Scotland around the time of Walter Scott. What a very curious but genuine assumption. On the other hand, I could argue this was because local bookshops were stuffed with Scott and not a single work of modern Scottish literature.”[2] After this he bought random Penguin Classics books from the local charity shop to read on his own.[1]

      Sir Walter Scott’s presence was certainly felt, not least in Edinburgh.

      Just stumbled across Alan interviewing Irvine Walsh.

  12. We’ve not said a word yet abut Robert Louis Stevenson.

    The Stevenson Trail is a big tourist attraction in the Cervennes

    https://www.cevennes-tourisme.fr/en/i-discover/walks-and-hikes-in-the-cevennes/the-gr/stevensons-path/

    There’s been a feature film

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6159660/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_2_nm_0_in_0_q_Travels%2520with%2520a%2520Donkey%2520in%2520the%2520Ceven
    and a tv series.
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0881342/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2_tt_2_nm_0_in_0_q_Voyage%2520avec%2520un%2520%25C3%25A2ne%2520dans%2520les%2520C

    based on his account of his travels..

    Here’s a very useful map with links to places all over re world which RLS visited. Fascinating to dip into.

    https://robert-louis-stevenson.org/in-the-footsteps-of-rls/

    As you remember, he died in Samoa of a cerebral haemorrhage- on 3rd December 1894.

    • There’s an Italian restaurant on South Bridge in Edinburgh called Ciao Roma. Round the corner is a bar/restaurant called The Hispaniola. Years ago, the Italian restaurant owner bought the bar, knocked the wall down between them and made it one. The Italian half is still an Italian restaurant, but the other half has been turned into a galley representing the ship in treasure island, complete with hanging cage holding a dead body.
      This is right in the heart of the university district where Stevenson studied. The site where the Hispaniola sits was once the pub(Revenants if I remember correctly) where Stevenson and his pals met up of an evening.
      https://www.ciaoroma.co.uk/la-hispaniola

      • That is a fascinating bit of Edinburgh history, @bigstevie. That restaurant owner was an enterprising chap.

        Of course i wanted to know more about the Speculative Society.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Speculative_Society

        RLS wasn’t the only famous member Many years before, Sir Walter Scott was also a member.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott

        What a remarkable life he had. i just stumbled across this very entertaining and informative article in praise of Scott.

        https://thelondonmagazine.org/article/sir-walter-the-history-man/

        The writer acknowledges that nowadays not everyone is crazy about Sir Walter…

        Some commentators in more recent times have not shared this mass enthusiasm for Scott; Edwin Muir’s poem Scotland 1941 put the boot into not only Scott but Robert Burns; ‘mummied housegods in their musty niches/Burns and Scott, sham bards of a sham nation.’ More recently, Kevin Williamson, former editor of the ground-breaking Scottish literary magazine Rebel Inc., posted on his blog;

        … Sir Walter Scott was not a great Scottish patriot nor even a particularly good writer – his prose is stodge – but he was an arse-licking royalist, a falsifier of Scottish history and a Tory c*** of the worst order.

        The writer defends Scott….

        In Waverley and other works, Scott’s vivid and intelligent portrayal of Scottish history and character helped to preserve a distinct Scottish identity at a time when it was in danger of extinction. Scott’s role in the creation of modern tartan kitsch is often condemned; yet there can only be tartan kitsch in a nation that still has some sense of itself, however distorted. Scott helped that sense to survive; he made it cool, if you like, to be Scottish again, albeit within the Union – with preferably no shouting from the working classes at the back, there. More importantly, he had taken the novel into new territory; through fiction it was now possible to investigate history and analyse political change and chance.

  13. On the subject of eminent Fifers, let’s hear it for one of my favourite poets of all time, the late, much-missed John Burnside (1955-2024). If anyone fancies trying some of his poetry, I recommend Black Cat Bone (2011).

  14. I was very curious to know more about that Michael Marra biography that James Robertson wrote, ARREST THIS MOMENT.

    Here are some reviews which are all full of interesting anecdotes about Michael’s life.

    https://www.northwordsnow.co.uk/issue36/Michael-Marra-Arrest-This-Moment-by-James-Robertson

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/arts_ents/15596844.arrest-moment-james-robertson-life-michael-marra/

    https://www.bigsky.scot/michael-marra-arrest-this-moment

  15. I used to think that Scotland’s most important export was Famous Grouse and all the other wonderful whiskies.

    I’m beginning to think that crime fiction is giving whisky a run for its money,

    This morning I discovered that even Aberdeen has a lively Tartan Noir scene.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-47377097

    here’s what the BEEB reported……

    From Stuart MacBride to Iain Banks, Aberdeen and the surrounding area has long featured as a setting and source of inspiration for writers.

    Its literary scene is thriving. Last weekend hundreds of book-lovers and writers descended on the city to talk all things crime.

    Granite Noir is the name of Aberdeen’s crime writing festival. Now in its third year, it is proving increasingly popular, with organisers reporting a 50% rise in ticket sales compared to last year’s event.

    Ian Rankin has a lot of competition.

  16. Thinking about that great traveller, Robert Louis Stevenson made me think of other ex-pat Scottish writers such as Conan Doyle and Irvine Welsh

    I also realised I’d completely forgotten THE MISS JEAN BRODIE HITMAKER, Muriel Spark. Which led me to this excellent article.

    The Go-Away Bird: Muriel Spark in Southern Rhodesia – The Bottle Imp

    Martin Stannard notes in his biography: ‘Spark may have been raised in Edinburgh but she grew up in Africa’.1 When Muriel Spark (then Camberg), sailed to Africa in 1937, she planned it to be a short stay. Sidney Oswald Spark, an older Jewish Scot from Edinburgh, whom she had agreed to marry despite the concerns of friends and family, had a teaching contract for three years in Southern Rhodesia and her sense of the impermanence of the situation, as an adventure, not a definitive destination, no doubt contributed to its attractiveness. Southern Rhodesia was at that time a self-governing colony with its own parliament and a Governor representing the British Monarch. Spark’s own sense of the temporary nature of the trip, to a landscape and culture that she could coolly observe and write about, was further qualified on her arrival by her apprehension of the precarity of the colonial outpost itself:

    I don’t know how anyone could have thought of this situation as anything but temporary. To me at the time there was no feeling of permanence, and I marvelled at people newly arrived from England, who had every intention of remaining forever. They thought the country was an extension of South Africa … I didn’t. I couldn’t pretend to belong. I intended to stay for the prearranged three years and gain as much human experience as I could. (CV, p. 123)

    I also learnt about the now defunct Scottish Review of Books. What a shame it closed down due to Creative Scotland withdrawing their funding.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Review_of_Books

    Luckily, back issues are still available on their website

    https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/

    VOLUME 13 ISSUE 1 has some excellent articleS about Spark.

    https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2018/02/volume-13-issue-1-editorial/

    https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2018/02/the-prime-of-miss-jean-brodie/

    https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/the-vaults/volume-13/issue-1/

    She read as only a child can; voraciously, serendipitously, indiscriminately, from The Pilgrim’s Progress to bound volumes of Victorian ladies’ magazines which her mother, an unabashed romantic, had acquired second-hand. The reluctant novelist was particularly fond of adventure stories and had a special fondness for the tales of Robert Louis Stevenson, like her a native of Scotland’s precipitous and windy capital. ‘Sometimes,’ she recalled, ‘when I read a particularly impressive book, I used to extend the story in my imagination and make the characters live in my own world of invention.’

  18. This is interesting. Back in 2016, the BBC published a long-list of great Scottish novelS and asked the public to vote for their top ten favourites.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-36940688

    Genre authors like Rankin, Conan Doyle, McDermid and RowlIng are included , along with more literary writers like Warner, Banks, Spark and Robertson

    The 30 shortlisted novels were:

    An Oidhche Mus Do Sheol Sinn (The Night Before We Sailed) – Angus Peter Campbell

    Garnethill – Denise Mina

    Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone – JK Rowling

    How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman

    Imagined Corners – Willa Muir

    Knots And Crosses – Ian Rankin

    Laidlaw – William McIlvanney

    Lanark: A Life In Four Books – Alasdair Gray

    Life After Life – Kate Atkinson

    Morvern Callar – Alan Warner

    Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott

    So I Am Glad – AL Kennedy

    Sunset Song – Lewis Grassic Gibbon

    The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle

    The Cone-Gatherers – Robin Jenkins

    The Cutting Room – Louise Welsh

    The Panopticon – Jenni Fagan

    The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark

    The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner – James Hogg

    The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

    The Testament Of Gideon Mack – James Robertson

    The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan

    The Trick Is To Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway

    The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox – Maggie O’Farrell

    The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

    The White Bird Passes – Jessie Kesson

    Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh

    Trumpet – Jackie Kay

    Under The Skin – Michel Faber

    Wire In The Blood – Val McDermid

    Which of your favourite Scottish novels did not make it onto the list?
    What did you vote for? Or would you have voted for?

    If I’d written the list it would defiitely have included a novel by Chris Brookmyre..

    For example. WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED from 2011.

    • Surely there would have to be one by Stuart MacBride. I must have read nearly 10 of these Logan MacRae books over the years. I’ve read most of Rankine and Brookmyre too. Peter James is another, though not Scottish. I gave up on them all a few years ago, as I felt they were just churning them out(as I said earlier). I like to try something new.

      • After all these years I really do still enjoy Rankin and Brookmyre. They are both excellent story tellers

        Looks like I’d better try one of those Stuart MacBride novels @bigstevie.

        Thanks a lot for all your excellent input which has really kept this thread rumbling along.

      • I’d never heard of William McIvanney, the father of Tartan Noir or Detective Inspector Jack Laidlaw . Thanks for putting them on our radar, @Lando-cakes.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McIlvanney

        A great quote from the Guardian obituary

        Detectives with existential anxieties, marriage problems and a deep literary hinterland are not uncommon now, but Detective Inspector Jack Laidlaw was a bright arrival on a dull Scottish literary scene in 1977. In policing the rougher territories of Glasgow and environs, Laidlaw found many things stacked against him; what he had going for him were a realistic outlook on life, abundantly laced with wit and philosophical reflection – a voice he inherited from his highly articulate creator.

        No one had previously encountered a Glasgow cop who described his regular tipple as “low-proof hemlock” and who hid his Camus and Kierkegaard in the desk drawer, the way an alcoholic keeps a secret stash. McIlvanney could say of Laidlaw, “He knew nothing to do but inhabit the paradoxes”, and make it sound like Glaswegian common sense.

        https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/05/william-mcilvanney

  19. My pal, TEUTONIC TIM, mailed me yesterday with a wonderful anecdote…..

    On the subject of Muriel, there was an article about her by Colin Burrow in a recent LRB, occasioned by a volume of her letters from 1944-63 and a new biography by Frances Wilson.

    Here’s a curious episode:

    In late 1953 she was taking too much Dexedrine, which she used as an appetite suppressant. (In those days you could buy it over the counter.) This, combined with overwork and undereating, led to a period of outright psychosis in early 1954. During this episode she thought that T.S. Eliot had encoded secret messages specifically for her, in Greek (of course), in his play The Confidential Clerk. She also believed (rather less plausibly) that Eliot was pretending to be her window cleaner in order to spy on her.

    Here’s the article..

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n18/colin-burrow/world-beating-buster-upper

    What a remarkable imagination she had. T.S. Eliot doing a George Formby and moonlighting as a window- cleaner. Wonderful.

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