- Indelible Ink: Angus Peter Campbell’s ‘The Girl On The Ferryboat’ Some of Scotland’s greatest writers have been bilingual in English and Gaelic. In the last 100 years there have been glorious examples, from Sorley MacLean, through Iain Crichton Smith and Derick Thomson, to Aonghas MacNeacail, Meg Bateman, Peter MacKay, and many more. Although all are distinctly individual, it does appear there is something in the […]
- Indelible Ink: Jane Alexander’s ‘The Last Treasure Hunt’ There are only a few novels which have dealt well with our age of celebrity, such as Brett Easton Ellis’s ‘Glamorama’, but there are hundreds of terrible novels written by celebrities, (‘A Mother’s Gift’ by Britney Spears, anyone? Thought not) which is a damning comment on current cultural concerns in itself. Luckily, Jane Alexander’s intriguing […]
- Indelible Ink: Margaret Elphinstone’s ‘Hy Brasil’ Could a small nation, with a history of being part of a larger whole, become independent with its own version of the pound and its own parliament, no army, but under the protection of NATO due to its strategic position? Could it not only survive, but thrive? It’s an intriguing question, and anyone interested in […]
- Scotland at SXSW 2014 – 11 Scottish Bands and More With just over 2 weeks to go until the annual SXSW tornado arrives here in Austin, it is time for a wee look at who will be representing Scotland this year. Right now we have 11 Scottish music acts confirmed as well as 3 films and an SDI event.
- Writing Competition, 1st Place – ‘Promenade’ by James Carson ‘Promenade’ is a wonderful journey through Glasgow, and by extension, Scotland, moving from the past to the present, a voyage of discovery as our guide sees the city as if with new eyes, wondering at the sites he sees and the people he meets. Same as it ever was, yet always changing.
- Writing Competition, 2nd Place – ‘Homesickness’ by Katriona Kerr Emotion, both positive and negative, drives ‘Homesickness’. It’s a fantastic depiction of the love/hate relationship which many of our entrants expressed, but none did it with such fervour and poetry as Katriona managed.
- Writing Competition, 3rd Place – ‘Snowglobes’ by Max Scratchman Max’s ‘Snowglobes’ is a wonderful summary of a nation, outlining how the landscape and the people unite to provoke the strongest of emotions, and taking a fresh look at Scotland’s ‘stereotypes’, embracing them instead of rejecting them.
- Indelible Ink: The Dear Scotland Writing Competition Winners As regular readers of this column will know, we recently ran the Dear Scotland, Indelible Ink Writing Competition, with no idea as to who would enter, or what they would send in. The prize was all 50 books which have appeared on these pages, and the only instructions were that pieces had to be under […]
- The Dear Scotland Xmas Video It’s that time of year again. A very special Christmas video, featuring a very Scottish Santa: