Bob Dylan and his Scots folk music traditions

I enjoyed reading the informed article 'The Scottish folk origins of Dylan’s best loved tracks', Ruairdh Mackenzie, Sunday National 15/12/2024

It reminded me that a few years back I was listening to a Radio Six Music program – Cerys Matthews: A Birthday Tribute to Bob Dylan, May - 2014 

She was having a chat with one of Dylan’s legion of serious music fans. They were discussing the influence of British or Anglo-folk on Dylan’s music. Mathews asked whether Irish folk had a major influence on Dylan’s music. 

The fan replied, “well apart from being close with the Clancy Brothers during their time in Greenwich village, not so much, but that Scottish folk music....."  Mathews interrupted and stopped him, not once, but TWICE. And then she said, “Oh we cant single out one region of the UK for particular attention.” 

I was very disappointed as I was looking forward to a discussion on Scottish traditional folk music’s influence on Dylan’s music.It took me aback and I thought, clearly those in England view Scotland as a region, merely due equal attention of other regions of England – say Yorkshire or Northumberland – and not a nation or country in its own right. This is truly shocking and clearly politically driven. 

Afterwards I felt convinced there must be messaging from the BBC to the effect of – “any reference to Scotland as a unique or separate nation should be avoided.  In all respects only the viable UK should be promoted as an entire whole – that is Wales, Scotland and NI are merely regions of the United Kingdom.” Of course I could be entirely wrong about this??!  I did receive a response from the BBC asking where in the program I heard these comments. 

 

Dylan’s early songs were adapted from Scots folk tunes – He wrote his early classis of ‘A Hard Rain a Gonna Fall’ based on the 17^th century Scots border ballad Lord Randal. His ‘Times They are a Changing’ is based on Hamish Henderson’s Banks O Sicily.

Interestingly Mackenzie writes that when Dylan arrived in Greenwich village as a young 20yr old, he shared a flat with Scots singer Jean Redpath. She taught Dylan about Burns and Scots traditional music. “Giving Dylan the poetry and tunes to rise to the top of the New York folk music scene.”

 

On his 30^th studio album Time Out of Mind, the final track is Highlands,

Well my hearts in the highlands, gentle and fair,

Honeysuckle bloomin in the wildwood air,

Bluebells bloomin where the Aberdeen waters flow

Well my herats in the highlands

I’m goonna go there when I feel good enough to go.”,

 

So ten years later I get some answers to the my questions over Scottish tradiitonal folk music’s influence on Dylan’s song writing! I’ve been studying both Bob Dylan and Robert Burns genius song writing over the past decade. Dylan later names Burns "A Red Red Rose" as the song that most influenced his work.  

Make music organically. In 2009 Dylan purchased a mansion at Nithy Bridge in the Cairngorms. Here was an artist going home to his roots. 

‘A Complete Unknown’ film with Timothy Chalamet, due out 17^th Jan 2025 in the UK

 Sunday National - The Scottish folk origins of Bob Dylan’s best-loved tracks

https://www.thenational.scot/culture/24795016.scottish-folk-origins-bob-dylans-best-loved-tracks/

Timothy Chalamet in A Complete Unknown

A Just Transition who decides

 

Its crucial we have sustainable and realistic moves to Net Zero. For a fair just transition should a small group of activists decide?

 

Fossil free Books (FFB), campaigned in 2023 to have UKs book festivals ban major sponsorship by Baillie Gifford investment bank, who also fund Edinburgh’s children’s program. This was brought to a head by Greta Thunberg’s cancellation of her major event at Edinburgh’s Playhouse last year. This also effected the Hay and Cheltenham’s book festivals in England.

 

It turns out only 2% the Baillie Gifford investment is for fossil fuels – and that most financial investment banks have 11% fossil fuel investments. Bookshop Waterstone’s are backed by Elliot advisors investment bank, who have oil and gas funds - as have Amazon books. in fact book production itself requires fossil fuels. 

 

The Green economy requires both private and public funding. The Greens, in the Scottish government partnership have encouraged ‘active travel’ – which is fine – but at the huge expense of drastic cuts to road infrastructure. Quite simply not everyone can ride a bike to work. Spending on main A trunk roads  - in 2016, 500m/ 2021, 54m/ and 2024, 12m. 

 

Book festivals are a major platform for informed and constructive debate on many major issues facing us, such as the climate emergency. The Arts funding, particularly after Covid, are under serious financial strain. Did book festivals appear an easy target? I attend EIBF each year and its an unmatched place for informed debate, intellectual collaboration and creative thinking. Why are green activists targeting a place of free add open ideas for our future? When there are so many fake, ignorant click baits on so much of online media?

 

We must question why a small group of extreme activists must hold the rest of us to account? I’m as keen as anyone on a just transition but it must start at the cliff face. That is by consumers asking for plastic free food. Twenty years ago our fruit and veg would not come wrapped in plastic, but rather cardboard or brown bags. A main culprit to the climate crisis, is plastic clothes and there must be another way of producing plastic free practical sweat tops etc. I buy cotton when its available. I prefer organic and vegetarian food.

 

This rush to Net Zero is not all about electric cars. Its about improved infrastructure – park and ride, joined up transport, better insulation etc. Scandinavia has been planning for net zero since the 70s. Britain is far behind this curve. About biodiversity, natural woodlands, and protecting our seas.. Meanwhile Baillie Gifford invests in several green innovations such as – Northvolt (Swedish battery company), Climeworks (carbon capture Iceland), Solagen (Texas, first carbon-negative molecule)

 

Who decides on planning for this huge pylon destruction of Scotland’s beautiful countryside? – the local council, the Scottish government or the UK government. Energy policy is reserved to Westminster. 

New oilrigs are much more efficient while the older rigs are more carbon inefficient – so the carbon intensity must be analysed on a case by case basis – as the SNP are advising. Scotland will require the engineering skills of UK companies to aid with green innovations for our just transition. 

 

I agree we must encourage a green economy and jobs for the future – as Biden has done in America with a green deal. The reality is complicated with the need for investment. Its such as farce – when ignorance leads to misguided judgements and imposing fake opinions on how both scientific innovation and investment actually works. The green economy requires both private and public funding and for oil companies to drive innovation to a greener future. 

 

The green activists would turn off the oil and gas taps tomorrow. This is not practical. The UKs older homes are poorly insulated. What about petrochemicals that are used in medicine, dyes, paint, clothes, supplies for industry and more. Until an alternative can be found we will need oil and gas for decades to come.

New Scottish Art Galleries BURNS excluded

 

Burns and other poets) wrote with Scots voices and language - why is Robert Burns not included here?

At a time when mainly English Tory unionist voices were being heard late 1700s. No other writer has done more than burns. I was taken back, at the new Scottish galleries that there is only one mention of DB, with regard his The Hunt poem and an Edinburgh tea room painting. 

Its wonderful to see the new galleries. I realise Scott lived in Edinburgh, but Burns was there for quite a few months over the late 1786 and into 1787, and he was greatly influenced by his time there – he visited the men’s clubs – the Crochallan Fencibles Anchor close; William Creech’s bookshop and publishing house, at the Luckenbooths near St Giles, where each day the great and the good met; and the literary parties that Burns was invited to, where he met the renowned scholars of the Scottish enlightenment. He also met the great love of his life late 1786, Agnes McLahose: (his Clarinda) who he wrote many love letters to and his famous song of parting Ae Fond Kiss.

 

Scott may have been read widely in 1800s – but to my mind (and most other Scots) Burns is our national hero and bard. We was painted by his good friend, the artist Alexander Nasmyth – on their walks to Rosslyn.

As i walked around the Scottish art I thought  - which Scotland are we emboldening and remembering here? After the first section covering the romantic period – we enter the brighter more modern period, with the windows open to the east Princes st garden views. 

I felt that the Burns creative legacy was a deliberately forgetting – Question? does his writing influence Scottish art. Burns was himself influenced by art – the symbolism and spiritual connection between the natural world, the creative fires and the established church teachings from his father – where dance was frowned upon. These strong interconnections.

He was influenced by the Ossian poems –by James MacPherson as the first Scot’s bard and also by other great poets. Burns was writing and collecting song before Scott – in fact he met the young 16 year old Scott at an Edinburgh literary party and Scott wrote about Burns after this great meeting. 

 

Burns was influenced by art and the close ties between our emotional life and nature – when he wrote one of the best love songs ever written - "Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear/ And the rocks melt wi’ the sun/ I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run."

It is hard to believe that Burns didn’t influence Scottish art with all the myths, memorabilia, statues and more that surround the great poet. Even so, his songs and poems were not enough to prevent the forgetting that occurred across Scotland over the 1800s. Today, as Lesley Riddoch writes in her 2023 book Thrive, ‘Scots know of William Wallace and Robert Bruce but nothing in-between up to modern times. Only in the past few decades have Scots recognised other great Scots from the 1980s onwards – with statues to James Clerk Maxwell and Adam Smith.

 

*      *      *      *       *

novelist Walter Scott

Scots bard Robert Burns

II   The galleries hold 60,000 works of Scottish art – from David Willkie, Alexander Nasmyth, Andrew Geddes, The Glasgow boys impress, particularly James Guthrie, and grand displays of William McTaggarts work.  

BUT Which Scotland – the empty Scotland or militarised? The proud Scotland or the shot stag. Romance or reality; mountain or flood;Ttory or Jacobin?

 

At the start of the exhibition there is an emphasis on the influence of Walter Scott’s historical fiction – Waverly and Heart of Midlothian. Scott was the inventor of historical novel. There is the claim “Nobody did more to popularise Scotland than Scott.’ There are photos of the construction of the imposing Scott monument nearby. David Octavious Hill’s pioneering photography, (a photography department at RSA 1857). On display is the painter John Drummond, and David Allan’s’ paintings of everyday life, the Porteous Riots.

*But I was surprised and saddened no mention of our great bard Robert Burns.

Moving on into the bright lit galleries with windows looking out onto east Princes st gardens displaying more modern art – the Glasgow boys, William McTaggert – The Sailing of the Emigrant ship, who was influenced by Constable 1776 – 1837 and Turner (1775- 1857). The Impressionist and Japanese print influences – of James Guthrie, Arthur Melville, Edward Arthur Waltour.

James Guthrie

Symbolism and Celtic revival 1890s - the alternative world of dreams, myths and visions. With John Peploe, George Leslie Hunter. And good to see several wmen artists – Frances Campbell Cadell, Anne Redpath. Margaret Macdonald, 

There is so much to be impressed with here and both the particular Scottish influence of Scotland soft ever changing light. The weather beaten and mountainous landscapes – the Celtic Ossian, Gaelic poetry, alongside other great Scots scholars and poets 1700s - Dunbar, Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns - who kept Scot’s voices alive. 

And of course Walter Scott’’s historical novels, which were popular worldwide. Political philosopher Tom Nairn criticised Scott - that he told of a ‘romanticised Scotland’ that was gone and lost forever’. This led to Scotland’s literacy voice being lost over the 1800s.

 

  

Romanticism in Scotland

 

Nigel Leask rites Burns has been tragically over-looked in academic studies and the need to consider Burns in a de-centralized four nation approach to British culture and of the marginalisation of Burns as a major Romantic poet.

 

The book is entitled 'Scottish Pastoral: Robert Burn and British Romanticism' Leask

sets out to recover a major Romantic poet in a Scottish, British, and colonial context. Burns's fame as Scotland's national bard, and his influence on Scottish writers like Hogg, Scott, Elizabeth Hamilton, Lockhart, Wilson and Carlyle, has achieved local recognition. The goal of this book is to reassess the global significance of Scottish and British Romanticism in the light of Burns's achievement and influence. ' And a more historically contextualised notion of the Scottish Enlightenment. And to situate Burns and 18th century Scottish poetry in relation to Enlightenment theories.

 

But much light remains to be cast on his literary and intellectual context in the Scottish Enlightenment, as well as his far-reaching influence on English and Irish Romantic writers like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Roscoe, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Clare, Hazlitt, De Quincey Tom Moore and J.C.Mangan. 

 

MUSIC  - Burns is best known as a songwriter and song collector

Burns's poetry is now largely excluded from a revised canon of Romantic literature as it is taught in UK and US English departments, despite the fact that the canon has broadened to include women and minority writers. In fact the decline of his reputation as a major Romantic poet has continued measurably even since 1945. Astonishingly, there is to date no dedicated study of Burns's influence on British Romanticism.

 

Contemporary Burns scholarship is still largely concerned with studying the poet in a national literary framework, despite important recent work by Carol McGuirk, Liam McIllvanney, Robert Crawford and Gerry Carruthers, opening up Burns to broader contexts. 

 

Robert Burns was part of an attempt to produce a canon of Scottish song, which resulted in a cross fertilisation of Scottish and continental classical music, with romantic music becoming dominant in Scotland into the 20^th century. 

Robert Burns (1759–96) and Walter Scott (1771–1832) were highly influenced by the Ossian poems. Burns, an Ayrshire poet and lyricist, is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and a major influence on the Romantic movement. His poem (and song) "Auld Lang Syne" is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and Scots Wha Hae served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Burns A Mans a Man as sung by Sheena Wellington at the opening of the Scottish parliament.

 

Novelist Walter Scott popularised Scottish cultural identity 19th century.  He played a major part in defining Scottish and British politics, helping to create a romanticised view of Scotland and the Highlands that changed Scottish national identity. Tom Nairn argues to a false mythical Scotland gone forever. Scott has a highly successful career, with other historical novels - Rob Roy (1817), The Heart of Midlothian (1818) and Ivanhoe (1820) 

 

Burns was greatly influenced by Scots poets Allan Ramsay, James Macpherson, and Robert Fergusson – who wrote poems in scots about Edinburgh. And English poets such as Alexander Pope. Allan Ramsay(1686–1758) laid the foundations of a reawakening of interest in older Scottish literature, as well as leading the trend for pastoral poetry, developed the Habbie stanza as a poetic form. 

 

James Macpherson(1736–96) was the first Scottish poet to gain an international reputation. Claiming to have found poetry written by the ancient bard Ossian, he published translations that were internationally popular, being proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the Classical epics. Fingal, written in 1762, was translated into European languages, and its appreciation of natural beauty and treatment of the ancient legend has been credited more than any single work with bringing about the Romantic movement in European, and in German literature (Johann Herder and Johann Goethe). Also popular in France –read by Napoleon^.

 

Other major Scottish literary figures connected with Romanticism include the poets James Hogg (1770–1835), Allan Cunningham (1784–1842) and John Galt (1779–1839). One of the most significant figures of the Romantic movement, Lord Bryon, was brought up in Scotland until he acquired his English title. 

 

**Romanticism in Scotland  II

was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement late 1700s and early 1800s. 

Part of the wider European romantic movement, which was partly a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment, emphasizing individual, national and emotional responses, moving beyond Renaissance and Classical models. In the arts, Romanticism manifested itself in literature with the mythical bard Ossian, the exploration of national poetry in the work of Robert Burns and in the historical novels of Walter Scott. Scott also had a major impact on the development of a national Scottish drama. Art was heavily influenced by Ossian and of the Highlands as the location of a wild and dramatic landscape. 

In music, 

 

In art there was a stress on imagination, landscape and a spiritual correspondence with nature. It has been described by Margaret Drabble as "an unending revolt against classical form, conservative morality, authoritarian government, personal insincerity, and human moderation" Although after union 1707 Scotland increasingly adopted English language and cultural norms, its literature developed a distinct national identity and began to enjoy an international reputation.

 

The editors of the recent essay collection Scotland and the Borders of Romanticism argue, from the 19th century Scottish literature came to stand for an 'inauthentic Romanticism, defined by a mystified commitment to history and folklore', in marginal relationship to an 'organic' English Romanticism. 

 

Scotland was also the location of two of the most important literary magazines of the era, The Edinburgh Review, (1802) and Blackwood Magazine(1817)which significantly influenced the development of British literature and drama in the era of Romanticism. 

 

Romanticism declined in the 1830s, but it continued to affect music and art. It had a lasting impact on the nature of Scottish identity and outside perceptions of Scotland. It is often thought to incorporate an emotional assertion of the self and of individual experience along with a sense of the infinite, transcendental and sublime. 

 

James MacPherson

Robert Burns and Pastoral is a full-scale reassessment of the writings of Robert Burns (1759-1796), arguably the most original poet writing in the British Isles between Pope and Blake, and the creator of the first modern vernacular style in British poetry. Although still celebrated as Scotland's national poet, Burns has long been marginalised in English literary studies worldwide, due to a mistaken view that his poetry is linguistically incomprehensible and of interest to Scottish readers only. 

 

Nigel Leask challenges this view by interpreting Burns's poetry as an innovative and critical engagement with the experience of rural modernity, namely to the revolutionary transformation of Scottish agriculture and society in the decades between 1760 and 1800, thereby resituating it within the mainstream of the Scottish and European enlightenments. Detailed study of the literary, social, and historical contexts of Burns's poetry explodes the myth of the 'Heaven-taught ploughman', revealing his poetic artfulness and critical acumen as a social observer, as well as his significance as a Romantic precursor. Leask discusses Burns's radical decision to write 'Scots pastoral' (rather than English georgic) poetry in the tradition of Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson, focusing on themes of Scottish and British identity, agricultural improvement, poetic self-fashioning, language, politics, religion, patronage, poverty, antiquarianism, and the animal world. The book offers fresh interpretations of all Burns's major poems and some of the songs, the first to do so since Thomas Crawford's landmark study of 1960. It concludes with a new assessment of his importance for British Romanticism and to a 'Four Nations' understanding of Scottish literature and culture.

 

New National Scottish Gallery at the National gallery

 

Margaret MacDonald

Brand new galleries have been built behind the Mound art galleries Edinburgh to be a new and open home to display Scottish art From 1800s to 1845 – from the Glasgow Colourists: Francis Cadell, Leslie hunter, Samuel Peploe and JD Fergusson (1890 – 1914)

William McTaggart

The galleries hold over 60K works of Scottish art and 140 will be on display. Including – William McTaggart, Anne Redpath, Phoebe Anna Traquair, Margaret Macdonald, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Boys.

Director john Leighton, Before retiring was ambitious to fulfil his desire for a proud spacious showcase for Scottish art at the national galleries. Before this Scottish art was displayed down some steep steps to  a confined, dark gallery space. 

 

On display is the controversial *Monarch of the Glen by English artist Edwin Landseer, 1661 - “thousands of real local people were cleared from surrounding glens to make way for aesthetically pleasing emptiness, deer and sportsmen.”

 

In 1830s, English reform campaigner William Corbett, was outraged that Edinburgh – which he regarded as the worlds finest city – was not surrounded by thriving agricultural villages, because aristocrats preferred their estates empty, rural and unspoiled. 

Allan Ramsay

 

SONGS make a Nation

The Proclaimers

And the poetry and art. Since the 60s Scots have been singing in their own Scots and Gaelic voices – first with Flower of Scotland on the football terraces, the resurgence of Scots folk protest songs such as Hamish Henderson’s Freedom Come All Ye and then with the Proclaimers songs. 

We might ask who is writing new songs for the union?

 

“Now everyone sings Scottish songs and if I were a unionist politician of whatever party, but especially the Labour party, I would be counting the songs, have a habit of making the laws also.” Ian Hamilton wrote. 

 

Since the 60s and 70s, the resurgence of Scots voices, culture and arts have had more impact on our hearts and minds - than the often hollow and ignorant political chat. Early in 1970s Edinburgh, traditional folk songs were flourishing around the folk clubs, bars and folk festivals – Girvan, Ayr, Arran, Sandy Bells and many more. 

Before this I had mainly listened to music on recorded albums, so the live local music scene was a revelation for me, with its foot-stomping fiddles, the strumming banjos, guitar and bohran, the perfect unaccompanied singers, and the traditional Scots ballads. 

 

The impact of the Proclaimers first tv appearance on channel Four’s music program the Tube – when they performed Letter to American in strong Scottish accent was immediate. They combined folk and punk music. Then we also have dougie macLleans powerful Caledonia and David Steele's Scotland Yet.

 

As attitudes towards the British empire changed after the war, in the mid 1960s at the men’s football game they started to boo and agitate and to sing their own songs as the band played the national anthem, God Save the Queen. In 1966-67 fans started to sing Flower of Scotland – and eventually authorities recognised this and dropped the UK National Anthem for Scotland.

 

The Corries

Ian Hamilton, who along with other student stole the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey, wrote -

“Nobody sang in Scotland in the ­middle part of the century. To be more correct, those who sang did not derive their songs from Scotland. Their sources were ­foreign and what they sang was only an alien copy of other people’s ways of life.”    He saw a very different Scotland in the early 1990s compared to the past: “Now everyone sings Scottish songs, and if I were a Unionist politician of whatever party, but especially of the Labour ­Party, I would be counting the songs, rather than the votes. The people who make the songs of a country have a habit of making the laws also.”

Perhaps that is a little too romantic for some but it contains a kernel of truth. What we sing and who sings says something about who we see ourselves as ­being and how we stake our claim in the world. Maybe in his heart, Ally McCoist knows this too.

Extracted The Songs We Sing, Gerry Hassan, The Sunday National 17^th September 202 - 

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23794397.gerry-hassan-god-save-king-flower-scotland-unites-us/

 

 

A Canon of Scottish literature

 

Scottish literature over long eras has been neglected or deliberately obscured,  so securing its place in the firmament is a kind of redress, a reclamation. “ Alan Riach

Language expresses who we are, 

A canon is a form of cultural empowerment, “any canon of Scottish literature is a form of cultural reclamation, a resistance to the canonical weight of English, or Anglo-American, or Anglophile literatures in English, what used to be called commonwealth literature.”

Lewis Grassic Gibbons

RL Stevenson

Galt, Gibbon, Mackay Brown, Oliphant, Spark, Janice Galloway, AL Kennedy, Jackie Kay, Ali Smith, Scott, RL Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Irvine Welsh, JM Barrie,…..Celtic folklore, ghost stories, landscapes of Highlands, western isles, rich histories of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Over the 1700s many poets worked to reclaim and keep alive Scots voices and ballads, - Allan Ramsey, Robert Burns, Robert Fergusson.  

**In 1800s, Privy Council in Westminster, created the Scottish Education Department, to teach English (to replace the Church of Scotland, who taught Scots and Gaelic). The plan was cultural change. At that time Scots spoke Scots or Gaelic or both.  

In 1911, the Scottish Education Department moved to Edinburgh. English was then used to deliberately destroy Scots culture and to eradicate “Scottishness.” In 1950s Gaelic teaching was stopped, - and only English was taught. In some counties of Scotland today most English teachers are non-Scots. 

 

Scots should be taught in schools as a second language – to protect our history and culture. In the EU children are taught their own language and English as the language of western international business. 

 

The importance of Scottish literature

WHY has Scottish literature not been explored as confidently as other literatures. 

“The subject needs to be more widely known and discussed with more confidence and curiosity.... There has been work since 1980s, and more needs to be done." Alan Riach 

 

At college down Edinburgh Royal mile, I studied French author Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and American poet Sylvia Plath, when I specialized in English, at school I studied Chaucer, Shakespeare, and novels Catch 22, English novelist Jane Austen. The union 1707 was basically an elite project begun under James VI – to incorporate Scottish history, literature and religion into the English system. Many rebelled – poets Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns), Covenanters, academics. Holyrood must protect Scots literature and Scots language, so its taught in schools alongside English.  

 

All this began with the elite project under James VI, at a meeting of clan chiefs on Iona, when it was agreed that every eldest son would be educated in England. 

 

Robert Fergusson

**BOOKS

Why Scottish literature matters? Professor Carla Sussi

 

SCOTTISH LITERATURE – from poets

And scholars such as George Buchannan, who wrote of democracy for all. 

American founding father – John Witherspoon, 

Our great Bard Robert Burns, Scots authors - 

And todays many acclaimed Scots academics, authors, artists, musicians and innovators. Scots literature and Scots voices do matter and have unique contributions to make.  Alongside scientific discoveries and one of the world\s first surgeons and medical schools. 

 

Douglas Stuart

**SCOTS Booker Prize winners

 

Disgracefully as usual in a Time article there is no mention of Scotland’s recent Booker prize winners. The Scottish literary scene boasts several Booker prize winners – 2020 Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, 1994 James Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late. 

Plus Booker shortlisted authors – Ali Smith, Andrew O’Hagan, AL Kennedy, Graham McCrea Burnett, Muriel Spark. World famous Scots novelists of modern times include –Iain Banks, Val McDermid, Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin, Louise Welsh, Liz Lochhead, Alan Bisset, Chris Brookmyre, Denise Mina, Alexander McColl Smith, Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway, William McIlcanney, Maggie O’Farrell, 

 

Famous Scots writers of the past – Arthur Conan Doyle, J M Barrie, John Buchan, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Boswell, John Barbour, Adam Smith. 

 

Hackett quotes Irish writer Magee, “The English may be too comfortable to write great novels.”  

At least six times in her article she labels ‘Britain/ England’ as one and the same, the England label can never include Scots or the Welsh and we’ll never regard Britain as England as our cultural or historic home, even though so many Scots remain in ignorance of Scotland’s rich histories of which we might be proud. Its time Londoners woke up to this reality. 

Our creative stories, arts and music are intrinsic to our shared voices and view of self.

 

Perhaps creative thinkers either can’t afford or don’t want to be in London. In ‘Britain/ England’ mind-set little exists outside of London. In the 80s London boasted a thriving literary scene around Soho. But today’s London is dominated in its skyline by foreign oligarchs empty high-rises, populist musicals, global chain outlets and over priced art. 

 

 

**BOOKS

Anthology of Scottish stories – Gerard Caruthers

Scottish literature, an introduction – Alan Riach.

The Fair Botanist – Sara Sheridan

 

Scottish Pastoral: Robert Burns and British Romanticism –