And the Land Lay Still

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Magic meets science fiction in this unique verse novel by Harry Josephine Giles. Readers can experience science fiction written in an Orkney dialect for the first time ever. The majority report, we believe, has the effect of magnifying the extent of the social and cultural differences between Scotland, Wales and England. This is partly because of the way it handles in the historical section the concept of ‘nationhood’ – with Scotland and Wales thus appearing as separate nations with distinctive values and ways of life ‘struggling to be free’. In contrast there is no matching study of the more homogenous contemporary pattern of social and cultural values and behaviour which characterise all the different parts of the United Kingdom. ( Royal Commission 1973, II, vii) Managing such worries took up a good deal of the Commission’s time. The minutes of a November 1972 meeting show the degree to which devising a coherent plan to recognise (and neuter) ‘national feeling’ involved extensive debate over how to accommodate cultural difference within the British national story: The stories we follow are mainly of those that are not too well-off. Apart from Michael Pentreich, we follow the stories of a couple who have two sons who follow very different paths, one a gentle left-winger, another a violent thug, the friend of the man of the couple who, one day, walks out on his wife and daughter without explanation and whom we meet early on (without being aware of it). We follow the story of the posh Tory M.P. who spends much of his time fighting with his wife (often physically but she is an equal match for him) and squandering his money, and their three children, two of whom do well and make money and one of whom, the daughter, drops out. The journalist, daughter of a generally absent father, the woman who keeps a sort of literary/political salon and the reformed thug who may or may not have killed William McRae also feature. The most interesting, perhaps, is the tale of James Bond (it really is his name but he changes it to Peter Bond later on, for obvious reasons), who really is a spy. He is recruited at a low level and remains at a low level, working in London However, he is later sent to Scotland, where he spies on the Scottish nationalist movement, as the authorities are worried it might turn into another Ireland, though Bond does not believe that that is even vaguely likely. The sporadic violence is both amateur and ineffectual. Iris’ goal is to met with Geillis Duncan, a woman who has one night left to live before she is hanged for the crime of witchcraft.

The basis for one of the most popular television series of our time, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander is the first book in the series that follows Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, and her adventures in love and war throughout time. The novel was enjoyed by everyone in the group - which is no mean feat as there are usually lots of different opinions around the room and few books gain a unanimous accolade!And the Land Lay Still is nothing less than the story of a nation. James Robertson's breathtaking novel is a portrait of modern Scotland as seen through the eyes of natives and immigrants, journalists and politicians, drop-outs and spooks, all trying to make their way through a country in the throes of great and rapid change. It is a moving, sweeping story of family, friendship, struggle and hope - epic in every sense. There is no strong ideological pulse beating through devolution, no political theology hovering above the pragmatic fudging of institutional reform. This makes the meaning of devolution both conveniently flexible and somewhat unstable, both as a policy and as an object of knowledge. Perhaps appropriately for an enterprise involving the deliberate erosion of central authority, devolution is always susceptible to being commandeered and re-defined, bent to stronger narrative impulses than those of its tinkering architects. To achieve better balance, there should be more reference to the common characteristics of the British people… ( Royal Commission papers, National Archive, HO 221/360).

Toweringly ambitious, virtually flawlessly realized, a masterpiece and, without a doubt, my book of the year ( Daily Mail) Without any knowledge of the language or his new home whatsoever, Fagan’s experiences in the seven years he lives in this small Japanese fishing village are humorous and offer countless moments of learning. The questions that In Ascension poses, and the incredibly discoveries made, ask the reader to deeply consider that old cliche: we are all made of star stuff. Hiding from his memories and generally showing little interest in progressing his career, Rebus can’t ignore the ghoulish strings of crimes now tormenting the city. He isn’t just a cop trying to catch a bad guy, but he’s also a man who knows more about this story than he lets on.

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The Daily Telegraph was impressed by the book’s ability to meld “engrossing individual storylines” with “cultural shifts such as the birth of Scottish nationalism, the death of industry, the sexual revolution and the boom in North Sea oil”. [5] The New Statesman noted that four years’ worth of research had gone into the book and finished its review with the line: “It’s some achievement”. [6] marks a celebration across the nation for Scotland’s Year of Stories – but what is a story without its storyteller? (A question on which I, and the generations of dutiful Unreliable Narrators before me, place much emphasis.) With workshop events held just before, and roughly a year after, the referendum on Scottish independence, the urgency of these political questions was a strong presence in our discussions. It was in this light that Italian critic Carla Sassi offered an ‘outsider’s perspective’ suggesting we think twice before discounting the force of literary nationalism: Irvine Welsh enjoys a sweeping look through a Scottish lens at a turbulent era". The Guardian. UK. 24 July 2010 . Retrieved 1 July 2011. The destructive obsession with the need to emphasise and preserve the ‘Scottishness’ of our writing far beyond what comes naturally and truthfully to writers will persist for as long as Scotland remains in a political limbo; in other words, it will last until Scotland either becomes a full nation-state, or loses its sense of nationhood altogether. ( McMillan 1983, 70)it had much earlier declared cultural devolution, both in the radical voices of new Scottish writing – from James Kelman to Matthew Fitt, from Janice Galloway to Ali Smith – and in the rewriting of Scottish cultural history that produced, in the 1980s and 1990s, a new sense of the richness and the autonomy of Scotland’s past cultural achievements. ( Craig 2003, 39)

At a literary debate in Edinburgh in the mid-1980s, James Robertson heard one of the speakers – "a well-known Scottish novelist" – express the observation that "there are no politics in Scotland". The writer had set many of his own novels abroad – in France, Italy and England – because "nothing of great importance ever happens here". Robertson, who was "more heavily involved in politics then than I am now", recalls the reaction. "There was a general drawing-in of breath. I thought: How dare you!" If for Craig the ‘effective cause’ of devolution’s endorsement in 1997 was cultural revolution, there is little doubt that the proximate cause was electoral. This part of the story is well-trodden ground, and vividly told in Robertson’s novel: Winnie Ewing’s sensational victory for the SNP in the 1967 Hamilton by-election, and growing alarm within the Labour government at the threat posed by the nationalists, rising sharply after the discovery of North Sea Oil in 1970. Both to allay and defer these pressures, Harold Wilson announced his intention to appoint a Royal Commission on the Constitution in late 1968. Set in the present day, In Ascension is a modern Scottish novel that follows a Dutch biologist named Leigh, who grew up in Rotterdam and is captivated by sea life.JAMES Robertson's fascinating and multi stranded novel is proving a huge hit with Scottish book groups - and Strathblane is no exception. Leading sociologist David McCrone notes ‘an influential strain of writing about the relationship between culture and politics’ in modern Scotland. What futures can we project for devolution today? In one sense, the political strategy became redundant in 2011, when it failed to prevent the open challenge to the legitimacy of the United Kingdom represented by the 2014 referendum. In another, the result of that referendum – 2 million votes against Scottish independence – was a ringing endorsement of devolution and proof both of its popularity and its durability as a ‘settled’ constitutional position. (This point was strongly made at our 2015 workshop by legal scholar – and Unionist/Conservative campaigner – Adam Tomkins.) Having spectacularly failed to ‘kill nationalism stone-dead’, in the famous 1990s prophecy of George Robertson, ever-further devolution is the maximalist middling way most popular with the Scottish public (see Curtice 2014), and serves as the basis for not one but two imminent strengthenings of the Scottish Parliament (the implementation of the Scotland Act 2012 and further new powers recommended by the Smith Commission in 2014). Simultaneously beefed-up and obsolete, devolution is being asked to mean most things to most people as never before.