News of the Dead

Product Information

Deep in the mountains of north-east Scotland lies Glen Conach, a place of secrets and memories, fable and history.

BBC Radio 4 - News of the Dead by James Robertson

I'd describe it as a set of stories around a fictional, very remote Glen near Forfar, and it's history and legend.Land clearance and its legacy is still a very controversial topic in the Highlands; the triumph of this book is not to diminish what happened there but to show that, despite its peculiarly brutal and culturally devastating characteristics, it was a late manifestation of a movement that had already permanently changed the population distribution of the Lowlands.

News of the Dead - Kindle edition by Robertson, James News of the Dead - Kindle edition by Robertson, James

The Queen’s men hold the Castle, the King’s men (strictly speaking, the Regent’s) are in the Canongate, bringing up cannon for a siege. Was mich schließlich doch noch veranlasst hat, dem Buch vier statt drei Sterne zu geben, war der letzte Teil, in dem Maja von „The Dumb Girl“ berichtet, und ganz besonders die mitreißende Performance der Erzählerin Sheila Reid, die für ein außergewöhnliches Hörbucherlebnis sorgt. In the early Middle Ages in Pictland, there’s the Christian hermit, Conach, whose signs and miracles performed in Glen are made legendary through ancient writings in a text known as “The Book of Conach. I think it has had a lasting effect on me though and I will definitely be delving into more of Robertson’s work in the future! It measures the space between the stories people tell of themselves - what they forget and what they invent - and the stories through which they may, or may not, be remembered.Reading Scotland is an innovative Edinburgh International Book Festival project to find new ways to understand Scotland in a post-Covid era. That he is actually quite a likeable character is in part because, in his journal, he is completely self-conscious about his pilfering, double-thinking and capacity to know when he might have outstayed his host’s hospitality. After a while he becomes fond of the Baron and his family – his wife Margaret, his daughter Jessie – and deceives them to extend his stay. The whole thing works rather better than that description would suggest, and my respect for Robertson's ability as a storyteller is still growing.

News of the Dead by James Robertson | Goodreads

Harking back to earlier days, they must rely on the support of their little community for their needs. Three different time periods mostly presented to us though the Book of Conach, the journal of Gibb, and Maja’s letter. Along with the three narratives there are a number of documents, from written testimonies to transcribed oral histories. Meanwhile, Esme Stuart, James VI’s mentor, makes no bones about being a Catholic, and may even be plotting a Counter-Reformation. While incarcerated, he wrote this astonishing book, which had to be smuggled out of prison to be published.Behind the beguiling, interlinked narrative of three characters from different periods of history—an Iron Age hermit, a nineteenth-century literary conman, and a child thrown out into the world from war-torn Europe—is a profound appreciation of a landscape, the rocks, the rain, the streams, trees and mosses of the remote Scottish glen where these three lives are lived. It is in Gibb’s interest to prolong the translation for as long as possible: he has nowhere else to stay. It's a complicated, strange and wonderful book, weaving multiple narratives of past and present together, exploring religion, place, war and conflict, history and storytelling and so much more.

News of the Dead (Short 2021) - IMDb News of the Dead (Short 2021) - IMDb

Over the course of his career he has travelled around sponging free bed and board from wealthy patrons and pocketing any possessions which won’t be missed. Several people I know have also read News of the Dead and we are of one mind: this is a superb book, and how the stories coalesce is the engine behind turning the page. The second strand of the book, mostly set in 1809, is an unreliable narration by Charles Kirklinton Gibb, a young aspiring antiquarian of very limited means who persuades the laird to allow him to stay in the big house in the glen while he translated the Book. Mary, Queen of Scots has stayed loyal to the Old Religion and although she has abdicated the Scottish throne, stands a chance of taking over the English one. Generations later, in the early nineteenth century, self-promoting antiquarian Charles Kirkliston Gibb is drawn to the Glen, and into the big house at the heart of its fragile community.What is clear to us, though, is that her creator has written a wise and hugely satisfying novel about stories, sanctuary and, to quote the Baron, the “strange, heeliegoleerie world we bide in”. This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. And, in the present day, eight-year-old Lachie tells his elderly neighbour Maja of a ghost he thinks he has seen. Like The Testament of Gideon Mack, its structure is a mixture of supposed found documents and straighter narration, and like To Be Continued.