A Sense of Place – The Battle for Hearts & Minds in the Scottish Landscape
Reading Scotland with John D. Burns
16 April, free online
This seminar will explore how historic patterns of land ownership & changes in land use have profoundly affected the Highlands of Scotland. The challenge for writers & artists is to capture the imagination of the Scottish people & show what our future could be.
@scotlit@cstross@bookstodon
Awesome story, though readers who are not familiar with the work of Charles Stross should be warned he deals in mildly humorous cosmic horror, and this work is no exception.
Warning: You will never be able to look at a unicorn the same again. 😂
“So that’s where you look for aliens. In the course of an eclipse totality track. When everybody else is looking awestruck at the sky, you need to be looking round for anybody who looks weird or overdressed, or who isn’t coming out of their RV or their moored yacht with the heavily smoked glass.”
Where to look for #alien tourists – from Iain (M) Banks’s 2009 novel TRANSITION
“It is difficult to read a collection of Scottish stories without becoming aware of the spoken voice and the power of first-person narration. It is absolutely crucial. It establishes the tone and direction of the story by forming an immediate and firm pact with the reader, appearing in every instance to take him or her into the writer’s confidence.”
In 1889, #ArthurConanDoyle & #OscarWilde sat down for dinner with J.M Stoddart, editor of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine.
There, Wilde agreed to write “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, & Conan Doyle “The Sign of Four” – one of his most famous #SherlockHolmes stories.
Now, Conan Doyle’s letters recounting that fated dinner and his sole handwritten #manuscript of “The Sign of Four” are being auctioned by Sotheby’s New York.
Never-before-seen writings & correspondence from author Iain Banks form part of an exhibit at the University of Stirling as it celebrates one of its most famous alumni.
Iain (M) Banks: Two Authors, One Man launches at a free event in the University of Stirling library on Thursday, April 4 from 4pm to 6pm, & will run until August 30.
Recovering Imaginaries of Illness & Disability in Scottish Literature & Culture: Sources, Contexts, Theory
Études écossaises 23 | 2024 – open access
This special issue of Études écossaises looks at what recovering imaginaries of illness & disability in #Scottish#literature & #CulturalStudies might involve. Contributions deal with a number periods of Scottish culture, & a wide variety of sources & media.
“The Story of a Recluse”, a 1985 TV play by Alasdair Gray, is based on an unfinished tale by Robert Louis Stevenson. Starring Peter Capaldi, Stewart Granger, Cristina Higueras, & Andrew Keir, & featuring Alasdair Gray as himself, is now available on the Alasdair Gray Archive’s YouTube channel
George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) – author, historian, journalist, screenwriter – was born #OTD, 2 April, 1925
“His dedication to strongly researched stories, built firmly on a bedrock of historical fact, but always with an eye to the humour of a situation, was the core of what appealed to me”
Historical novelist Michael Jecks discusses George MacDonald Fraser’s writing for the Royal Literary Fund:
“At one moment when President Richard Nixon was taking part in his inauguration ceremony, he appeared flanked by Lyndon Johnson and Billy Graham […] it was one of those historical coincidences which send a little shudder through the mind…”
– George MacDonald Fraser, THE STEEL BONNETS (1971)