What Scotsman was caught up in a civil war before the age of twenty? Wrote a book that became the inspiration for an Oscar-winning film? Met a runaway teenager in Paris and married her against the wishes of his family? Lost his ranch to raiding Apaches?
Our book EMPIRES & REVOLUTIONS: Cunninghame Graham & His Contemporaries contains essays exploring ideas of revolution, emancipation, equality, & liberty in the works of RBCG & other Scottish writers of the period—in print & online via Project MUSE
Poor Things, Rich Adaptation? Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel & Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2023 film
28 May, 6–7:30pm CEST (5–6:30 BST)
Free online
Dietmar Böhnke will assess what is arguably the highest-profile #adaptation of a #Scottish novel since TRAINSPOTTING (1996) – & will touch on Gray’s works & reputation more generally, including a #film script he wrote for #PoorThings in 1993…
According to the Guinness Book of Records, Sherlock Holmes has been portrayed on screen more than any other literary character. Olivia Rutigliano ranks the 100 best, worst, & strangest screen portrayals of the great detective…
“Holmes’s stories […] have a surprisingly grounded view of crime, & one that arguably fits better into the hardboiled tradition of Hammett & Chandler than the cozy tradition of Christie.”
Doyle didn’t just write #CrimeFiction … Alan Brown looks at Arthur Conan Doyle’s “vain, volatile, & brilliant” Scottish adventurer-scientist-explorer & dinosaur hunter Professor George Edward Challenger
After THE LOST WORLD, Challenger’s other adventures include the novels THE POISON BELT and THE LAND OF MIST, & the short stories “The World Screamed” & “The Disintegration Machine”. Alan Brown digs deeper into Doyle’s #sciencefiction
(Conan Doyle personally preferred Professor Challenger over Sherlock Holmes – even dressing up as the Professor for a photograph of Challenger’s Amazonian expedition)
When Doyle killed Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, “20,000 people cancelled their subscriptions to the Strand”. Public pressure – & a huge fee – brought Holmes back from the dead; did this fictional immortality influence Doyle’s spiritualism?
In 1912, “Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the world’s most celebrated fictional detective, had turned detective himself in an actual murder case – in the process liberating a man who had spent nearly twenty years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
In March 1927, Arthur Conan Doyle put together a list of his own top 12 Sherlock Holmes stories, sealed it in an envelope, & left it with the editor of the Strand magazine…
“THE DYNAMITER is a hugely inventive & brilliant book, at once a political thriller, a blackly comic satire, & a female adventure”
Robert Louis Stevenson & Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne married #OTD, 19 May, 1880. In this article, Prof Penny Fielding explores the dangerous #collaboration between RLS & his wife: granting female agency on the page & in life
#BBCLauraK just stated that there are terrible problems with the #Scottish#NHS. What's she on about - of course there are problems after 14 years of Tory mismanagement and corruption but we haven't even had strikes here unlike the rest of UK.
18 May 1640: Archibald Adair #Scottish Church of #Ireland bishop of Killala found guilty of uttering seditious words, appearing to favour the Covenanters #otd
—“Mr. Johnson, (said I) I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.”
—“That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.”
May 16 is Biographers Day – marking the 1st meeting of James Boswell & Samuel Johnson in 1763
Guest speaker: Scottish actor & playwright Matthew Zajac, who will be also performing his critically acclaimed play THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS – the first performance of this play in France