WHAT Edinburgh was like before the coming of the festival is hard for anyone who did not know it then to imagine. That it was smaller, less populous, darker, sootier, beerier and danker is undoubtedly true. In the years immediately after the Second World War, Britain in general was often portrayed in...

EARLIER this year Creative Scotland published a report on the state of literature in Scotland. Titled Literature and Publishing Sector Review, it included a raft of recommendations. Of particular interest to the Scottish Review of Books was the section dealing with reviewing and criticism where it was...

EVEN today, when we are blessed with an avalanche of history books, many Scots remain painfully ignorant of their nation’s past. This is not a problem for which there is an instant panacea. For too long, influential Caledonian cringers and whingers have argued that if children in school are force-fed...

The independence referendum is now a year away. The debate will thus intensify over the coming months and, it is to be hoped, will be conducted in a civil and enlightened (and enlightening) manner. Divorce is never an easy matter and after more than three hundred years in a union that has been generally...

YOU’ve got to read it to believe it.’ says Amazon of its Kindle Paperwhite. It is but one among many Kindles, several of which are called Fire. Why we know not. Once you’ve taken the plunge there are countless ‘accessories’ with which you can embellish your Kindle and ‘customise’ it. There...

With just four and a half months to go before the referendum that will define the immediate future of Scotland, a strange smell may be detected in the wind blowing from the south. It would perhaps need someone with the cultured nose of a wine buff to identify it accurately but suffice it to say it is...

A FEW days from now Scotland will go to the polls and make a decision which, whatever its outcome, will define a generation and have far-reaching and as yet unimaginable consequences. It has been suggested that the turnout may be as high as eighty per cent. That is as it should be. Ideally, it would...

IN 1970, there appeared a collection of essays in honour of Hector MacIver who taught English at Edinburgh’s Royal High School. MacIver, who was born on Lewis in 1910 and died in Midlothian in 1966, was a man of many parts. He was a writer, broadcaster, producer of plays, a talker and a speaker. He...

In 1912, a profile appeared in the Bookman of a Scottish author who, it was said, ‘has breathed a new life into the moribund art of the novel; he has made the short story what a cameo might be when it is cut by the hand of a master, and he has even contrived to make the light essay and occasional...

IN 1933, the novelist Eric Linklater contested a by-election in East Fife on behalf of the National Party of Scotland which, a year later, amalgamated with the Scottish Party to form the Scottish National Party. Linklater, who was born in 1899 in Penarth in Glamorganshire of Orcadian stock, recalled...