Interviews
The SRB Interview: Jackie Kay
Opening one of Jackie Kay’s books is like walking into a busy metropolitan bar that has accommodated within its walls the deep past, character and charm of a country pub. You know you will encounter stories comic and sad, that you will never leave thirsty, and that the mind will feel renewed with...
The SRB Interview: Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith’s fingers must move faster than Alfred Brendel’s. Among the most productive and successful writers at work today, he has published in the region of 80 books (excluding academic works), among them The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series (16 titles), which has sold more than...
The SRB Interview: Debi Gliori
Debi Gliori was born in 1959 in Glasgow. She graduated from Edinburgh College of Art and worked as a freelance illustrator before publishing her first picture book, New Big Sister, in 1991. Since then she has published over seventy-five books for children of all ages. Her creation Mr. Bear will be...
The SRB Interview: Robin Robertson
Robin Robertson is a poet whose work is infused with classical myth and folklore. The gods and prophets who inhabit his poems are shape-shifting and transformational figures, such as Dionysus or Proteus. His visceral and sometimes violent verse displays a carefully controlled rhythm and musicality....
The SRB Interview: Andrew O’Hagan
Andrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968, and grew up in Ayrshire. His writing, both fictional and non-fictional, has always been concerned with what he has described as ‘selfhood and its precariousness’. The Missing (1995), his first book, is a memoir and investigation of missing persons and...
The SRB Interview: Rona Munro
Rona Munro was born in Aberdeen. Primarily a scriptwriter for the stage, she has also written for radio, television and film. Her theatre credits include Bold Girls (7:84 and Hampstead Theatre), Dear Scotland and The Last Witch. Little Eagles, a play about the space race, was produced by The Royal Shakespeare...
The SRB Interview: Andrew Greig
Andrew Greig was born in Stirling in 1951. He spent his adolescence in Fife, before gaining a degree in Philosophy at Edinburgh University in 1975. Growing up in the late 1960s, he played guitar, wrote songs and encountered the Incredible String Band. When he was seventeen he first met Norman MacCaig....
The SRB Interview: Neal Ascherson
Neal Ascherson was born in Edinburgh in 1932. He gained a scholarship to study at Eton and progressed to King’s College, Cambridge. Eschewing a life in academia, he became a journalist in the 1950s. He started as a reporter for the Manchester Guardian, and later became commonwealth correspondent for...
The SRB Interview: Richard Holloway
Richard Holloway is the author of more than twenty books, including Godless Morality: How to Keep Religion out of Ethics, Doubts and Loves: What is Left of Christianity, Looking in the Distance: The Human Search for Meaning and Between the Monster and the Saint: Reflections on the Human Condition. His...
The SRB Interview: Kirsty Gunn
Kirsty Gunn was born in 1960 in New Zealand. She was educated at Queen Margaret College and Victoria University, Wellington, and completed an M.Phil. at Oxford University. Her first novel, Rain, was published in 1994. Her second novel, The Keepsake, followed in 1997 and the short story collection This...
