IT has become accepted to talk about places both real and imaginary in novels as characters. The most recent example of this was a tweet from a well-respected Scottish literary organisation which declared that the landscape described in The Thirty-Nine Steps is as much of a ‘character’ in John...

"Impatience explains why I was ready to adopt a quarrelsome attitude to James Meek’s new book within moments of opening it, before the page numbers had even arrived on the scene." Alasdair McKillop reviews James Meek's 'Dreams of Leaving and Remaining'.

The following piece was written for the Scots Magazine in 1802 at the height of the Enlightenment when it was commonplace in Edinburgh to bump into men of genius, of whom Leyden was undoubtedly one. Edmund Curl, who is mentioned by Leyden, was a notorious and unscrupulous English bookseller who specialised...

Dr Anette Hagan is the Rare Books Curator (Early Printed Collections to 1700) at the National Library of Scotland (NLS). In this piece, in celebration of International Women's Day, she explores the work of Elizabeth Melville, the first Scottish woman to see her work in print.

  The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, now in its tenth year, has announced a longlist of twelve books in contention for the £25,000 prize.  A further list of twenty books recommended by the Prize’s Academy is also unveiled today. The Longlist of twelve is: Little by Edward Carey...

  AS the train from Edinburgh pulls out of Galashiels and inches across the River Tweed on the way to its final stop at Tweedbank the Eildons rise like soufflés in the distance. Consisting of three hills, the highest of which, the banally-named Mid Hill, is just under 1,400 feet, they are the...

Rosemary Goring reviews Alexander McCall Smith's new 'Scani blanc' novel, The Department of Sensitive Crimes.

  winter morning the cat’s shadow on the kitchen wall * * * wintry sunshine on my bookshelves words chuckle * * * outside: winter rain inside: my father’s portrait, a dozing cat * * * after last night’s storm my neighbour’s old trampoline slanted, still standing * * * wintry downpour the...

Laura M. Morgan reviews Ewan Morrison's new novel, Nina X.

As a tribute to Tom Leonard, who died at the end of last year aged 74, here is a review by Alasdair Gray, which first appeared in Scottish Library Association News in 1984, of the poet’s Intimate Voices: Selected Work 1965-1983.