Volume 04 Issue 1
The SRB Interview: Douglas Dunn
DOUGLAS DUNN was born in Inchinnan, Refrewshire, on 23 October, 1942, into a working class environment. At school, he was gifted at English and History, but his lack of aptitude with Maths and Science prevented him going to university. Instead, he studied at the Scottish School of Librarianship in Glasgow....
Volume 4 – Issue 1 – Editorial
THERE was a time, if we are to believe William Smellie, co-founder and, in large part, author, of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, when one could stand at the Cross of Edinburgh and, within the space of a few minutes, “take fifty men of genius and learning by the hand.” The original...
SRB Diary: Sex and Sensibility
Venice at the beginning of a new year sounded enviable. I went to chase up a document supposedly held by a Venetian scholar: the record of visitors to the Danielli Hotel in the beginning of the nineteenth century when Shelley’s daughter might have died there. Efforts with the hotel management had...
Archie Hind’s Lost Novel
AN EXTRACT WAS ALL that was ever published. This was 35 years ago in a magazine which presented it as a novel in progress. The title was given there as For Sadie. A later manuscript changed this to Für Sadie, playing on a thematic link with Beethoven’s sonatina Für Elise, because it is a story about...
Volume 4 – Issue 1 – New Poems – David Kinloch
Sir David Wilkie Administering Tea in Kensington “A Mr. Delacroix to see you, Sir. With a brace of partridges And a very handsome turkey.” There was chat: how gendarmes, “Damned gendarmes” nicked the Scot for sketching Calais gates; how old Hogarth was beaten up, deported for the same; linked...
Rebel Reinvented
IN 1996 REBEL INC published Children Of Albion Rovers, six tales of “underdogs, losers and psycho-active users” by Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, Laura Hird, Gordon Legge, Paul Reekie and one James Meek. It became a cult classic, required reading for student and schemie alike: the sort of book that...
The Real Tartan Army at War
AS NATIONAL EVENTS are viewed by the public, the emergence of The Royal Regiment of Scot-land on March 28 2006 was hardly an event of seismic proportions. No big parades, tar-tanry kept to a minimum and only a few fellows in kilts with bagpipes. A handful of soldiers were presented with the new cap...
Auschwitz: A Neverending Story
ANYONE WRITING TODAY on the Holocaust is haunted by the thought that the decimated generation of Holocaust survivors will soon pass away. Consequently, the question of how to preserve their voices and memory poses major challenges to post-war generations. Angela Morgan Cutler’s experimental novel...
Hello There! China
ACCORDING TO THE CHATTER, Rupert Murdoch is bored with Britain. These days, the lately-acquired Wall Street Journal consumes his attention. The editor of London’s Times is shipped out to Manhattan to tend the new toy – a pointed reminder of relative values – and one of the progeny is gifted the...
Buchan With Bells On
IN 1925 JOHN BUCHAN produced his whimsical adventure story, John Mac-nab. Macnab, you may recall, was a composite of three men, familiar to Buchan lovers from many other adventures – Sir Edward Leithen, former attorney-general; John Palliser Yates, an eminent banker; and Lord Lamancha, a cabinet minister....
A Soft-Centred Woman
THE SPRING OF 1947, as her husband’s sixtieth birthday approached, Willa Muir settled down to reflect on growing old. The fruit of her reflection was a poem: a small masterpiece, and a good starting point for anybody wanting to understand what this passionate, formidable, vulnerable woman was really...
Volume 4 – Issue 1 – Gallimaufry
Meas Air Chrannaibh (Fruit On Branches) Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul ACAIR, £13.00 pp328, ISBN 086152330X A dodo language, Gaelic “is like a patient lying/weak on her deathbed”, according to its nurse, Aong-has Pàdraig Caimbeul. Certainly, as if futureproofing his verse from one of language’s regular...