Edinburgh
50th anniversary
The Christian Aid Book Sale in Edinburgh’s George Street has just celebrated its 50th anniversary. Fifty years! And it has shown all the enthusiasm and vigour of former years pre-pandemic; no hint of jaded spirits that I could see.
Both altruism and the printed book are still very much alive and well. Wahey!
The setting in St Andrew’s and St George’s West Church’s magnificent building is stunning,
… with the space inside on two levels filled with books, all carefully categorised,
… spilling out in abundance into the surrounding courtyard.
The message and cause are abundantly evident within and without …
From the volunteers efficiently and cheerfully emptying boxes of books from our cars beforehand (and we had the contents of two people’s libraries as well as several cartons of our own books to contribute this year), to those manning the stalls on the very last day, we met only smiles and helpfulness.
And the sheer volume of books shows no sign of diminishing. Table after table of boxes of novels and non-fiction,
… and an impressive display of more expensive rarer tomes, not to mention all the cards and ephemera and music and toys and jigsaws.
There were pearls to be had everywhere, too. I loved this little volume of The Book of Nonsense with hand-painted pictures!
And this delightful 1990 edition of the much loved Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, written by TS Eliot for his godchildren and friends in the 1930s.
As if this whole enterprise were not enough to oversee, the convenor, Lady Mary Davidson, somehow manages to hand-write personal letters to us authors who donate copies of our books. Not after the event, or at some comfortable time in the future; oh no! but immediately, during all the hullabaloo of preparation. Impressive, or what?
I salute every volunteer giving of themselves to this brilliantly worthwhile charitable event, a cause very dear to my heart. You have pulled off another major triumph.
(Apologies for the amateurish photos taken in my phone as I browsed.)
A tribute to writers everywhere
Much of what we writers do is unseen and unsung. However, some people do manage to eke out a living from their scribbling. Occasionally a particular book or name becomes a sensation. Very occasionally an author gets applause or awards. Very very occasionally one becomes a household name.
But if you‘re a writer and feeling overlooked and unappreciated, just think for a moment of Sir Walter Scott – 19th century Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright and historian. How cool is it for an auithor to have a massive Victorian Gothic monument built to commemorate him? It’s a landmark in Edinburgh, slap bang in the capital’s most famous street, Princes Street; the second biggest monument to an author anywhere in the world.
I stood and stared at it this week, and thought of all those people whose words I’ve loved, whose productivity I’ve admired, who I would pop into that arched edifice alongside Scott. It already has sixteen Scottish poets and writers appearing at the top of the lower pilasters, alongside many many other famous figures. But today I want to pay tribute to countless others who have influenced and affected and charmed and impressed me, and even changed the world because of their skill with words. I salute them all … and the gifted photographers who allowed me to share their superb images.
Coffin Road
If I were given the choice of where to live out six months of quarantine from a deadly virus, one of my first choices would be Luskentyre on the Isle of Harris. It’s breathtaking. Mesmerisingly, deeply, stunningly. Silver sands, clear turquoise water, utter tranquility.
The sea breathes gently upon the shore, phosphorescent foam bursting silver bubbles over gold.
But wild and unforgiving when ferocious storms sweep in across 3000 miles of uninterrupted ocean.
To set a dark and murderous tale against such loveliness seems somehow both incongruous and inspired. But that’s what Peter May has done. It’s only two years since I walked on those unbelievable beaches, drove along those deserted coastal roads, felt the icy salt-laden air roaring in off the Atlantic, so I had to read Coffin Road, and re-imagine the scenery he conjures up so vividly, my own personal memories enhancing enjoyment of his compelling storytelling.
A man washes up on the beach near his house not knowing who he is or where he is or what has happened to him. He’s wearing a life jacket which has saved his life, but why was he in the sea and why is there a terrible sense of dark foreboding hanging over him, a sense of knowing that something terrible has happened? Has he committed some sort of crime? Why is someone threatening his life now? The only clue to his identity is a folded map of a path named Coffin Road.
‘I cannot even begin to describe how dissociating it is to look at yourself without recognition. As if you belong somewhere outside of this alien body you inhabit. As if you have simply borrowed it, or it has borrowed you, and neither belongs to the other.’
An elderly woman recognises him, drenched and dazed, and walks him to his house; she calls him ‘Mr MacLean’. But there’s nothing in the house to give him any clues as to his identity. Even his computer seems to be wiped clean: nothing but blinking emptiness, even in the trash can. How can every trace of him have been removed so comprehensively?
By dint of careful listening without betraying his amnesia, he learns from neighbours that his first name is Neal, and he’s an academic from Edinburgh, writing a book about three lighthouse keepers who mysteriously vanished from Eilean Mòr, one of seven islands in the Flannan Isles to the west of the Outer Hebridean coast. It’s supposedly almost finished. But he quickly establishes that this isn’t, in reality, true. So who IS he, and why has he been lying about his life and reasons for being on Harris?
When a bludgeoned corpse is found on the very island Neal had visited he has a fearful dread that he must have been responsible for it. And since he can’t answer any of the police detective’s questions satisfactorily, they too believe he must be the guilty man.
Meanwhile miles away in Edinburgh, a teenage girl is desperate to discover the truth behind her scientist father’s suicide. Why did he abandon her? Was she to blame? Her last cruel words to him will be forever printed indelibly in her mind. Her quest takes her into grave danger and threatens to blow open a secret that could jeopardise the future of the human race and the planet.
I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but another aspect of this story that resonated with me, is that it involves bees, and we actually have three hives in our garden. We’re very aware of the essential role they play in the food-chain and existence of life on this planet, and watch anxiously if there is any hint of danger to them. So it was weirdly spooky when, coincidentally, as I was reading Coffin Road, our own bees swarmed no less than three times in two days! Unprecendented. Sent a shiver down my spine, adding to the sense of total immersion in this story.
I’m a fan of Peter May, as regular readers know, so I’m hoping to use the extra time of lockdown to start the famous Lewis Trilogy next. It’s been waiting for just such an opportunity. And revisiting the landscape of the Outer Hebrides through Coffin Road, has put me thoroughly in the mood.
Let’s celebrate! Books, books and more books
Yep, it’s Christian Aid Book Sale time again in Edinburgh. I was there at St George’s and St Andrew’s in George Street at opening time on Day 2 this year surrounded by over 100,000 secondhand books of every genre, fact and fiction, filling the sanctuary and both courtyards. Imagine! The sun was beating down on us, the mood everywhere was upbeat and busy … I was like a pig in muck! And I picked up no less than fifteen paperbacks! … what? … yes, of course I paid for them! It’s a cause very dear to my heart.
I missed getting the whole set of Peter May‘s The Lewis Trilogy by a whisker – and I even refrained from challenging or cheating the lady who found them two seconds ahead of me but put them down while she continued searching. My honesty and magnanimity was rewarded however, by my finding two other copies in boxes under the tables, and I immediately ordered the third one when I got home – a treat in store.
And another first … there was one of my own used novels nestling amidst all the Maggie O’Farrells and Alexander McCall Smiths and Ian Rankins and JK Rowlings. It felt very grown up!
But as every year, the biggest thrill is seeing so many people browsing and buying and discussing books. So confirming. The written word, the hold-in-your-hand real copy, is very much alive and well.
Literary triumphs
I have the great good fortune to live just outside one of the most famous literary cities in the world: Edinburgh. Numerous well-known writers have – and still do – stalked its streets, culled from its haunts, woven its magic into their books. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying exploring its streets all over again taking visitors to see its picturesque closes and wynds and courtyards and beautiful buildings – including The Writers’ Museum pictured here.
And as we gear up to the biggest international arts festival in the world, it seems an appropriate time to add my own homage to one of the most enduring names in fiction ever: Emily Brontë, whose special bicentennial anniversary we remember this year. Wouldn’t she herself be completely stunned by all the hype!!
Two hundred years ago, in 1818, this girl was born in Yorkshire into obscurity, the fifth child of an impoverished clergyman and his wife. She was a weak timid little thing, who found school too daunting, so she spent her childhood at home reading avidly and scribbling stories and poems of her own. A brief skirmish with teaching in her adult years in an effort to contribute to the family’s meagre income met with similar discord, and back she went to the peace and anonymity of the rectory, and the quiet influence of a bookish, creative environment.
So oppressed were women in her day that she and her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, all published their writing under male pseudonyms. Emily’s was Ellis Bell. Much they wrote sank into oblivion, but, as I’m sure you know, her one outstanding work, Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, proved hugely popular and remains a classic to this day.
Having already lost three siblings and her mother, Emily’s young life was overshadowed by struggle, death and despair, and perhaps it was that which coloured her own writing, and lead to the melancholy tale of bleak love and dark revenge we know and revere today. Heathcliffe has to be one of the most bitter, haunted and vengeful fictional heroes of all time.
How sad that this reclusive figure didn’t live long enough to see her creation achieve success; she was a mere thirty years of age when she caught a chill at her brother Bramwell’s funeral, developed TB and died, six days before Christmas. But how doubly heartening that the world pays tribute to her still.
And now I’m preparing for a whirl of amazing cultural experiences as we take friends and relations to the huge range of performances on offer. All this on our doorstop … most fortunate indeed.
Hazards aplenty
As they say, no experiences are wasted for a writer. Not even negative ones.
It’s that time again – the annual giant Christian Aid Sale held in the splendid premises of St Andrew’s and St George’s West Church in the centre of Edinburgh. Selling thousands upon thousands of books, art works, ephemera, music, their aspirations are as high as their steeple: it’s always mobbed, and I, as any writer would, rejoice each year that physical books are still so very much alive.
Each year I go at least twice – once to deliver copies of my own books (as requested) before it opens, once to buy – and every time I’m staggered at the number of helpers involved, cheerful kindly people who don’t bat an eyelid when someone asks for a specific title or six, or hands them a large note expecting lots of small change. Such calm under pressure is a joy to behold. This time my second trip was about an hour after the doors opened. First impressions were fantastic – bright sunshine, happy fresh assistants, orderly boxes of books, hundreds of avid readers milling everywhere. The gangways between the trellis tables are narrow so you don’t need to be squeamish about bodily contact, and you are expected to take responsibility for your own health and safety – unmarked steps, dips underfoot, minor obstacles aplenty. But the atmosphere is relaxed and convivial, and there’s plenty of give and take.
So black marks to the folk who parked empty wheelchairs and buggies right across pathways, who thought it expedient to gather right beside the tables to natter, who spread their possessions over the boxes while they browsed denying others access, or who left their long-suffering husbands on corners necessitating inconvenient detours down steps and onto the road. And a special penalty to the two who trundled enormous hard suitcases right through the masses with sublime disregard for ankles and shins – yep, I was one of the victims. But I escaped with no lasting damage and a modest collection of purchases, and I raise a salute to the wonderful people who give their time and energies so tirelessly to this excellent cause and come up smiling.
Rather stupidly I went with two specific authors in mind – Stephen King and Mary Elizabeth Braddon – and before you ask, no, I certainly didn’t ask any of the volunteers for them! There was no evidence of either, but I was thinking about King as the bus trundled me home. He has a neat way of expressing what I’m thinking about. Take this thought:
I’ve always wondered who I am when I write because once I’m doing it, I’m not in the room with myself.
It takes me a while to find myself again after an intense period of writing, and it certainly did the following night when I was deep in a psychological discussion with my characters. Only vaguely did I become aware of a rumpus outside … raised voices … smoke … hello? DJ had managed to set the garden shed alight and the air was alive with the sound of helpful neighbours sounding warnings and thick acrid smoke! By the time I’d re-entered the real world, DJ had the garden hose on full-tilt, damping down the smouldering structure, someone had called the fire brigade, and a crisis had been narrowly averted. I was left with no role other than redundant spectator. As the reassuring operations commander said, surveying the canisters of gas, tins of paint and fuel, and sundry other inflammables, laid out on the path afterwards: it could have been a whole lot worse. So, again, not much significant damage mercifully, but a few revisions to the to-do list and some changed priorities.
I might be dealing with mounting horror in my fictional world but it’s still a safer place than the here-and-now it seems!
Let’s hear it for the book!
It’s May … Christian Aid week again … which means the monarch of all secondhand book sales. Each year the St Andrew’s and St George’s West Church in George Street in Edinburgh hosts this fantastic week long event to help address world poverty. Since it started in 1974 the sale has raised in excess of £2m for the charity.
Preparation goes on for weeks beforehand involving over 500 volunteers, local authors bring along signed copies of their work, some people bequeath whole libraries to them, countless anonymous people donate their discard-able tomes. And by the time the doors open to the public, over 100,000 books of every kind fill the sanctuary, balconies and both courtyards, rare and valuable items rubbing shoulders with the run-of-the-mill. 100,000 books! Bliss.
Unusually this year I went along on Saturday’s opening day just half an hour after the doors opened. There was already an excited buzz outside on the pavement …
as well as inside …
Plenty of ‘excuse me’s, jostling elbows/large bags, competitive reaching. Long arms and good vision a definite advantage.
This early on there was good evidence of order with books by the same author gathered into boxes, and I could only dimly conceive of the mammoth task that involved. And yet I still heard one customer asking if they were arranged in alphabetical order! The remarkably tolerant volunteer said apologetically, ‘Sorry. There just wasn’t time for that.’ Bless her. Of course, it was the beginning of the week long effort … and the rain was holding off … and the snell east wind had abated. She could still feel her fingers and toes and didn’t have rain dripping off the polythene covers onto her trousers. But even so.
So the customer must tour the tables, row after row after row of them, grouped under banner signposts to find the titles they’re after. Specialised non-fiction tomes and sets varying in price; most hard-cover novels £2 a pop; paperbacks £1. Amazing bargains. And I’m sure many people cheerfully stump up far more than the asking price.
Inside the stalls range from the obscure to the classical and there are phenomenal bargains to be had. Having just read about the illuminators of ancient Turkey, this intriguing book held my attention.
But despite the serious temptation, I limited my own purchases to one carriable-home-on-the-bus bag which included these novels …
But my biggest kick came from standing on the balcony watching all these earnest browsers digging into boxes on every topic you can think of. Wanting, buying, loving books! Yep, the real hold-in-your-hand hard copy book is certainly nowhere near in terminal decline. Half-way round I beat a retreat to the basement cafe to fortify myself for a second wave of literary rummaging and then discovering more lovely and unusual finds in the antiques and collectables department.
Huge congratulations to all who sustain this brilliant endeavour.
Are you sitting comfortably?
May Bank Holiday included a couple of National Trust properties for me this year – Cragside House in Northumberland and Acorn Bank in Cumbria – fascinating places with rich histories, each in their own way evocative of a bygone age. So I thought I’d give you faithful followers a little holiday too, take you to some wonderfully inviting places to sit, to write, to read, simply to meditate. (Apologies for the quality of some of the pictures – taken on my iPad so limited control.)
Imagine for yourself what the peace, the serenity, the ambience, would conjure up in your mind.
At Cragside
A sumptuous Victorian Country house, the first in the world to be lit by hydroelectric power. So let your thoughts roam free as you …
sit surrounded by fantastic gardens …
in elegant rooms …
beside roaring fires …
in the midst of enormous wealth and inheritance …
looking over fabulous views …
Acorn Bank
A virtually empty-at-the-moment 13th century building spanning occupancy by the Knights Templar through to the Sue Ryder Foundation before becoming a national treasure. So imagine again where your thoughts would roam …
sitting in a chair once occupied by a renowned writer …
snuggling up in window seats …
Feel any historical novels coming on?!
How about sitting alone in the fragrance of a well stocked herb garden …
The NT are alive to opportunities; I found seats beckoning me everywhere I went. What’s more the beautiful dovecot building at Acorn Bank has been given over to reading. It houses secondhand books alongside a lovely comfy chair and even 3-for-2 offers!
What more could a writer visitor from Scotland ask for? Well, maybe a book about Edinburgh …
Happy days.
The Resurrectionist
On Monday this week I stood in front of the real skeleton of the legendary body snatcher/anatomy murderer William Burke. I had to stand still and quiet to absorb that fact.
We, a small number of writers from the Society of Authors, were being given a private conducted tour of the Anatomical Museum in the old Medical School in Edinburgh – a fascinating visit. In a former life I’ve given many a lecture (though never a dissection!) in the steeply-tiered theatre in that same building where anatomists used to do public demonstrations on human corpses, but this was my first trip to the third floor.
It’s quite spooky to be inches away from all these remains – bones, cross sections of various parts of the anatomy, pickled organs, even a full size corpse from the 1880s showing the lymphatic system filled with mercury – and realise that these were once actual living breathing people. OK, some of them may have been vagabonds and criminals, some of them solitary unloved creatures, nevertheless they had beating hearts and brains and thoughts and motives and rights. So it’s hugely reassuring to hear that today these human remains are being treated with enormous respect and care, and that they’re protected by strict ethical codes (hence no photos). I couldn’t help a wry smile standing in front of Burke’s bones though. Ironic that, in death, this man, who was hung for his crimes at the age of 37, is now being accorded far more reverence than he ever showed others during his life, although of course, his hanging took place in front of a crowd estimated at between 20,000 and 25,000 in spite of the torrential rain, and the following day his body was publicly dissected in the anatomy theatre of the University’s Old College (now the Faculty of Law buildings). We’ve come a long way since those barbaric days.
Standing in the austere and echoing back courtyard where bodies were smuggled in to the medical school three hundred years ago … listening to tales of the great anatomists who are honoured still … putting flesh on the bones and muscles and organs in front of me … my mind went back to an evocative account …
In their sacks they ride as in their mother’s womb: knee to chest, head pressed down, as if to die is merely to return to the flesh from which we were born, and this a second conception. A rope behind the knees to hold them thus, another to bind their arms, then the mouth of the sack closed about them and bound again, the whole presenting a compact bundle, easily disguised, for to be seen abroad with such a cargo is to tempt the mob.
A knife then, to cut the rope which binds the sack, and, one lifting, the other pulling, we deliver it of its contents, slipping them forth onto the table’s surface, naked and cold, as a calf or child stillborn slides from its mother. The knife again, to cut the rope which binds the body to itself, the sack and rope retained, for we shall use them again, much later, to dispose of the scraps and shreds.
So begins James Bradley in his novel The Resurrectionist, a dank, fetid, bleak tale of corruption and murder, which has received a lot of very bad reviews as well as the accolade of being a Richard and Judy Summer Read. The year is 1826 (the same era I was in at the Anatomical Museum). Gabriel Swift has arrived in London to be apprenticed to the great anatomist, Edwin Poll. Step by step we follow him as he washes the bodies methodically with water and rags and vinegar, ‘wiping the grave from these stolen dead’, noting as he goes with an almost forensic eye the markings and emissions and anomalies. Just as methodically he shaves them, tidies away the sacks, rinses and dries the rags, writes up the accounts.
We watch with his scientific curiosity the careful incisions, internal explorations, surgery, autopsies. We accompany him out to a silent wasteland where no birds sing, the barren earth scorched and filthy, the barrows disguised with wood heaped upon the sacks of human remains for their passage through the streets. And see the hell of a pyre fire spitting and crackling where it encounters human fat; flesh bubbling and blackening; limbs jumbled, broken, burning; oily black smoke clinging to clothes like a stain as the remaining embers are beaten until all the evidence is obliterated.
It’s a brilliantly evocative opening chapter, the Dickensian style of writing perfectly fitting the times, the context, the nature of the profession. But perhaps more macabre still is the rest of the book, viewing life through the eyes of a grave robber, a murderer, eeking out a meagre living in an age where life is cheap, seeing how boundaries for what is acceptable can become increasingly blurred. Bradley’s writing, his unusual perspectives, bring to life the darkly seamy and sinister underworld of Georgian London in the 1800s, the abject poverty of the underclasses, when a ha’penny piece would buy you enough food for a week and enough opium to deaden the hateful aspects of everyday life.
Life for Gabriel becomes increasingly compromised as competition for bodies, and questionable loyalties, challenge his moral code. He finds himself drawn to his master’s nemesis, Lucan, the most notorious and powerful resurrectionist and ruler of his trade in stolen bodies. Now he lives constantly under the threat of imminent detection, arrest, hanging, keeping company with evil traitorous men and desperate prostitutes. ‘No one refuses‘ the offer of bodies though they be increasingly fresh, mutilated even, decidedly suspect. Life is indeed cheap.
Little by little we see how easy it can be to segue from witness to spectator to collaborator to active participant. Gabriel moves ever deeper into crime until even murder becomes ‘such a small thing, to take a life‘, no harder indeed than drawing a tooth. Asking himself why? ‘I did it because I could.’ ‘I should care I know, but I do not.’ In his head he manages to distance himself from the act of killing, even whilst acknowledging that by doing so he has now moved outside the boundaries of decent civilised society. But in time, years after the event, he feels ‘a sort of hopelessness, a loathing for this thing I am, this half-thing of lies and circumstances’. He feels compelled to reinvent himself and eventually concludes: ‘It is so easy, to forget one’s self, to mistake the masks we wear for the truth of us’.
I’m not at all sure Bradley intended this to be a moral tale, but it holds salutary lessons for us all, to take stock, and not let ourselves become insidiously brutalised. Far better not to begin that process by condoning the dubious; be neither a passive witness nor a party at any level to anything unseemly or wrong.
So, did I enjoy it? Yes, I did. Would I recommend it? Yes, I would. Admittedly it’s rather thin in places, disjointed at times, and you need to work at keeping the secondary characters firmly in their place, but it captures a grim time and place too often romanticised by writers. Hats off to a man brave enough to tread a bleaker truer path.
It’s all relative …
Phew! It’s been quite a week.
My mind has been split too many ways for its own good, juggling preparation for a number of forthcoming speaking appointments all on different subjects, as well as finalising the text and cover of Inside of Me, plus a variety of other demands outside of my writing life. I confess I’ve felt unusually cross-eyed, and tense, and generally discombobulated.
I won’t bore you with the detail, except to share the most exciting development: the cover of Inside of Me is now chosen! Yeah! It’s been unusually tricky getting it right this time, but thanks to a very patient designer, Tom Bee, who provided lots of choice and properly listened to my quibbles, we have a striking end result that feels good. I’ll share it with you as soon as it’s finalised.
So, in the midst of all this angst, it was something of a welcome escape to go to a book launch for Professor David Purdie‘s latest offering: The Dean’s Diaries, held in all the magnificence of the Royal College of Physicians’ premises in the centre of Edinburgh. I found myself in august company. Purdie himself is a well-known and brilliant raconteur and was both witty and amusing on this occasion, offering, like Peter Ustinov, ‘all the various accents for his superb mimicry; and the rare combination of brevity of language with breadth of expression‘. Enviable skills.
His latest slim volume is a compilation of observations and anecdotes by the Dean of Edinburgh’s fictitious St Andrew’s College, ‘renowned for its academic oddity, interdepartmental warfare and explosive disasters‘. A happy blend of fact and fiction. I defy anyone to read it without laughing aloud. Clever, heretical, irreverent, stunningly good writing. A real tonic. Guaranteed to lift the spirits and banish tension. Just what I needed. Oh, and the Dean reckons that ‘Disparate activities, especially if novel, are apparently useful in staving off the onset of dementia … and … keeping the old frontal cortex ticking over‘, so perhaps I should be embracing more challenges not seeking less.
Alexander McCall Smith (who appears in the book as himself) was to have chaired the evening, but in the event he was in India … ahhh … therein lies a salutary and timely reminder. His life puts my present little alarms and excursions firmly into perspective. Sandy is probably the most prolific author I know personally, his daily word output is phenomenal, he’s constantly in demand as speaker/reviewer, juggles innumerable interests, and travels the world on a regular basis. And still finds time for friends and colleagues. Does he ever sleep?
OK, McHaffie. Take a big breath. Break down the tasks on your puny little list into manageable pieces. Tackle each one systematically. Tick them off; reduce the pressure.
There you go. Calm restored. Thanks to two professors and a hefty dose of laughter.