celticman's blog

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09h3nwt/witnesses-a-frozen-death-episode-1 I love Wallender and I’m a big fan of The Killing , wouldn’t say no to A Bridge or two, in fact, put subtitles on it and stick it on BBC 4 and there’s a more than fair chance I’ll be watching. The eight episodes of A Frozen Death will take us up to Christmas. Time to clean out that freezer and make way for fifteen dead bodies found frozen like turkey-wings on a bus...

Where are all the working class writers? http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09fzmjt That’s the question Kit de Waal asked. She published her first novel, My Name is Leon , at the age of 55. I’ve placed an order to read this book. Well, you know what happened next. International acclaim and all the happy-ending stuff. If you read very carefully between the lines you’ll see the lie that works so well in politics and book publishing and in real life...

This is Louise Welsh’s debut novel and the first of her work I’ve read. That old cliché applies here, it won’t be the last. It’s great, up there with Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory . I’m biased that way and like things to be parochial and have resonance with people I know and places I recognise. The setting is just up the road, a square mile of Hyndland and Crow Road. Not may folk understand that Downhill is a place and not just a state of mind...

I never read the same book twice, but this is my third, or fourth, reading of Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face . Joyce Carol Oates may yammer on, in fictional terms, about her characters finding their one true thing, but for every David Bowie there’s millions of Davie Bowieless strumming a guitar and never making anything of their life or art. There’s more writers than people with cancer. One reading of these books (and there are many ways...

Books don’t usually have corners. But (I guess) this one does. That’s one of the things that (kinda) annoyed me, Joyce Carol Oates has a tended to add extra bits of information in brackets. Her writing style didn’t (really) annoy me. What annoyed me was I felt the book was too long. War and Peace and the rebirth of the Russian nation as a leading European power in 1815 took less of a word count than it took for Soldier of God, Luther Amos Dunphy...

to-hunter-gatherers-evolutionary-success Kalahari Bushmen have lived in southern Africa for over 150 000 years, perhaps longer, no one was counting, but, roughly, almost as long as Scotsmen have lived in Scotland. Like the Scotsmen they are in exile in their own land. Marginalised they have managed to eke out an existence and survive and prosper ‘working’ as little as fifteen hours a week hunting and gathering. They adapted and made a good...

Robert Burn’s poem Halloween was in many ways a sidelong glance at many of the rites, ritual and superstitions of an Ayrshire lad and farmer’s son in a Christian community of 1785 rural Scotland. Some merry friendly country folks Together they convene, To burn their nits and pon their stocks, And haud their Halloween. Of course you could tell a lot about a person by the type of lice they had. And in his poem To A Louse it showed that the wee...

We all know how it works. The diddy team, in this case, Celtic, need to play at the top of their game, if they get a chance they’ve got to take it and our goalkeeper has got to play a blinder for us to win. We all know how it turned out. Stuart Armstrong missed a sitter in front of goal in the first five minutes, Kieran Tiernay had skipped past a few Bayern players and a great bending pass from James Forrest set it up. Craig Gordon wandered...

I’m familiar with the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival. I’m vain enough to imagine my work may appear in it someday, but the chance seem as remote as Rangers winning ten-in-a-row. Historic Scotland asked novelist whom they considered to be the top twelve crime writers in Scotland to write a story for them. The starting point was not character, or plot, but place. Easy-peasy for any writer or would-be writer and as reading is the engine of...

John Lewis-Stempel’s Where Poppies Blow is a hotchpot of different things. That’s usually a criticism, but in this case this is the books strength. Pre-war England is the baseline, a kind of Acardia to which the British soldier on the front’s mind often returns. Fuck off I say to that kind of crap. The majority of troops came from slum housing and if they were lucky enough to be in regular employments worked between 12 and 15 hours a day for 364...