Scotiana

I didn’t read Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale but I can’t think of a better quote than his to introduce my post today! 😉 We are at the end of January and there have been some unusually cold days here in Périgord Noir. Although I do love winter walks in the frost-white countryside, especially in our lovely corner of Dordogne or in Scotland where we spent a wonderful winter holiday in 2019-2020, one of my favourite pastimes at this time of the year is to read a good book by the fire… let the cold wind howl outside! 😉

« Give me a night by the fire, with a book in my hand ». My wish has been granted beyond all hope because I found not one but several books under our Christmas tree this year with, among them,  two very recently published novels by my favourite Scottish authors and a wonderfully illustrated book about Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his four inseparable and very talented fellow artists…

When it comes to winter reading, I really can’t resist mentioning and quoting again and again George Mackay Brown. GMB is one of the two authors who guided us through our first steps in Scotland and, of course, in Orkney. He is definitely first on my list of favourite Scottish authors, closely followed by Iain Crichton Smith. Both of them have written a number of very fine pages about winter in Scotland.

Christmas Stories George Mackay Brown Galileo Publishers 2020

From  the chapter entitled “Stars” in  GMB’s Chrismas Stories here’s a wonderful piece of prose poetry, a poetic meditation on the mystery of life, great writing deeply rooted in Orkney’s beautiful landscape, in its ancient and sacred culture.

“It had been a bright midwinter morning, but the crofter of Banks knew there would be snow before sunset.

He could smell snow in the wind (…)

Mr Lorne the schoolmaster walked among the standing stones. There was the sun circle, a wide ring of tall stones on the moor, between two lochs, and the moon circle, a smaller more intimate group. Apart from those two henges, there were individual stones set here and there, apparently at random, at the end of a field, above a quarry, on the tip of the sea loch… A field away was the green hump that had the tombs of the ancient dead inside it, a chamber hewn out of immense stones.

The setting sun on winter solstice illumined one grave through a long passage, on these few darkest days of the year.

‘What is the meaning of the stones?’ Mr Lorne wondered.

‘There must be some key to the mystery, that is not known to us any more. But to those vanished people, the stones were thirled intimately to sun and moon and stars. Is there a wisdom vanished from the earth? Is our life drained of an ancient precious meaning?’

Out there on the moor, Mr Lorne laughed to himself. (..)

A few flakes of snow drifted past; one lighted coldly on Mr Lorne’s lip and melted there at once, and was a drop of tasteless water.

‘And yet, said the school-master, ‘that snowflake is a congregation – a little city – of crystal hexagons. Consider: this island buried under an infinity of sixes, each like a hidden star in the storm!… Truly, the earth is full of most intriguing mysteries.’ (..)

A sixth and a seventh snowflake fell on mr Lorne’s spectacles and dimmed his seeing, somewhat.”

 

Orkney Ring of Brodgar light Orkney Maes Howe chambered cairn © Scotiana 2003

Another beautiful page from Iain Crichton Smith’s On the Island… a boy’s point of view with autobiographical elements… I do love this book (and its lovely cover).

IT WAS WINTER time and the snow was billowing round the cottage where Iain stayed with Kenneth and his mother, and the glittering light was almost dazzling. So attracted was Iain by the waves of snow and the light that he put on his wellingtons and went outside (..)

In front of him and around him he could see the houses of the village, with snow on their roofs and doors, as if they existed in a fairy tale. Blue smoke rose vaguely from the chimneys and was dissipated in the still air. In his wellingtons he sank deep into the snow, finding no road anywhere and once sinking deep into a ditch, but though for a while he was frightened by this, his main feeling was intense joy to see the world so white and clear and sparkling, so that he wanted to burst out singing. The houses were like ships rising out of an ocean of snow, and on the telegraph wires, themselves covered with snow, he saw little birds perched as if they were clutching their little wings about them for warmth. It was a magical world, its purity was overwhelming: it was as if some being had calmly in the night rid the whole world of its detail – roads, tin cans, planks – so that all that was visible was an undulating sea of snow, more solid – seeming than an ordinary sea, but almost as treacherous (..)

Plunging his wellingtons into the snow, Iain plodded on, just for the sake of the walking and not because he was going anywhere in particular. Sometimes he felt that he was losing his balance and that he would keel over like an overloaded ship into the waves of white. When he turned and faced the moor all he could see was uninterrupted mounds of snow, rising and falling like a ghostly Atlantic. The world had been made anew under a blue sky: in the secrecy of the night it had been totally transformed. And into this new world Iain plodded. (..) (On the Island – Iain Crichton Smith)

 

From the shelves: books with a childhood flavour…

There’s nothing I enjoy more than coming across a book I loved when I was young. Some covers are for me like Proust’s “little madeleine”. Whoever entered my library at that magical moment would find me sitting on the floor in the middle of a pile of books, immersed in my reading.

Recently, as I was unpacking a few boxes of books and arranging them on our new shelves I suddenly fell upon three of my favourite authors: Elizabeth Goudge, Daphné du Maurier and A.J. Cronin. All were packed in the same box, most of them in old pocket editions. It was like discovering a treasure chest!

I know that Archibald Joseph Cronin ((1896-1981) has been a very popular Scottish writer and I intend to devote a whole post to him soon but, today, I’ve chosen to open L’Arche dans la tempête d’Elizabeth Goudge. No connection however between this writer and Scotland or, at least, that’s what I thought when I picked up my dear old book…

Elizabeth Goudge has been a prolific and very popular English writer for years not only in Great-Britain but also in France to mention only my country. There have been many editions since the first publication of L’Arche dans la tempête but the lovely Livre de Poche edition shown above is the one that has always been in my library.

It’s interesting to compare the French and English editions: the titles (Island Magic/L’arche dans la tempête), the cover style… quite different indeed…

The way an adult reads is very different from that of a child. While children are more spontaneous in their reading and identify more easily with characters, adults – it seems to me now –  show a more in-depth reading, lingering on details, descriptions, trying to find out more about authors, delighting in introductions and notes. As far as I’m concerned, since I’ve become an insatiable fan of Scotland, I look for Scottish clues in every book and author I read. 😉 That’s how I recently discovered that Elizabeth Goudge’s second novel The Middle Window (1935) is set in Scotland.

The French title for The Middle Window is L’appel du passé.  I’ve dowloaded it in English and just bought the French edition in Livre de Poche.

Elizabeth Goudge The Middle Window Coward-McCann 1939

The book’s entire action is rooted in the reminiscence of a past life, the kind of extra-sensory experience that was not only much talked about at the time but also very familiar to the author. Scotland, which is often associated with this kind of phenomenon (ghosts – second sight…), in the Highlands more particularly if not exclusively, was the ideal setting for Elizabeth Goudge’s story all the more since she had experienced a memorable episode of this kind, “the moor terror”, during an unforgettable visit to the Isle of Skye, while walking alone through the island’s wild countryside.

L’appel du passé Elizabeth Goudge

Be Stuck in a Book with Simon ;-). His analysis of the book is quite interesting.

“The Middle Window is very definitely divided into halves. The first – set in the 1930s – concerns Judy, a London-dweller, whose life is changed when she looks into the three windows of an art gallery. Each displays a painting: one is a cityscape; one is a country cottage. In the middle window is a painting of the wilds of the Scottish highlands. For some reason, Judy believes that her life must follow the path indicated by one of those paintings. This isn’t the last time that the title of the novel will be significant, but Judy (as you may have guessed) opts for the middle window and the Scottish highlands.

Being in the happy position to be able to afford to take a ten week holiday, she advertises to rent a house there, and goes with her parents and her fiancée Charles to Glen Suilag. It’s a beautiful but neglected mansion in the middle of nowhere. There is no running water (which horrifies Judy’s mother, Lady Cameron) and little by way of local amusements. The only company seems to be a grumpy old servant, Angus – who greets Judy by saying “Mistress Judith, ye’ve coom back”.”

MacDonald Tartan

(..) the second half of the novel takes place in 1745. Here they are Judith and Ramand, who fall in love and marry only a day before Ramand is called away to fight in the Jacobite rising for Bonnie Prince Charlie. This is period of history I know very little about, so The Middle Window was surprisingly instructive, helping put in context lots of terms I’d heard but without knowledge.

In her autobiograhy The Joy of the Snow (1976),  I discovered the nature of the extra-sensory perception Elizabeth Goudge lived while on holiday on the Isle of Skye, an  experience which is described as the “moor terror”,

Chapter 7 : E.S.P*

I was in Skye when I had my only (I hope) experience of the moor terror. It was years ago when Skye was wilder than it is now. I was on a walking holiday with a friend, but she was tired that day and I climbed up alone to the great stretch of moorland behind the little hotel where we were staying. It was a long pull and itw as good to sit and rest. There was not a sign of a human habitation or of another human being. I felt alone in this magic world and gloried in the loneliness. For once it was not raining in Skye, it was a blue, still, warm day. I could see the Cuillins in the misty distance and the blue line of the sea was not far away. The bees hummed in the wild thyme but there was no other sound. I sat without moving for I do not know how long, sinking deeper and deeper into happiness and peace, and then suddenly there was a lound, shattering, double-rap behind me. It was like two mighty blows of a door-knocker in quick succession, but much lounder. I have sometimesbeen wakened from sleep at night into a state of momentary fear by this same double rap but this was infinitely more terrifying and it came from exactly behind me. I jumped to my feet and turned round but there was nothing to be seen ; only the empty miles of moorland quivering a little in the heat-haze. But the terror remained. I was not brave enough to stay, and lef the lovely place more precipitately than I have ever left anywhere.  I did not actually run but the pace was good and steady and did not slacken until I reached the homely little hotel beside the harbour down below. It was years before I spoke to anyone about this terrifying experience and then I was told casually, « That’s the moor terror. Everone has it at some time or other. »

*E.S.P : extra-sensory perception

In search of SCOTLAND…

And to begin with, back again to the mythical Scottish archipelago of St Kilda…

There’s something magical about islands but this is particularly true of the Scottish Isles, whether wild or inhabited. There are about 790 of them. The Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland, Skye, Mull, Arran, Islay… their very name makes you dream, especially if you’ve had the chance to visit them, but there is one – and few of us have had the chance to go there –  that has always made travellers dream more than the others. It has often been described as an Ultima Thule,  celebrated for its sublime and untamed beauty. Its name is St Kilda or at least it’s the name of an archipelago, Scotland’s most isolated one, situated 65 kilometers west of the islands of Lewis and Harris and Barra, in the middle of the Atlantic. Lying there, off the coast of the Outer Hebrides, incessant winds and a raging ocean have given this ancient volcano otherworldly reliefs.

St Kilda was continuously inhabited for two millennia or more, from the Bronze Age to the 20th century. In 2015, the first direct evidence of earlier Neolithic settlement emerged the islands were settled in the 4th millennium BC.

Today, I’ve chosen to focus on The Gravity of Feathers (2024), Andrew Fleming’s recent book about St Kilda, the St Kildans and Hirta, the island where the St Kildans had lived for centuries until their evacuation in 1930. This book had been highly recommended by Iain and I’m reading it together with St Kilda and the Wider World, Andrew Fleming’s former book about the islands, published in 2007.

St Kilda and the Wider World Andrew Fleming 2005

“This book, the first general history of the remote Hebridean archipelago of St Kilda to be published for over 30 years, has been ten years in the making. It is based partly on my own archaeological fieldwork (1994 to date) and has been inspired by a growing conviction that the conventional wisdom developed by mid to late twentieth- century commentators needs to be challenged.” (Andrew Fleming)

Press Review

I heartily invite you to discover St Kilda’s wild beauty, flora and fauna, with this wonderful guide, smiling and brimming with love and enthusiasm for these islands which make us dream but where life was very hard for the people who lived there…

map-of-st-kilda-postcard-h-std-cb- © Colin Baxter

North Berwick Scottish flags © 2007 Scotiana

There are three symbols that portray nationhood in Scotland that enshrines a long and ancient history to be proud of that is second to non. The Stone of Destiny, the Saltire Scotlands national flag, and the Honours of Scotland. I will tell the story of all three with the Stone of Destiny first, then the Saltire followed by the Honours of Scotland.

(Graeme Taylor Swith – Alb gu bràth)

Our quest for Scotland goes on…

Let us focus now on quite a different subject and one of the greatest mysteries in Scottish history: the Stone of Destiny.

Iain has worked and is still working hard on the subject which has made the headlines on more than one occasion and particularly when,  on the morning of Christmas Day at 05.00, a determined team of daring and courageous nationalist students led by Ian Hamilton, managed to steal the Stone of Destiny from under the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey. Un vrai coup de force!  Not only did Iain wrote a very lively and interesting post about this incredible story but he has also added many additional comments, very up-to-date information. He even managed to get in touch with Professor Sally Foster from Stirling University who is an expert, and a passionate one, on this fascinating subject.

many questions still remain and are still much talked about…

It’s a polemical topic, not to say political!  Here again Iain has been a great help to us when he has brought to our attention Nigel Tranter’s novel The Stone. Of course, as Iain underlines, it’s only fiction and very often reality surpasses fiction! But doesn’t historical fiction do a lot to light the way of history, at least in the sense that it draws our attention to important issues and prompts us to ask questions. It’s all the more true when this fiction is signed by Nigel Tranter, one of the greatest writers of historical novels and admirers of Sir Walter Scott…

Abbotsford Nigel Tranter exhibition author’s typewriter © 2006 Scotiana

I remember pretty well our visit to Abbotsford in June 2006, at a time when there was a very interesting exhibition on Nigel Tranter. We took a number of pictures then. Janice can’t have forgotten that it was the day we bought our paperback copy of Walter Scott’s Diary. A big volume we’ve opened so often it’s in tatters today! 😉

Abbotsford & Nigel Tranter © 2006 Scotiana

Let’s try to find out now Nigel Tranter’s own point of view about this historical question and his sources for his novel The Stone.

The article from which the following extracts are taken is Copyright by the Estate of Nigel Tranter. All rights reserved. It’s quite interesting to read.

“Tranter believes that his novel The Stone has caused more public interest than any other. Here is the background for that work and some of the mystery that surrounds the real Stone of Destiny. This article first appeared in The Scots Magazine for August 1960. Since then, of course, the so-called Stone of Scone has been returned from Westminster to Edinburgh Castle but that doesn’t answer the question, does it? This article is an example of its companions that you will find in SCOTTISH BOOKS including NIGEL TRANTER NEWS. — Rory Mor, Ed.”

“In my novel, The Stone, I did not so much work on research as research rather worked for me. The Stone of Destiny has been news for 700 years and may well be so for as long again. But which Stone of Destiny? There is the rub. Is the lump of red sandstone at present so jealously guarded in Westminster Abbey by electric eyes, chains and burglar alarms is the Stone of Destiny at all? Or just a 700-year-old phony, a piece of local Scone scenery that Edward the Hammer of the Scots took south with him when he could not lay hands on the real stone in 1296ă and which Ian Hamilton and his student friends abstracted in 1950, believing that it would be more fittingly kept in Scotland ă and thereby set Scotland Yard, Scotland and much of England, by the ears? And if so, where is the other, the original, the ancient Liath Fail, talisman of Scotland’s kings, pillow of Jacob, St. Columba’s altar, holy relic of our ancestors?”

What made me believe, you may ask, that the Westminster Stone, the one that I had got myself involved with and taken certain risks for, was not in fact what it seemed to be, not the original? Well, strangely enough, two factors ă common sense (if I may be allowed to claim a modicum of such which I agree is debateable); and the testimony of no less official and resounding an authority than the late H.M. Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Scotland. The first, common sense, told me, after due reflection, that the Stone which had such a long and stirring history, had been carried about through the mists of antiquity had been described as ‘the marble chair,’ St. Columba’s portable altar, Princess Scota’s throne, etc., was not likely to be a mere shapeless lump of soft red sandstone, devoid of all grace, ornamentation or suitably enduring qualities — for of course it did in fact break down the middle when it was taken out of the Coronation Chair at Westminster. The ancients did not do things that way.

Also, would its original official guardian, the Abbot of Scone, the sort of Archbishop of Canterbury for Scotland, have supinely allowed Edward to come up to Scone and steal the precious relic, without at least some attempt to hide it? It was Scotland’s most sacred treasure, after all, and the Abbot had plenty of warning of Edward’s intention to take it. That I cannot believe.

Expert Testimony to the Fore

Then I read the treatise on the subject by Dr. James S. Richardson, late Inspector of Ancient Monuments, and an expert if ever there was one, who convinced me once and for all that the original Stone was quite otherwise to the one I had been mixed up with. The scholarly manuscript of Dr. James S. Richardson, late inspector of Ancient Monuments, certainly convinced me that the original Stone was quite otherwise from the one I had been recently mixed up with.

Nigel Tranter’s sketch of the Stone

Briefly, his monograph pointed out that all early chroniclers described the Stone as elaborately carved and decorative (whether marble or not), durable and handsome ă whereas the soft red sandstone of the Westminster one, he discovered, is identical with that of the local building material, almost certainly out of a Scone quarry. Moreover, antique sacred stones were nearly always made of meteorites, hard and capable of a hard polish — which might have been called marble by chroniclers. Then, he pointed out, ancient Great Seals of the early Scots Kings, up until 1296, all depicted the Stone as of a different shape and size from the present one. These seals were meticulously accurate in detail; surely they wou1d not all make the same mistake, over a period of centuries! All of them showed the Stone to be of seat height, almost as high as it is broad; whereas the Westminster one is merely 11 inches high, though 26 inches broad. The sketch above was done by Tranter for his book, Nigel Tranter’s Scotland, Richard Drew Publishing, Glasgow:1981.

Dr. Richardson’s research satisfied me, at any rate, that King Edward had either had a sham Stone palmed off on him in 1296, or else had quarried one himself to take south ă when he could not lay his hands on the real one ă a subterfuge certainly not past that unscrupulous character, since a Scottish Stone he must have!

Nigel Tranter The Stone Hodder & Stoughton 1958 1st edition

Certain experts and archaeologists have long held that the famed Stone of Destiny, now under electronic guard in the Coronation Chair at Westminster Abbey, is a 700-year-old fake, being merely a great lump of red sandstone quarried at Scone to deceive Edward I, Hammer of the Scots, who stole it, while the true Scottish Coronation Stone was secretly buried somewhere in the Scone district of Perthshire.

«When an Oxford University research team decided that they had discovered where the genuine Stone was buried and sent an expedition to Scotland to dig it up, violent repercussions were bound to result, and sparks to fly. After the world-famous upheaval of several years ago, what might happen in Scotland and in London challenged the imagination. A young and impoverished Scots baronet decided to take a hand and, in partnership with a burly Glasgow ex-riveter and a local farmer’s daughter, set out to ensure that this Stone should remain in Scotland at all costs.

« This is the theme of a fast-moving, highly realistic and possible adventure story by Nigel Tranter who did not remain wholly uninvolved in a part of the Stone drama of some years ago. The inevitable fireworks and high jinks are not entirely concerned with ancient masonry. »

Front of the 1st Edition

« Is this the Stone that finally returned to Scotland in 1996 and now rests within the ancient walls of Edinburgh Castle… ? »

(From the back cover of the 1997 Paperback reprint)

Our investigation goes on with a very interesting video I’ve just discovered on You Tube.

Is The Stone of Destiny Real? Was it hidden by patriotic Scots. Scottish history tour guide, Bruce Fummey gives five reasons the Stone of Destiny might not be real.

I’ve watched with much interest Bruce’s video and I also bought David Maule’s book  The Mysterious Case of the Stone of Destiny. I look forward to reading it but as the book won’t be arriving here until February, I can’t tell you more today …

The number of comments Bruce received for his video testifies not only to its popularity but also to the interest the subject generates in Scotland.

Colin Black writes :

“I grew up in the local, its of Scone Palace and can confirm the sandstone is local to that area and found in local peoples garden walls, outbuildings and houses. Some might actually be from the ruined Abbey. On a recent visit to Scone Palace to educate my grandson on Scottish history the guide told us that there are various descriptions of the original stone but nowhere on the planet is it described as sandstone. There are medieval bale seals depicting the stone which show it needed six people to transport it and was saddle shaped with carvings.The sandstone block in Perth museum clearly shows signs of being worked on and abandoned. This is why it is referred to as the Cludgie Stone 😉 by Scots.
The coronation stone used for hundreds of years at Westminster was and is the biggest hoax and joke in history. I am sure the monarchy knew and still know this and get crowned through gritted teeth, whilst those in the know in Scotland sit and smirk.”

The Mysterious Case of the Stone of Destiny David Maule 2024

Meticulously researched, The Mysterious Case of the Stone of Destiny is a gripping historical whodunnit. David Maule leaves no stone unturned as he casts a forensic eye over the evidence. His fact-finding process – investigating its origins and background, scrutinising the witnesses and identifying possible suspects – comes to some surprising conclusions. Whether you agree with his verdict about the Stone’s final resting place, this incisive and entertaining inquiry is a must-read for those interested in Scottish history and for lovers of historical mysteries.

I would not end this part of my post dedicated to the Stone mystery without quoting the very interesting article published in 2025 by Graeme Taylor Smith in Alba Gu Brath, his very attractive blog. Read the article, look at the blog. It’s the best way to get an idea of what’s involved 😉

Some historians would have us believe that King Edward of England had taken the sacred Stone of the Scots in 1296, to symbolize the extinction of the Kingdom of Scots, back to Westminster with him. However, Edward was outwitted by the Scone Monks, after all they had time to hide the true Stone and replace it with the unremarkable block of sand stone from a local quarry, which was the stone that Edward had taken. Geologists proved that the stone taken by Edward I of England, is of “lower Old Red Sandstone”, which was quarried in the vicinity of Scone. Doubts over the authenticity of the stone have existed for a long time and there is more evidence regarding the doubts. The fact that the historical descriptions of the stone do not match the present stone that was held in Westminster and now Edinburgh Castle, are totally different. The Treaty of Edinburgh – Northampton in 1328 when Edward III recognised Scotland’s independence. Side letters accompanying the Treaty saw the Bruce being promised the return of the Stone, and a written order from Edward III to the Abbot of Westminster confirmed that arrangement, though its removal was opposed by a London mob and it remained at Westminster. That King Robert the Bruce never pressed too hard for its return suggests he was possibly not too bothered about getting back a counterfeit.

In the book “Nigel Tranter’s Scotland”, by the historical novelist Nigel Tranter, the author gives a sketch of how he thinks the true Stone may have looked, with its Celtic carvings. He was never convinced that the Coronation Stone in Westminster Abby, now in Edinburgh Castle, was the true Stone of Destiny and the one purloined by Edward I is a 722 – year-old fake. The author also believed that King Robert of the Scots was almost certainly crowned seated on the true Stone of Destiny. Bruce was most concerned that all should be done in fullest traditional fashion to up hold his Kingship. Tranter believed that King Edward of England had been duped over the Stone, so the real one was still in Scotland, very different, as described by the ancient chroniclers, from the lump of hewn sandstone that was under the Coronation Chair in London. It is also a know fact that Edward I must have realised he had been tricked by the Scone Monks, for the year after he had taken the fake Stone, his army was back at Scone where they completely tore down the Abby brick by brick as if they were trying to find something, and its believed that a number of the Monks were tortured to death.

So, finally le mystère reste entier 😉 A few more sleepless nights for Iain to investigate 😉

UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE… MORE GREAT BOOKS !

And now it’s time for the magic moment, when everyone discovers and unwraps their Christmas gifts, lovingly chosen by those they love. Once again I was very spoiled by Santa Claus!

I first discovered a wonderful, beautifully illustrated book about Charles Rennie Mackintosh, my favourite Scottish artist… we’ve followed his trail in Glasgow and in the South of France.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Art of the Four Roger Billcliffe 2022

The Four, also known as The Spook School, are a group of Glasgow artists, among the best known in the wider Glasgow School circle.

Within the Glasgow School, they asserted their style, defined by influences from Celtic imagery, the Arts & Crafts movement and Japonism. Their works met with widespread success in the modern art world throughout Europe. The Four had a major impact on the definition of Art Nouveau.

The collective is made up of 4 members:

• Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
• Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh, who married Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
• Frances MacDonald, Margaret’s sister,
• James Herbert MacNair, Frances MacDonald’s husband.

The May Queen – Margaret Macdonald – 1900 (Glasgow) © Jean-Pierre Dalbéra

The May Queen from the Willow Tea Rooms was painted in 1900 by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. This painting, along with Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s “The Wassail”, was exhibited in the Secession pavilion in Vienna in November 1900. It most likely influenced Gustav Klimt when he painted his “Beethoven” frieze.

The Wassail – Charles Rennie Mackintosh – 1900 (Glasgow) © Jean-Pierre Dalbéra

The Wassail from the Ladies’ Luncheon Room Ingram Street Tea Rooms, was painted in 1900 par Charles Rennie Mackintosh. This painting, along with Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh’s “The May Queen”, was exhibited in the Secession pavilion in Vienna in November 1900. It most likely influenced Gustav Klimt when he painted his “Beethoven” frieze.

Sauchiehall Street The Willow Tearoom Mackintosh Sign © 2007 Scotiana

I was very happy to find the last thriller by Peter May, the great French-Scottish author… it was the French edition and I’ve dowloaded the English version since 😉

Cameron Brodie is a Glasgow cop. A lonely widower who, like everyone else, is suffering the effects of climate change. With the disruption of ocean currents, Scotland has become a near-polar land in the middle of the 21st century. When his boss asks him to travel to the Highlands, where the body of an investigative journalist has been found in an ice tunnel, Brodie decides to accept this unlikely mission. His doctor has just told him that he has only six months to live and that going to Kinlochleven is his only chance to see Addie, his only daughter, with whom he has had no contact for ten years. And it was Addie who discovered Charles Younger’s body.
In this gripping novel, Peter May immerses us in landscapes as grandiose as they are disturbing. What dangerous secrets lie hidden in these remote, inhospitable mountains, leading to the murder of a man with strange lung lesions? What kind of dialogue will a father and daughter, separated by years of misunderstanding, be able to establish? With masterly skill, Peter May carries his reader along in a maelstrom of twists and emotions.

Peter May’s latest book, the 26th, as he explains in the interview below, was published in English in 2023 and in French in 2024! Quite an exploit! In addition to being a great thriller, the writing of this book is his way of taking action to defend the environment. At a time when the leader of the world’s most powerful country has decided to leave the Paris Agreements, there are still people who desperately continue to fight against global warming…

Press Review

To cut a long story short :

On coming to power,  in january 2017, Donald Trump decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, as his campaign platform called for. An exit that took a long time to achieve. As the newspaper Le Monde points out, the American president “announced that he wanted to leave in 2017. Nevertheless, procedural rules required him to wait three years from the text’s entry into force – which occurred on November 4, 2016 – before being able to take official steps, which he did on November 4, 2019.”

The decision was reversed in 2020 by Trump’s successor Joe Biden but the United States, which rejoined the Paris Agreement in 2020, are expected to leave it again.

Crime writer Peter May envisions a Glasgow ravaged by climate change in his latest thriller. Speaking to STV’s Scotland Tonight, Peter May said he felt so frustrated by the lack of action at the COP26 climate conference that he was compelled to write his latest novel. A Winter Grave is set 30 years in the future in a Scotland heavily impacted by climate change. “We all sit and watch this happening – politicians doing nothing, our home, the place we live, our planet, going to the dogs, and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s why I felt – really frustrated. What can I do?”, he said.

The Perfect Passion Company Alexander McCall Smith 2024

To  end my post on a lighter note, here’s the first volume of a very promising new series by Alexander McCall Smith, one of the most prolific and popular Scottish writers.

Santa knows my tastes pretty well and I was really pleased to discover under the Christmas tree not only a new book by Alexander McCall Smith whom I love very much, but also the start of a new series (wow, so many more books to read still!). I already have a large number of Mr Smith’s books in my library and in different genres.

I’ve only read the first few pages The Perfect Passion Company yet, but I’ve already rediscovered in it the good-natured humor and focus on the positive side of life that we can find in  most of this author’s book.  With its cheerful, colorful cover, this book has found its place on my bedside table and The Perfect Passion is  perfect bedtime reading as I like to fall asleep in a relaxed mood. A great way to lift your spirits at the end of the day, after hearing all the bad news that arrives daily from all over the world…

Last but not least why not follow the guide through the streets of Edinburgh that this author knows so well… as we prepare our Itinerary 10 in Scotland, I wonder if I won’t be rereading Mr Smith’s books set in Scotland’s beautiful capital: 44 Scotland series,  Isabel Dalhousie series,  (for those taking place in Botswana, we’ll see later;-))

As you can see, I’ll have no shortage of good books to read in the following weeks, which is great, because winter is far from over 😉

I hope I’ve inspired you to read some of the books in my winter selection…

Bonne lecture.

Á bientôt. 😉

Mairiuna

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