Literary Scotland

A Traveller’s Guide to
60 places to
visit in Scotland
associated with writers from
Shetland to Ecclefechan
Alan Riach
in association with
VisitScotland and ASLS
Left Looking over to the statue of Sir Walter Scott below the Scott Monument, Princes Street, Edinburgh.
Literary Scotland:
A Traveller’s Guide
Scotland is rich in its distinctive national
literature and there are innumerable places to visit
associated with great authors and their works.
Writers’ homes, birthplaces, graves, locations
vividly described in novels and poems, theatres
and writers’ museums, libraries and visitor centres,
are to be found in almost every corner of the
country. Scotland’s landscapes and seascapes
described in literature bring the reality of where
and how people live into a vibrant presence.
Many memorable characters in fiction and poems
Front cover photos:
were based on people whose homes, favoured Top left A shelf of leather bound
volumes of the Parochial Registers
places or graves may be visited. This is a list of for Argyll at New Register House,
Edinburgh.
a selection of places to visit. There are many Top right Standing Stones of
Stenness, Orkney.
more that might be added, so this is no more Middle left The sign showing a portrait
of Robert Burns above the doorway of
than a sampler. We’re starting from the top, the the Globe Inn, Dumfries.
Bottom right Writer Iain Banks
far North, where Scotland rubs ocean-shoulders beneath the iconic Forth Bridge.
with Norway and Iceland, and we work our way Back cover photos:
Top right Forth Rail Bridge in the mist,
south to the Borders, where England and Scotland from South Queensferry.
Bottom left Memorial in the form
become contested territories, the Debatable Lands. of a giant stylised metal book to
Hugh MacDiarmid.
But from Shetland to Selkirk, there is a coherent
Photography: Paul Tomkins,
story in these diverse locations. VisitScotland; Scottish Viewpoint
1
How to use this guide
This little book is divided into three sections. In the first, literary locations are described
under the headings of thirteen geographical areas in Scotland:
1 Shetland (locations 1–2) p4

2 Orkney (locations 3–5) p5
3 The Outer Hebrides (locations 6–8) p7
4 Highlands and Moray (locations 9–16) p8
5 Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire (locations 17–19) p12
6 Perthshire, Angus and Dundee (locations 20–27) p14
7 Argyll, the Isles, Loch Lomond, Stirling and the Trossachs (locations 28–34) p18
8 The Kingdom of Fife (locations 35–37) p22
9 Edinburgh and the Lothians (locations 38–42) p24
10 The Clyde Valley and Glasgow (locations 43–48) p30
11 Ayrshire and Arran (locations 49–52) p34
12 Dumfries and Galloway (locations 53–55) p37
13 Scottish Borders (locations 56–60) p40
Under each of these area headings are listed a number of specific locations, each associated
with an individual writer or writers, including landscapes or buildings described in novels
and poems, places where you will find a museum, library or visitor attraction devoted to one
or more major author. Each of these locations is numbered from 1 to 60, although in some
cases, such as the entries for Edinburgh and Glasgow, there are many places listed under the
one number.
In the second section is a list of the authors named in the first section, with a brief note about
some of their major features of interest, and why they are worth reading. Some will be more
familiar than others, so major figures like Burns, Scott and MacDiarmid may be seen in the
geography of the national imagination alongside many other writers of different range and
calibre.
In the final section of the book is a map of Scotland on which these numbers are printed,
showing clearly where the locations are that may be visited.
All go into a rich and evolving fabric, and, to emphasise the point once again, this is no more
than a preliminary sample of the writers and literary locations to be discovered in Scotland.
2
Acknowledgements
Thanks to James Alison and Ronald Renton for advising on individual entries and to Mark
Smith for suggestions for the first entry on Shetland. Thanks to Duncan Jones for seeing
the work through long permutation and finally into print. And thanks to Jenni Steele of
VisitScotland for her support and engagement with the whole project, and to VisitScotland
for helping to make such vital information as may be found in Scottish literature more widely
available to both residents and visitors to Scotland.
Note
While every effort has been made to be accurate in the descriptions of the places listed here,
some may be closed for refurbishment or temporarily difficult to access for various reasons.
To avoid disappointment, please check on the internet or with the local authority or the
institution in question directly before making your visit. Some of the places noted are in
private ownership and may be opened to visitors only by prior arrangement.
Scotland is also home to many literary festivals, from the Edinburgh International Book
Festival (the word’s largest) to small local events, each with a distinctive character given by
its particular location. These include regular festivals at Wigtown, St Andrews, Glasgow,
Aberdeen, Dundee, Leith and the Three Harbours and many others. Information about such
festivals can be found on individual websites, and through the websites of VisitScotland, the
Association for Scottish Literary Studies and Creative Scotland.
Above The Edinburgh International Book Festival, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh. 3

1 Shetland
1 shetland 2 WHALSaY
On the main island of Shetland, there are a On the island of Whalsay, Hugh
number of literary locations worth visiting. MacDiarmid (C.M. Grieve), his wife Valda
Mavis Grind is one of the most narrow and their young son Michael lived from 1933
points of the isles and, with a very strong to 1942. The house they lived in is now a
arm, you can supposedly stand in the North hostel, The Grieves Bod. The treeless terrain,
Sea and throw a stone into the Atlantic. stony beaches and tidal inlets of Whalsay are
It is one of the locations in William J. Tait’s the land and seascapes of the central poem
magnificent poem ‘A Day Atween Waddirs’. of MacDiarmid’s career, ‘On a Raised Beach’
The museum at Dunrossness is a crofthouse and inform many other fine poems of this
restored to its nineteenth-century condition period including ‘Diamond Body: In a Cave
and is the setting for Stella Sutherland’s of the Sea’, ‘From the War with England’ and
poem ‘At da Croft Museum’. Both poems ‘Shetland Lyrics’ as well as numerous stories,
are in A Shetland Anthology (1998), edited sketches and passages in his autobiography,
by John J. Graham and Laurence I. Graham. Lucky Poet (1943): ‘I was better with the
The township of Sandness in the extreme sounds of the sea / Than with the voices of
west of the island was home to poet and men / And in desolate and desert places /
novelist Robert Alan Jamieson and the I found myself again …’
subject of his book of poems Nort Atlantik
Drift (2007), while the oil terminal at Sullom
Voe is the subject of his novel Thin Wealth
(1986) and features in Ian Rankin’s ‘Rebus’
crime novel Black & Blue (1997). Sumburgh
Head is vividly described in Walter Scott’s
novel The Pirate (1822) and Eric Linklater’s
novel The Dark of Summer (1956) is partly
set in Shetland.
4 Top A boat in the red sunrise in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Shetland. Bottom Croft House Museum, Shetland.
Orkney 2
3 orkney
St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall is one of the away: Stromness, where 3 Mayburn Court
greatest buildings in the northern islands was for many years GMB’s home. There is
of Scotland, architecture that does justice a blue plaque on the wall now. He regularly
to its location. The great literary work worked quietly through the mornings in
of these regions is The Orkneyinga Saga this house, with a card pinned to his door
(c.1200) and in the modern period, the best asking not to be disturbed, then often walked
introduction to the Orkney archipelago through the small town for his shopping,
is George Mackay Brown’s An Orkney enjoying meeting visitors or friends for a beer
Tapestry (1969), a collection of stories, in the nearby Braes Hotel. The sea is visible
poems, dialogues, portraits and sketches from his front door and the small streams
giving a multi-faceted picture of the islands, that run down the slope behind Stromness
their people and history. George Mackay give a murmuring music after rainfall. GMB
Brown’s (or GMB for short) novel Magnus wrote hauntingly of Stromness repeatedly in
(1973) dramatises the life of the saint. his fiction and poems, calling it Hamnavoe.
The other main town of Orkney is not far He is buried at the nearby Warbeth Cemetery,
Above St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney. 5
2 Orkney
having chosen the words on his stone: ‘Carve journalism are packed with affectionate
the runes, then be content with silence’. details and descriptions of these and other
The Standing Stones of Stenness, the Ring Orkney places: Letters from Hamnavoe (1975),
of Brodgar, Maes Howe and Skara Brae are Under Brinkie’s Brae (1979), Rockpools and
all prehistoric monuments described in many Daffodils: An Orcadian Diary, 1979–1991
of his short stories, poems and sketches. (1992) and posthumously, The First Wash of
He wrote regularly for the local newspaper, Spring (2006).
The Orcadian, and his collections of
The Orkney island of Wyre

provided Muir with idyllic
memories of childhood
which were heightened
and intensified in symbolic
significance when he
encountered the squalor
and poverty of industrial
Glasgow.
5 orkney
Edwin Muir spent his childhood on his
father’s farm, The Bu, on the Orkney island of
Wyre. It provided him with idyllic memories
of childhood which were heightened and
intensified in symbolic significance when
4 orkney he encountered the squalor and poverty
of industrial Glasgow, where he saw
Merkister Hotel, by the Loch of Harray, members of his family die, and later when
before it became a hotel, was Merkister he experienced the horrors of Fascism rising
House, the home of novelist Eric Linklater, throughout Europe. The island and farming
who is buried beside his wife Marjorie at St world he came from strengthens the vision in
Michael’s Churchyard nearby. Orkney is the poems such as ‘The Horses’ and is an implicit
scene of episodes in his novels White-Maa’s counterpoint to the Cold War terrors of
Saga (1929) and Magnus Merriman (1934). ‘The Good Town’.
6 Above Stenness Standing Stones, Stenness, Orkney.
The Outer Hebrides 3
6 isle of barra
At Cille Bharra Cemetery, Eoligarry is the
grave of Compton Mackenzie, author of
the famous Whisky Galore! (1947) and the
less well-known but far finer novel, Thin Ice
(1956). His home was above the airport-
beach at Eoligarry.
7 isle of harris
In the south transept of St Clement’s Church,
Rodel is the grave of Mary Macleod /
Mairi Nighean Alasdair Ruaidh, poet,
composer and singer of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Other Gaelic writers
from the island include the religious poet
John Morrison / Iain Gobha. Luskentyre
is the location of the cemetery mentioned
by Norman MacCaig in his ferociously
angry poem, ‘Aunt Julia’ and Scalpay is the
island of his mother and his mother’s people,
described in the poem ‘Return to Scalpay’.
A fond account of a 1930s Harris childhood
is in Finlay J. MacDonald’s three collections
of memoirs, Crowdie and Cream (1982),
Crotal and White (1983), and The Corncrake
8 isle of lewis,
stornoway
and the Lysander (1985).
On the outskirts of the town is Bayble,

childhood home of poet and novelist Iain At Cille Bharra Cemetery,
Crichton Smith (52 Upper Bayble); poet Eoligarry is the grave of
Derick Thomson was born here and both
Compton Mackenzie, author
attended the Nicholson Institute, the famous
Stornoway school. Both have numerous of the famous Whisky Galore!
poems about Lewis and its people, in each of
their volumes of Collected Poems.
Left Tangasdale beach, Barra. Right Mirror in Politician pub, Haun, Eriskay. 7
4 Highlands and Moray
9
Arisaig
In the cemetery of Arisaig Church is the
grave of Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair
(Alexander MacDonald) perhaps the
greatest Gaelic poet of the 18th century.
A carved image in the stone of a sailing ship
or ‘birlinn’ may be linked to his greatest poem,
‘The Birlinn of Clanranald’.
10 corrieshalloch
gorge
The waterfall here (there is a viewpoint
from a suspension bridge) is the subject of
an astonishing poem by Norman MacCaig,
‘Falls of Measach’, which begins: ‘The wind
was basins slopping over. / The river plunged
into its ravine / Like coins into a stocking.
The day / Was like the buzzard on the
pine.’ As a profound exercise in studying the
relation between a work of literature and the
specific location from which it arises, this
place is worth visiting with the poem in mind,
and, typically MacCaig, the poem is deeply
revealing of the relation between language,
imagination and specific location. In fact,
MacCaig’s poems deserve a whole gazetteer
devoted to their locations. Though he was
a teacher in Edinburgh, he spent as many
summers as he could in Lochinver and the
area around Assynt. Andrew Greig’s At the
The waterfall here is the Loch of the Green Corrie (2010) is an extended
subject of an astonishing memoir centred on only one of MacCaig’s
poem by Norman MacCaig favoured places, and Greig’s expedition to
discover it for himself.
8 Above Corrieshalloch Gorge, Inverness-shire.
Highlands and Moray 4
11 Cromarty
Hugh Miller’s Cottage is the birthplace of
Hugh Miller, geologist, naturalist, pioneer
ecologist, with collections of his geological
specimens, manuscripts of his writings
and personal belongings on display. Miller
might be considered in the company of
Carlyle, Ruskin, Matthew Arnold and J.S.
Mill as moral and social thinkers of the late
nineteenth century, the Victorian Sages.
12 Culloden moor
Scene of the final massacre of the soldiers
supporting Prince Charles Edward Stuart
Dunbeath and other coastal
in 1746, by ‘Butcher’ Cumberland and his
towns here were home Hanoverian troops. This is the culminating
to large fishing fleets – event (not described) in Sir Walter
now almost gone, but vividly Scott’s first novel, Waverley (1814), as it is
described in Gunn’s epic (horrifically detailed) in James Hogg’s under-
rated novel The Three Perils of Woman (1823).
novel The Silver Darlings. It features in numerous literary works, and in
one of the most memorable of Iain Crichton
Smith’s poems, ‘Culloden and After’ from his
13 dunbeath collection Thistles and Roses (1961).
This was the favoured territory of the novelist

Neil Gunn and Dunbeath Heritage Centre
is sited in Gunn’s old school. The Terrace,
Gunn’s birthplace, has a memorial plaque
on the wall and there is a powerful sculpture
of Kenn and the salmon from the novel
Highland River (1937) at Dunbeath harbour.
Dunbeath and other coastal towns here were
home to large fishing fleets – now almost
entirely gone, but vividly described in Gunn’s
epic novel The Silver Darlings (1941). There
is also a Gunn Memorial Viewpoint above
Dingwall near Strathpeffer.
Top The plaque on Hugh Miller’s cottage, Cromarty. Bottom Kenn and the salmon, from the book, Highland River by Neil Gunn. 9
4 Highlands and Moray
It is one of the most
important poems of the
twentieth century and
visiting the place can help
you understand its qualities
of haunting, loss and
affirmation: ‘the dead
have been seen alive.’
14 ISLE OF RAASAY
Sorley MacLean’s poem ‘Hallaig’ evokes the cleared township of that name and is engraved
on a monument overlooking this spot. It is one of the most important poems of the twentieth
century and visiting the place can help you understand its qualities of haunting, loss and
affirmation: ‘the dead have been seen alive.’
10 Above Looking over to Raasay and Skye from the Pass of the Cattle.
Highlands and Moray 4
15 ISLE OF SKYE, BRAES
The home of Sorley MacLean and his wife looking around as if over all of Scotland, and
René was at 6 Penniechorrain, Braes, and on concluding that the Inaccessible Pinnacle –
the hill to the right of the road on the way among the highest points of the range – ‘is
to the small cluster of houses there, there is not inaccessible’: in other words, the highest
a monument to the Battle of the Braes, with ambition needs to be encouraged if Scotland
words by MacLean, commemorating the and the people of Scotland are to fulfil their
confrontation in the 1880s, that began the potential. In his long poem-sequence, ‘The
reclaiming of land rights for the crofters in Cuillin’ (1939), Sorley MacLean evokes the
the face of absentee landowners. The great mountains as a physical reality he climbed
poet of the crofters’ battle for land rights and knew intimately, but also as a permanent
was Mary Macpherson, known as Mairi symbol of hope and aspiration, rising above
Mhor nan Oran, Big Mary of the Songs, the European threat of Fascism he felt when
partly because of the magnitude of her voice, he wrote the poem, but also, beyond the
vision and moral authority, partly because innumerable tragedies and human failures of
of her girth. The great mountain range of history, including the Highland Clearances,
Skye is the Cuillins: Hugh MacDiarmid rising ‘on the other side of sorrow’. James
describes himself in his poem ‘Direadh Hunter’s book, On the Other Side of Sorrow
III’ (published in his 1943 autobiography, (1995) takes a broad survey of poets and
Lucky Poet) sitting on the summit of one of writers on the Highland Clearances, writing
them, Sgurr Alasdair, lighting his pipe and in Gaelic, Scots and English.
16 strathnaver
This is one of the most beautiful and saddest nearby. The landowners’ factor Patrick Sellar
valleys in the world. Its emptiness is laden is vilified in memory for his brutality and
with the sense of missing people, more hypocrisy. The Clearances are central in the
than a century after their evictions. Donald novels Butcher’s Broom (1934) by Neil Gunn,
MacLeod describes what happened in And the Cock Crew (1945) by Fionn Mac
his memoir of the Highland Clearances, Colla and Consider the Lilies (1968) by Iain
Gloomy Memories (1857), the title an ironic Crichton Smith and in Crichton Smith’s
reference to the American author Harriet poem ‘Clearances’, in Norman MacCaig’s
Beecher Stowe’s Sunny Memories of Foreign poems ‘A Man in Assynt’ and ‘Two Thieves’,
Lands (1854), MacLeod contrasting the and in John McGrath and the 7:84 Theatre
conditions Stowe enjoyed as a guest of the Company’s play, The Cheviot, the Stag and the
Duke and Duchess of Sutherland at the Black, Black Oil (1973).
lavish Dunrobin Castle which can be seen
11
5 Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire
17 aberdeen
In front of the city Grammar School, there
is a boldly assertive statue by the poet,
sculptor and cultural activist Pittendrigh
MacGillivray of Lord Byron, who attended
the school till the age of ten. MacGillivray’s
work is similar to that of his great
contemporary Rodin. It was T.S. Eliot who
insisted that Byron should best be considered
as a Scottish poet, and in Don Juan, Cantos
10–11, Byron himself wrote: ‘… I am half a
Scot by birth, and bred / A whole one, and
my heart flies to my head, // As Auld Lang
Syne brings Scotland, one and all, / Scotch
plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear
arbuthnott
streams, / The Dee, the Don, Balgounie’s
18
Brig’s blackwall, / All my boy feelings, all
my gentler dreams / Of what I then dreamt, Lewis Grassic Gibbon ( James Leslie
clothed in their own pall, / Like Banquo’s Mitchell), the author of the novel Sunset Song
offspring.’ Byron’s poignant ‘Dark Lochnagar’ (1932), grew up on the croft of Hillhead of
is one of the loveliest evocations of the Seggett and the farm of Bloomfield, and is
landscape of youth. John Barbour, author buried in Arbuthnott Church, where an
of The Bruce (c.1376) was Archdeacon of open book in sculpted stone in the corner
St Machar’s Cathedral, Aberdeen, and there of the cemetery carries the words, ‘For I will
is a memorial to him here. Writers have give you the morning star …’. The Howe o’
often been in two minds about Aberdeen, the Mearns informs the novel, a vast, rolling,
its prosperity, its granitic architecture and farming landscape extending all around this
the stereotyped self-satisfaction and alleged area, with a sense of the cold North Sea
frugality of its citizens. This ambivalence is nearby and the presence of the priorities
notable in Alexander Scott’s challenging of seasonal change everywhere palpable.
descriptive poem Heart of Stone composed to Of the two novels succeeding Sunset Song
complement Alan Daiches’ photography for in the trilogy A Scots Quair, Cloud Howe
a television programme in 1965. (1933) is based on the town of Stonehaven
and Grey Granite (1934) blends elements of
Writers have often been in Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow. The Lewis
two minds about Aberdeen. Grassic Gibbon Centre is a museum, café
and bookshop devoted to his work.
12 Above Looking up to the spire of the Town House in the centre of Aberdeen.
Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire 5
19 slains castle and cruden bay
The Irish writer Bram Stoker wrote Dracula (1897), while staying at the Kilmarnock Arms
Hotel at Cruden Bay; in the novel, some of the rougher characters (ostensibly English locals
in Whitby) speak broad Scots. Nearby Slains Castle, which was visited by Samuel Johnson
and James Boswell in 1773, when it was inhabited, provided Stoker with a model for his
Gothic imagination, as did nearby Whinnyfold, where he also stayed. Stoker set other fiction
including The Mystery of the Sea (1902) in and around this area. But it is the ruined Slains
Castle that haunts the memory. As Dracula says, ‘My revenge is just begun. I spread it over
centuries and time is on my side.’
It is the ruined Slains Castle

that haunts the memory.
As Dracula says,
‘My revenge is just begun.
I spread it over centuries
and time is on my side.’
Top New Slains Castle – thought to be the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Bottom An aerial view of Cruden Bay. 13
6 Perthshire, Angus and Dundee
20 arbroath 21 kirriemuir
It was from Arbroath Abbey that one of Here is J.M. Barrie’s birthplace, a museum
the most eloquent and passionate political with manuscripts and mementoes from
documents in history was issued in 1320, his long involvement with the theatre and
the Declaration of Arbroath. Drafted by his classic plays Quality Street (1901), The
Bernard de Linton, Abbot of Arbroath, Admirable Crichton (1902) and Peter Pan
the Declaration defines one of the prevailing (1904) – the latter commemorated with a
myths of Scottish identity and shows statue in the town square. The little building
prophetic affinities with the American in the narrow streets of the town, surrounded
Declaration of Independence of 1776. by the open fields of wide farming landscapes,
There is a fine sculpture at the entrance to gives a strong impression of an imagination
Arbroath by David Annand, showing the bursting to escape its material confinement.
Abbot, the King and the Declaration being
held aloft. The Declaration proposes that the
authority of the King lies in the sovereignty
of his people and that he cannot govern
without their consent: ‘for, as long as one
hundred of us remain alive, never will we
in any conditions be brought under English
rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor
honours that we are fighting, but for freedom –
for that alone, which no honest man gives up
but with life itself.’
14 Top The Memorial to the Declaration of Arbroath. Bottom Memorabilia at the birthplace of J.M. Barrie at 9 Brechin Road, Kirriemuir.
Perthshire, Angus and Dundee 6
22 MONTROSE
The House of Dun was the ancestral home
and birthplace of Violet Jacob (born into the
Kennedy-Erskine family), whose poems and
novels, including the remarkable Flemington
(1911), are often descriptive of the landscapes
around Montrose while her travel writings
and diaries from India illustrate the extent
of her actual journeying and the liveliness of
her enquiring mind. This is also the terrain
of Jacob’s contemporary, Marion Angus,
who lived a much more reclusive and locally
bound life, and whose poems, especially in
The Lilt and Other Verses (1922) and The
23 Dunkeld
Tinker’s Road (1924), represent the people Gavin Douglas, who translated Virgil’s
of this area in deftly suggestive sketches of Aeneid into the Scots language, as The
moments of crisis or reflection. Willa Muir’s Eneados (1513) was Bishop of Dunkeld
novels Imagined Corners (1931) and Mrs Cathedral. In the poem, he introduced his
Ritchie (1933), and her memoir Belonging own descriptions of Scotland and Scotland’s
(1968), describe life in Montrose closely. The landscapes and weather into the Prologues
poet, suffragette and friend of many writers to each Book. The American poet Ezra
associated with the Scottish Renaissance Pound championed Douglas in the twentieth
movement of the 1920s, Helen Cruickshank, century. In his ABC of Reading (1951),
was born in Hillside, and went to school in Pound writes: ‘the texture of Gavin’s verse is
Montrose. Montrose was the town where, in stronger, the resilience greater than Chaucer’s’
the 1920s, Hugh MacDiarmid worked as and he admits, ‘I get considerably more
a reporter on the local newspaper (a plaque pleasure from the Bishop of Dunkeld than
on the wall of the newspaper building in from the original highly cultured but non-
the main street commemorates him), while seafaring author.’ Near Dunkeld at Birnam,
living with his first wife, son and daughter is the Beatrix Potter Centre and Garden,
at 16 Links Avenue, where much of his early devoted to the works of the famous children’s
writing was completed. writer, creator of Jemima Puddle-Duck, Mr
Jeremy Fisher, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Peter
Rabbit. Potter spent childhood holidays in
Near Dunkeld at Birnam, this area and it was here she gained her love
is the Beatrix Potter Centre of nature and much of her inspiration from
and Garden. the local gardener.
Above Dunkeld and the River Tay, Perthshire. 15
6 Perthshire, Angus and Dundee
The Fortingall Yew is said to
be the most ancient living
thing in the world, between
2,000 and 5,000 years old.
25 GLENEAGLES
The centuries old, secluded House of
Gleneagles, is the backdrop for one of
Scotland’s finest historical novels, Naomi
Mitchison’s The Bull Calves. Published in
1947 and set in 1747, this deals with the
immediate impact of the Jacobite defeat
at Culloden on the extended family of the
Haldane Lairds of Gleneagles and their lands
around Blackford. More recent novelists
24 FORTINGALL James Kennaway, Rosamunde Pilcher,
Alan Massie and Ronald Frame have in
The Fortingall Yew is said to be most ancient their very different ways explored lives of
living thing in the world, between 2,000 and quiet desperation among the gentry and the
5,000 years old. A story has it that Pontius genteel in rural Perthshire.
Pilate was born in Fortingall, the son of a
Roman centurion, and in Edwin Morgan’s
poem ‘Pilate at Fortingall’, from the sequence
Sonnets from Scotland (1986), he is seen as an
old man, returned to the village, washing his
hands again and again, finding it impossible
to absolve himself of his own guilty
responsibility in the crucifixion of Christ.
It was also here that James MacGregor, the
vicar of Fortingall, compiled the Book of the
Dean of Lismore between 1512 and 1542:
this is an extremely important early Gaelic
text with songs and heroic poems apparently
transmitted from the age of the ancient, pre-
Christian mythical Celtic heroes such as
Finn MacCool and his son the bard Ossian.
16 Top The Yew Tree in the churchyard of Fortingall Church. Bottom Cherry Blossom along the Burn of Sorrow, Dollar, near Gleneagles.
Perthshire, Angus and Dundee 6
26 LOGIEALMOND These were sensationally
Logiealmond, accessible via leafy byways popular in the USA and
from Perth and Crieff, is a former quarry their first American editions
workers’ village. Under the fictional name (1896) were bound in tartan
of Drumtochty it became famous as the
and thistle livery.
setting of the best-selling collections of
PERTH
fictional sketches Beside the Bonnie Brier
27
Bush (1894) and The Days of Auld Langsyne
(1895). Writing under the nom de plume
Ian Maclaren, their author the Rev John
Watson created rose-tinted, backward-
looking, whimsical sketches of country life
on the fringes of the Perthshire highlands in
the 1830s. These were sensationally popular
in the USA and their first American editions
(1896), bound in tartan and thistle livery,
carried specially commissioned photographic
illustrations of the locations and alleged The William Soutar House at 27 Wilson
principal characters of the stories. Street was the home in which the poet
retired to bed with the disease of spondylitis
from 1930 till his death in 1943. The wall
facing his bed was turned into a large window
onto the garden by his father and Soutar kept
journals of his dreams, diaries and accounts
of his visitors, and continued to write some
of the most memorable Scots-language
poems of the twentieth century from this
location. Soutar’s ‘bairnrhymes’ for children
and mysterious, ballad-like adult poems of
haunting and loss are equally memorable,
including ‘The Tryst’ (which has been set
to music by James MacMillan). The house
has been home to a writer-in-residence and
may be visited by appointment: contact the
A.K. Bell Memorial Library in Perth, which
has many items relating to Soutar and an
excellent theatre.
Left Looking along the River Tay at Perth. 17
Right Looking over the grass parkland of South Inch to the church of St Leonard’s in the Fields at Perth.
7 Argyll, the Isles, Loch Lomond,
Stirling and the Trossachs
28 aberfoyle
The grave of the minister Robert Kirk, author spooky aura. Walter Scott talks about
of The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns Kirk’s book in his Letters on Demonology
and Fairies (1691), is marked in the local and Witchcraft (1830) and James Robertson,
cemetery, but is said to be empty, as he was in the novel The Testament of Gideon Mack
spirited away to the underworld beneath the (2006) has more than one reference to Kirk
nearby Doon Hill, at the summit of which a and the mysterious underworld to which
strange tree in a clearing creates a peculiarly Kirk seems to have been sensitive.
29 ben dorain
This imposing mountain on the right-hand evocation of a hunt for deer across the
side of the road as you drive north between wooded slopes, by Duncan Ban MacIntyre.
Tyndrum and Glencoe, was the subject of The Duncan Ban MacIntyre monument is
one of the greatest of all Gaelic poems, ‘Praise about two miles up a side road from Dalmally
of Ben Dorain’, a celebration and vibrant railway station.
18 Above Ben Dorain, near Tyndrum, Argyll.

Argyll, the Isles, Loch Lomond, 7
30 inchmahome priory
Nearby Gartmore was the home of R.B. eyes on those who live.’ This was used as an
Cunninghame Graham and there is a epigraph to Hugh MacDiarmid’s brilliant
memorial sculpture for him there. He and short poem, ‘Perfect’ which famously adapts
his wife Gabriella are buried in the ruins of and combines words from a short story by
Inchmahome Priory, which can be reached the Welsh writer Glyn Jones, a biography
across the Lake of Menteith by a small of Cunninghame Graham which quotes
ferryboat. On a ruined wall by his wife’s grave, the Spanish phrase, and a guide book to the
Cunninghame Graham had a plaque placed, western islands of Scotland, so that it is as
on which is the quotation, ‘Los muertos abren if the significant images and oblique meaning
los ojos a los que viven’: an ambiguous phrase, in the poem were coming up onto the page
meaning both, ‘The dead open the eyes of through multiple layers of textual source
those who live’ and also, ‘The dead open their material.
31 inveraray castle
Inveraray Castle and the Neil Munro
monument in Glen Aray. Munro was born
in Inveraray and his birthplace, Crombie’s
Land, now known as Para Handy Cottage,
has a plaque on the wall. His novels describe
this part of Scotland, while his short stories,
including the most-loved tales about Para
Handy and the crew of the Vital Spark, a
small cargo boat travelling among the islands
from the Clyde Estuary, out of Glasgow, all
give a vivid impression of Scotland’s west
coast and southern Highlands. Munro’s
comedy in the Para Handy stories is a
counterpoint to his novels, where there is a
tragic sense of the social changes thrust upon
the Highlanders, which Munro knew at first
hand. This pessimistic vision is close to that
of his friend Joseph Conrad.
Above Looking across the River Aray to Inveraray Castle. 19
7 Argyll, the Isles, Loch Lomond,
32 inversnaid
Inversnaid was the scene of Wordsworth’s the weeds and the wilderness yet.’ Nearby
poem ‘To a Highland Girl’ (1803) and of Rowardennan was the scene of the parting
Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem ‘Inversnaid’ between Rob Roy and Bailie Nicol Jarvie,
(1881) which brilliantly describes the respectively representative characters of
waterfall by the lochside, ‘This darksome the Highlands and Lowlands, but also
burn, horseback brown, / His rollrock first cousins and therefore symbolic of the
highroad roaring down,’ and ends in eternal connectedness of all Scotland, in Walter
praise of the uncultivated world: ‘Long live Scott’s novel Rob Roy (1817).
33 loch katrine and the trossachs
This is the terrain of Walter Scott’s narrative Jules Verne was one of the tourists who came
poem, The Lady of the Lake (1810), arguably to the area in 1859, writing a travel memoir
the work which had the most incalculable Backwards to Britain (English translation,
influence on literary tourism in the nineteenth 1992) and two astonishing novels set in
century. A new edition with detailed map, Scotland, The Underground City (1877) and
notes and introduction is available from the The Green Ray (1882).
Association for Scottish Literary Studies.
20 Above View of Loch Katrine.
Argyll, the Isles, Loch Lomond, 7
34 stirling
A Race outlandish fill their throne;
An idiot race, to honour lost;
Who know them best despise them most.
Battles fought around Stirling are described heard in its halls. Robert Burns was a
in early epic poems: Bannockburn in John later visitor who deplored the mess Stirling
Barbour’s The Bruce and Stirling Bridge Castle had been left in after the departure
in Blind Harry’s The Wallace. Writers of the Stuart dynasty in his poem ‘Lines on
who would have frequented Stirling Castle Stirling’: ‘A Race outlandish fill their throne;
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries / An idiot race, to honour lost; / Who know
include William Dunbar and Sir David them best despise them most.’ Nearby, on the
Lyndsay and the music of Scotland’s greatest Abbey Craig, is the Wallace Monument.
composer Robert Carver would have been
Above The Wallace Monument in Stirling shrouded in fog. 21
8 The Kingdom of Fife
35 dunfermline 36 forth bridges

Abbot House Heritage Centre has particular The bridges across the Firth of Forth just
connections with William Dunbar and north of Edinburgh are spectacular sights.
Robert Henryson: both may have read their The train bridge features memorably in
poems within these walls. Henryson may also film adaptations of John Buchan’s novel
have been a schoolmaster in Dunfermline The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), and in a
Grammar School and was associated with nightmare amalgamation of mechanical
the Benedictine Dunfermline Abbey gardens structure and unpredictable imagination,
and surrounding medieval village. This was it forms the world of most of Iain Banks’s
the home of generations of Stuart kings and novel The Bridge (1986).
is associated with the playwright and poet
Sir David Lyndsay.
22 Above Forth Rail Bridge in the mist, from South Queensferry.
The Kingdom of Fife 8
37 the university of st andrews
The University of St Andrews, Britain’s third oldest university, rejoices in having the whole of
the historic town as its campus, ‘a place eminently adapted to study and education’ according
to Dr Johnson. Notable alumni have included the poets William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas,
Sir David Lyndsay, George Buchanan, James Graham Marquis of Montrose and Robert
Fergusson. Dying tragically young, Fergusson hilariously satirised ‘the superb treat’ with
which the dignitaries of the university honoured Dr Johnson’s visit in 1773. Another of its
distinguished graduates, the folklore scholar Andrew Lang celebrated in nostalgic verse ‘a little
city worn and grey’, and also less solemnly the rigours of its golf links. He is buried among the
graves surrounding the ruins of the cathedral. In the mid-1930s, St Andrews was a central
location for the writers associated with the Scottish Literary Renaissance: James H. Whyte
was a wealthy American who edited the key periodical of the time, The Modern Scot, owned and
ran the Abbey Bookshop at 3 South Street and an art gallery in the former coastguard building
at 5–11 North Street. The composer F.G. Scott, poet Edwin Muir and his wife the novelist
Willa Muir, art critic and cultural historian John Tonge and poet Hugh MacDiarmid were
all intermittent residents at this time. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, a
cluster of poets has been centred at the university, including John Burnside, Robert Crawford,
Douglas Dunn, Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson.
Above St Salvator’s College, University of St Andrews. 23

9 Edinburgh and the Lothians
38 aberlady bay
Tranter apparently walked around
the bay, composing his novels.
There is a monument here to the popular composing his novels. The best of them
and prolific novelist Nigel Tranter, from include Druid Sacrifice (1993), Columba
whose novels, it has been said, many Scots (1990), The Bruce Trilogy: The Steps to the
learned their own history because for many Empty Throne (1969), The Path of the Hero
generations, Scottish history, literature King (1970) and The Price of the King’s Peace
and culture formed almost no part of the (1971), and The Young Montrose (1972) and
curriculum provision in Scottish schools. Montrose: The Captain General (1973).
Tranter apparently walked around the bay,
24 Above The wooden footbridge at Aberlady Bay.
Edinburgh and the Lothians 9
39 edinburgh
Perhaps the essential Edinburgh novel is underworlds of Welsh and Rankin and
Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie many others too. Whatever your preference,
(1961), which captures the potential for Edinburgh is a literary centre, designated
radicalism and also deploys a devastating and the first UNESCO City of Literature in
merciless sense of humour which are essential 2004, home to the annual International
aspects of Edinburgh’s character. Some Book Festival, the world’s largest book fair,
would say that Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting and with its own poet laureate. Homes of
(1993) is closer to the reality of Edinburgh, authors include: 8 Howard Place, birthplace
or that Ian Rankin’s Rebus crime novels of Robert Louis Stevenson, and 17 Heriot
show the city in its turn-of-the-century Row, the Stevenson family home; 25
era and you can walk through Fleshmarket Drummond Place, home of Sydney Goodsir
Close, the title of one of his novels, and see Smith; 4 Nelson Street, home of Robert
his handprint (next to that of J.K. Rowling) Garioch; 39 Castle Street, home of Walter
outside the City Chambers. Edinburgh’s Scott; 160 Bruntsfield Place, birthplace of
history has room for each of these visions, Muriel Spark; and 7 Leamington Terrace,
the genteel Brodie crème de la crème, the home of Norman MacCaig.
Above View over Edinburgh’s Old Town. 25

40 edinburgh: the old town
In the old town, the Royal Mile runs from in James Robertson’s novel The Fanatic.
the Castle down to the Parliament building The entrance to the Castle is guarded by
and Palace of Holyroodhouse. The whole statues of William Wallace and Robert the
area is redolent with literary associations Bruce, each respectively the hero of epic
and there are various literary and other tours poems by Blind Harry and John Barbour.
of the area, one atmospherically described At the north-east corner of the Castle
26 Above Castle Esplanade, Camera Obscura, St John’s Tolbooth Kirk and Royal Mile.
esplanade are the Outlook Tower, with the windows to Burns and Stevenson. Beside the
Camera Obscura and Ramsay Gardens: Kirk, cobblestones in the shape of a heart
this was the home of Allan Ramsay in the mark the site where the Heart of Midlothian,
eighteenth century and of Patrick Geddes Edinburgh’s Old Tolbooth prison, once stood.
in the nineteenth century. To your left as you It features centrally in Walter Scott’s novel
go downhill, in Lady Stair’s Close, is Lady with that title. Behind the Kirk is Parliament
Stair’s House and the Writers’ Museum, House, where Scott and Stevenson both
devoted mainly to the lives and works of practised as advocates. Still further downhill
Robert Burns, Walter Scott and Robert on your left, is John Knox’s House and the
Louis Stevenson. Outside in the courtyard, Scottish Storytelling Centre. Further down,
named the Makars’ Court, are memorial slabs still on your left, is Canongate Kirk, in which
with quotations from many Scottish writers. are the graves of Robert Fergusson (with
the gravestone above it commissioned by
The whole area is redolent Robert Burns) and Robert Burns’s Clarinda,
with literary associations Mrs Agnes MacLehose, with a statue of
Fergusson at the entrance gates. Opposite, in
Just off the Mile on George IV Bridge is the Crichton’s Close, The Scottish Poetry Library
National Library of Scotland, which houses is a major resource and a wonderful place to
the John Murray Archive and puts on regular visit. And if you proceed to the Parliament
exhibitions of literary works and manuscripts.
Opposite is the Central Library, with its Down the road is
Edinburgh Room and Scottish section, and
just down the road is The Elephant House,
The Elephant House, a
a restaurant said to be one of the locations restaurant said to be one of
where J.K. Rowling began imagining and the locations where
writing the internationally best-selling
Harry Potter novels. Further along the road
J.K. Rowling began imagining
is Greyfriars Kirk where you can find the and writing the best-selling
grave of the great Gaelic poet Duncan Ban Harry Potter novels
MacIntyre; a small statue of Greyfriars Bobby,
a wee dog renowned for its extraordinary building, ask there for a copy of the poem
loyalty, and the subject of children’s novels Edwin Morgan was commissioned to
by Lavinia Derwent (in 1985) and Eleanor write for the occasion of its opening, which
Atkinson, (in 1912) is in the street near the describes the building and itemises what is
entrance to the cemetery. Back on the Mile, required by the people from our political
heading downhill, on your right is the High representatives. Finally you will see, brooding
Kirk of St Giles, where there is a plaque for over Holyrood, the extinct volcano of Arthur’s
Gavin Douglas, who was Provost here in Seat on the summit of which, in a blue haze,
1501, a plaque for Robert Fergusson, whose the title character in James Hogg’s novel
poem ‘Auld Reekie’ (the name for Edinburgh Confessions of a Justified Sinner encountered
evoking its smelly smokiness), and memorial his fearsome satanic doppelganger.
27
41 EDINBURGH: THE NEW TOWN AND BEYOND
Over on the other side of Princes Street
This is the biggest Gardens, the New Town of Edinburgh is
monument to a writer a creation of the Enlightenment. Go to the
anywhere in the world. Scott Monument on Princes Street first.
This is the biggest monument to a writer
anywhere in the world, populated with
statues of characters from Walter Scott’s
novels. From the top the view is panoramic.
In the New Town, the Scottish National
Portrait Gallery, on Queen Street (reopening
in November 2011), exhibits numerous
portraits of great Scottish writers, including
the iconic Poets’ Pub by Alexander Moffat,
with its group portrait of the major Scottish
poets of the twentieth century: Hugh
MacDiarmid, Sorley MacLean, Norman
MacCaig, Robert Garioch, Sydney Goodsir
Smith, George Mackay Brown and Edwin
Morgan. Many of them frequented Rose
Street, the ‘amber mile’ of pubs running
parallel to Princes Street. Poets, writers,
intellectuals and artists of all kinds met in
numerous pubs throughout the 1950s and
1960s, especially Milne’s Bar, the Abbotsford
and the Café Royal. The poets talking and
drinking are accurately described in poems by
Sydney Goodsir Smith, in Kynd Kittocks’s
Land (1965), and by George Mackay Brown,
in his elegiac poem ‘Norman MacCaig’.
At the top of Leith Walk the Conan Doyle
pub is situated near the birthplace of Sherlock
Holmes creator, Arthur Conan Doyle.
If you proceed downhill into Leith itself, you’ll
find yourself in Irvine Welsh territory. Other
pubs with particular literary associations
in Edinburgh include Hispaniola, formerly
28 Above The statue of the writer Sir Walter Scott below the Scott Monument.
Rutherford’s, on Drummond Street in 42 rosslyn chapel
the Old Town, a dark pub used by Robert
Louis Stevenson; Sandy Bell’s Bar, Forrest
Road, also in the Old Town, described in the
novel The Myrtle and Ivy (1967) by Stuart
MacGregor, the centre of the folk music
revival and a regular watering-hole for the
poet and archivist Hamish Henderson; and
at 8 Young Street, The Oxford Bar, a pub
favoured by Ian Rankin, author of a series of
popular police-crime novels with the central
character John Rebus. Another popular
phenomenon was the episodic novel 44
Scotland Street (2004) by Alexander McCall
Smith, first serialised in The Scotsman
newspaper, about the inhabitants of a New
Town tenement flat. This was followed
by a series of novels, also set in Edinburgh,
starting with The Sunday Philosophy Club.
On the outskirts of Edinburgh, at South
Queensferry, is The Hawes Inn, described in
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped (1886). If you have read Dan Brown’s best-selling
By the side of the main road running through novel The Da Vinci Code (2003), this is an
Corstorphine is a large statue by Alexander important destination for you. Of course,
Stoddart of Allan Breck Stewart and David there is a lot more to it than that – but you’ll
Balfour, from Kidnapped and at Cramond, have to find out for yourself what that might
Cramond House may have been the model be. Nearby Hawthornden Castle was the
for the House of Shaws in the same novel. home of William Drummond, poet.
Many of them frequented

Rose Street, the ‘amber mile’
of pubs running parallel
to Princes Street.
Left The ornate sign for the Cafe Royal pub/restaurant. Right Rosslyn Chapel, Roslin, Midlothian. 29
10 The Clyde Valley and Glasgow
43 BIGGAR 45 stonypath
Brownsbank Cottage, originally a ‘Little Sparta’ was the name Ian Hamilton
farmworker’s small, two-room house, was the Finlay gave to this garden and Temple to the
home of Hugh MacDiarmid and his wife Muses which he designed with his wife Sue,
Valda, from 1951 till their deaths, in 1978 beginning in 1966. The gardens are intimately
and 1989, respectively. Here MacDiarmid structured with neoclassical, subversively
was visited by Allen Ginsberg, Yevgeny political sculptures and architectural
Yevtushenko and other literary luminaries. works, as weaving paths take the visitor to
At first without running water or indoor unexpected views and unpredicted ways of
plumbing, the ditches were dug with help seeing and reinterpreting the pastoral world
from the actor Alex McCrindle, who went and the violence in nature and mankind.
on to play General Dodonna in Star Wars Fairytales, myths and historical references
and first uttered the words, ‘May the force populate the tranquillity of the rural setting
be with you!’ The cottage is preserved in with sharp-edged, subtle implications.
much the same condition as it was left, with
MacDiarmid’s collection of detective novels
and Valda’s native Cornwall memorabilia
in their respective rooms. May be visited by
contacting the Biggar Museums Trust.
Here MacDiarmid was visited

by Allen Ginsberg, Yevgeny
Yevtushenko and other
literary luminaries.
44 broughton
The John Buchan Centre houses a collection
of memorabilia, books, clothes, manuscripts
and film posters relating to John Buchan and
his sister Anna Buchan, a prolific novelist
whose first book, Olivia in India (1912) was
followed by numerous others; her best work
is perhaps The Setons (1917) and her memoir
of her brother Unforgettable, Unforgotten
(1945) is lucid, affectionate and revealing.
30 Above Little Sparta – the garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay at Stonypath.
The Clyde Valley and Glasgow 10
46 PAISLEY AND GREENOCK
West of Glasgow and south of the Clyde, poet W.S. Graham was born at 1 Hope
among many writers resident in Paisley, Street has a plaque on the wall, and above
which has its own character and identity, the industrial town is Loch Thom, which
Robert Tannahill, a younger contemporary Graham describes in his unforgettable poem
of Burns, wrote popular vernacular songs. He of that name. In his shrewdly entertaining
has a statue in the grounds of Paisley Abbey, novels of small town society John Galt drew
and his cottage and grave are conserved. The on his own experiences of life in Irvine and
direct descendant of his younger brother was Greenock. Greenock’s riverside esplanade
the poet Andrew Tannahill, a friend and displays a Galt memorial fountain and he
contemporary of Hugh MacDiarmid, who is buried in a local graveyard. Among his
inherited the same tradition of Burns, and Tales of the West (1820-1822) are Annals of
was a visionary of social justice. The same the Parish (1821), The Provost (1822), The
legacy informs many of the poets collected Entail (1822) and the The Steamboat (1821).
in the groundbreaking anthology Radical Edwin Muir, George Blake, Alan Sharp
Renfrew (1990) edited by Tom Leonard, and the dramatists Bill Bryden and Peter
and the work of younger writers from the McDougall have all written powerfully
area such as Graham Fulton. Further about aspects of the growth and decline of
west, in Greenock, the house where the Greenock as an industrial community.
Above Paisley Town Hall. 31
10 The Clyde Valley and Glasgow
47 glasgow
Perhaps the most essential novels set in pavement here, outside the Concert Hall
Glasgow are Archie Hind’s The Dear Greeen and the Scottish Music Centre, engraved
Place (1966) and Alasdair Gray’s Lanark in the paving stones just along from this
(1981), but the city is steeped in literary plaque, are four poems by Edwin Morgan
associations. The Cathedral was where commemorating the fruit and vegetable
Glasgow began, when the city was called market that used to be located here and the
Cathures, which is the name Edwin Morgan people who lived and worked here. South
took as the title of a 2002 book of poems and west, Cathkin Braes and Rutherglen
written while he was Poet Laureate of Glasgow. were Morgan’s earliest favoured territories:
The Cathedral is described in Walter Scott’s his first book of poems was The Vision of
Rob Roy (1817). The Necropolis, beside the Cathkin Braes (1952). The East End of the
Cathedral, is the Victorian cemetery, the city of Glasgow was traditionally working-
city of the dead. Among its literary residents class, homeland for the city’s industrial poor.
are William Miller, author of the nursery
rhyme, ‘Wee Willie Winkie’. The whole place
The Gorbals was the scene
features memorably at the end of Gray’s of perhaps the most famous
Lanark. South of the Cathedral, in the of all literary depictions
Merchant City, on the wall of a building in
Candleriggs, is a plaque commemorating the
of Glasgow
Communist teacher John MacLean, whose Robin Jenkins’s novel A Very Scotch Affair
life inspired tributes in poems and songs by (1968) is largely set in Bridgeton, regarded
Hugh MacDiarmid, Hamish Henderson, by some of the characters as a ‘ghetto’ and
Edwin Morgan and many others. In the Jenkins’s The Changeling (1958) explores the
32 Above Glasgow Cathedral.
The Clyde Valley and Glasgow 10
tension between working-class and middle- at Glasgow School of Art, including John
class experience and expectations, between Byrne, Alasdair Gray, Stephen Mulrine
people who live in slums and those who live and Liz Lochhead. Near Charing Cross
in more prosperous areas, and the further stands the Mitchell Library, the largest public
opposition between city-dwellers and the reference library in Europe. Travelling west
experience of life in the country. South of the along Woodlands Road towards Glasgow
river, the Gorbals was the scene of perhaps University, on the south side of Woodlands
the most famous of all literary depictions Road is the statue of Lobey Dosser, Sheriff
of Glasgow, Alexander McArthur and of Calton Creek, taking his enemy the arch-
H. Kingsley Long’s sensational novel No villain Rank Bajin off to jail, on the back
Mean City (1935). The tenement slums have of his trusty two-legged horse El Fideldo.
been demolished. Near where they were is This is the only two-legged equestrian statue
the Citizens’ Theatre, founded by playwright in the world, erected by public subscription,
James Bridie in 1943. The Gorbals was also suggesting the affection in which Glasgow
the home of the fine writer of stories and people continue to hold the creator of
the novel Dance of the Apprentices (1948), these characters, the genius cartoonist Bud
Edward Gaitens. Edwin Muir’s novel Poor Neill. The many writers, either students or
Tom (1932) is an autobiographical account of teachers or both, associated with Glasgow
poverty-stricken life in the city. Returning to University, include Robert Henryson,
the city centre, George Square is populated by Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alistair, Adam
statues of Walter Scott, Robert Burns and Smith, James Boswell, Tobias Smollett,
Thomas Campbell, who was a Glasgow poet John Buchan, A.J. Cronin, James Bridie,
and famous for many generations, writing Catherine Carswell, Janice Galloway,
critically of the industrial revolution and the Christopher Brookmyre, Edwin Morgan,
pollution that came with it: ‘And call they this Alexander Scott, Alexander Trocchi, Tom
improvement?’ Numerous writers studied Leonard, Liz Lochhead, Alasdair Gray,
James Kelman and Louise Welsh.
48 renton
and balloch
Now travelling north and west, Cameron
House Hotel, Balloch was formerly the
home of novelist and poet Tobias Smollett
and the Smollett Monument is a Tuscan
Column in Renton, near Balloch. In Balloch
itself, the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs
National Park Centre, Carrochan, actively
promotes literary tourism throughout Loch
Lomondside and the Trossachs.
Above Main entrance to the Glasgow School of Art. 33
11 Ayrshire and Arran
49 alloway
The Robert Burns trail begins here, where he in Kirkoswald cemetery. At Tarbolton is the
was born in 1759 in Burns Cottage, which Bachelors’ Club, a 17th-century house at 28
was built by his father and was his home Croft Street, where, in 1779, Burns learned
until 1766. The newly designed museum to dance and play the fiddle. Burns and his
nearby houses numerous manuscripts, books friends met here regularly after establishing
and memorabilia. His parents are buried in a literary and debating society, the Bachelors’
the cemetery of the Auld Kirk, the scene of Club, in 1780. He was initiated as a
the witches’ dance in ‘Tam o’ Shanter’, from Freemason here in 1781. Period furniture
which Tam gallops down to the bridge over helps convey a physical sense of what the
the river Doon, the Brig o’ Doon, to escape domestic space Burns inhabited as a young
from the murderous ‘hellish legion’ who man was like. Mauchline: On the upper
cannot cross running water. A marvellous floor of the Burns House is the room Burns
sequence of paintings of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ by took for Jean Armour in 1788 and there are
Alexander Goudie, that give full expression various items of Burnsiana in the museum.
to both the comic and horrific aspects of Mauchline Kirkyard was the scene of the
the poem and its vertiginous speed, may be riotous poem, ‘The Holy Fair’ and many of
seen in Rozelle House Art Gallery. A few Burns’s friends and contemporaries are
miles away, in the village of Kirkoswald, is buried here, alongside four of his daughters.
Souter Johnnie’s House, home of one of the Nearby, Poosie Nancy’s Tavern was the scene
characters named in the poem, the Souter or of his most anarchic song-sequence, ‘The Jolly
shoemaker; many other models for Burns’s Beggars’ also known as ‘Love and Liberty: A
characters and people Burns knew are buried Cantata’: ‘A fig for those by law protected /
34 Above Burns Cottage, birthplace of Scotland’s National Poet Robert Burns, Alloway, Ayrshire.
Ayrshire and Arran 11
Liberty’s a glorious feast! / Courts for cowards were erected! / Churches built to please the
priest!’ In Kilmarnock, the Kay Park Burns Monument and Museum is a brilliant arts venue
for poetry and literary readings and entertaining educational lectures with a landmark statue
of Robert Burns by W.G. Stevenson and a copy of the first edition of Burns’s poems, the
Kilmarnock Edition, on display with other manuscripts and related material.
Top Brig o’ Doon, Alloway. Bottom left National Trust for Scotland sign at the Bachelor’s Club. Bottom right Kirkoswald Churchyard. 35
11 Ayrshire and Arran
50 arran 52 ochiltree
Burns never described the view from This is the birthplace of novelist George
Ayrshire of the Isle of Arran, with its striking Douglas Brown, author of the classic
mountainous skyline, but its landscape and tragedy of small-town Scottish commercial
natural resources had been celebrated as early ambition causing family destruction in
as the twelfth century in a lovely anonymous domestic slaughter of Greek proportion and
Gaelic lyric beginning ‘Arran of the many character, the novel The House with the Green
stags / The sea strikes against its shoulder…’ Shutters (1901). His birthplace is marked
and concluding ‘Delightful at all times with a plaque in Ochiltree main street, on a
is Arran.’ The island is rich in literary steeply sloping hill with broad views over the
associations, from the tales of the Fianna, Ayrshire countryside beyond. There is also a
the ancient Celtic warrior band led by memorial to George Douglas Brown in Ayr
Finn MacCool and his son, Ossian the cemetery.
bard, to the modern plays and poems of
Robert MacLellan, who also wrote the best
introductory guide-book to the island. Arran
is also the main location for the popular cult
supernatural thriller Deadlight (1968) by
Archie Roy.
51 loudoun hill
This is a striking visual landmark, imposing
on the flat landscape on the edge of Ayrshire
and Lanarkshire, looming like a sleeping lion.
Loudoun Hill was the location of various
battles, most memorably those described by
John Barbour in The Bruce (c.1376), Blind
Harry in The Wallace (c.1477), and Walter
Scott in Old Mortality (1816).
36 Left View to Goat Fell, Isle of Arran. Right Loudoun Hill, near Darvel, East Ayrshire.
Dumfries and Galloway 12
53 dumfries
Just north of Dumfries is Ellisland Farm:
Robert Burns moved here in 1788 and one
sunny afternoon, walking on the banks of
the River Nith, he is said to have composed
the poem ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ in a delighted
spell of inspiration, before going indoors
in the feverish grip of his imagination to
commit it to paper in one sitting. Burns
moved to Dumfries in 1791 to work as an
Exciseman and died here in 1796, his widow
Jean Armour staying on in their house till
her death in 1834. Furniture he used may
be seen in a favourite pub, The Globe Inn.
The Robert Burns Centre is a film theatre
and arts venue with regular poetry readings
and the nearby Burns House contains relics
and memorabilia. Burns was buried in
St Michael’s Churchyard but in 1815 his
remains were relocated to the Mausoleum. 54 ecclefechan
Here is the Birthplace of Thomas Carlyle,
a small stone house which effectively displays
the humble conditions from which the high
moral judgements of the mature Carlyle
were developed. In his essays, such as
‘Signs of the Times’ and his classic satirical
work, Sartor Resartus (1832) or, ‘the Tailor
Reclothed’, he cuts through the hypocrisies
of conventional Victorian society in heavy,
self-consciously convoluted prose that was
a significant influence on Herman Melville
and many others. Latterly Carlyle’s opinions
became increasingly inclined to brutal
authoritarianism and racism but he remains
one of the great Victorian sages, alongside
Matthew Arnold, J.S. Mill and John Ruskin.
Left Various artefacts on display at Arched House – the birthplace of the essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle. 37
Right The sign showing a portrait of Robert Burns above the doorway of the Globe Inn, Dumfries.
12 Dumfries and Galloway
55 langholm
‘Here comes Langholm! Birthplace of Hugh MacDiarmid!’ –

a slogan devised by the local schoolchildren.
On Whita Hill is the Hugh MacDiarmid taught him at Langholm school; the post
Monument by Jake Harvey, and MacDiarmid office building housed the Telford library he
and his wife Valda are buried in Langholm read his way through as a boy; and there is a
cemetery. This beautiful little town, the hills ‘Hugh MacDiarmid Walk’ through the town.
around and the rivers that run to a confluence As a young man, he believed he could tell
in it, the Wauchope, the Esk and the Ewes, precisely where he was in Langholm simply
were the poet’s childhood environment. from the sound of the running water of the
The composer F.G. Scott, a Hawick man, rivers. The roadsign as you drive in says, not
‘Welcome to …’ but ‘Here comes Langholm!
Birthplace of Hugh MacDiarmid!’ – a slogan
devised by the local schoolchildren. Langholm
features lovingly in many of MacDiarmid’s
poems, short stories, sketches and the essay,
‘My Native Place’ and in his autobiography,
Lucky Poet (1943), where he recounts some
outrageous goings-on at his school.
38 Top Memorial in the form of a giant stylised metal book to Hugh MacDiarmid. Bottom Plaque stating Hugh Macdiarmid was born here.
Dumfries and Galloway 12
56 wigtownshire
At St Medans is the Gavin Maxwell

Monument, a fine sculpture of an otter in
memory of Mij as described in Maxwell’s
lastingly popular work Ring of Bright Water
(1960). Maxwell grew up in the village of
Elrig, described in his autobiography, The
House of Elrig (1965). Wigtown is Scotland’s
designated Book Town, where bookshops
abound and an annual festival takes place.
A pub on the main square is named after
a sensational novel by Ian Niall (John
McNeillie), Wigtown Ploughman (1939),
whose dreamlike A Galloway Childhood
(1967) is a fondly remembered autobiography.
Nearby, the Rhinns of Galloway are the
location for James Barke’s Tolstoyan classic
of the lives of rural farmworkers, The Land of
The Leal (1939).
Top Gavin Maxwell memorial. Bottom Sign for the Wigtown Ploughman Hotel. 39
13 Scottish Borders
57 abbotsford, near melrose

The home of Sir Walter Scott, built between in 1832, looking out and listening to the
1817 and 1822, houses a magnificently nearby River Tweed. In the grounds of the
curious collection of historic relics Scott beautiful ruins of Dryburgh Abbey nearby is
gathered himself, from the outer door-locks the grave of Scott and his wife Charlotte, and
of the Heart of Midlothian (Edinburgh’s Scott’s son-in-law and first biographer, John
famous jail, like the Paris Bastille, and the Gibson Lockhart. Rising beside Melrose are
title of one of his greatest novels) to items the Eildon Hills, where the Rhymer’s Stone
from the battlefield of Waterloo. Armouries marks the spot where Thomas the Rhymer
of guns and swords, a vast library of around is said to have been carried off by the Queen
9,000 books, his writing desk and the of Elfland, to spend years as if they were
little alcove in which he conducted private hours in the land of the young. The wizard
conversations: all give a palpable sense of Michael Scot created the three Eildon hills
Scott the man and the writer. He died here with a fantastical spell described by James
40 Above Abbotsford House on the south bank of the River Tweed.

Scottish Borders 13
Hogg in his phastasmagorical novel The in the market-square and at the far end of the
Three Perils of Man (1822). Rich in ballad, High Street, another statue of the explorer of
folklore and literary references, the Eildon Africa, Mungo Park, whose Travels in the
Hills are also thought to be the location Interior Districts of Africa: Performed in the
under which King Arthur and the Knights Years 1795, 1796, and 1797 (1816) tell of his
of the Round Table are currently resting. experience there. Niger: The Life of Mungo
Scott’s View is a picture-postcard prospect Park (1934) by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
overlooking the bending River Tweed and includes vivid scenes of Park’s meeting and
the Eildon Hills, reputedly Scott’s favourite friendship with Scott.
panorama. It is said that the horses taking
his body to Dryburgh Abbey for interment
stopped here as they had done frequently
58 ednam
before for Scott to enjoy the prospect. James Thomson, author of perhaps the
Nearby at Bemersyde is an imposing red most influential book of poems in the early
sandstone statue of Sir William Wallace by eighteenth century, The Seasons (1730) and
John Smith of Darnick, commissioned by of the song, ‘Rule Britannia’, was born in the
the Earl of Buchan and unveiled in 1814. Old Manse at Ednam and is commemorated
Scott is also associated with Selkirk, as by the James Thomson obelisk, outside Kelso
he was the Sheriff of Selkirkshire and he on the Ednam road. Another monument to
worked regularly at the Selkirk Courthouse Thomson, the Temple of the Muses, is on
from 1800 to 1832. There is a statue of Scott Bass Hill next to the suspension bridge.
Scott’s View is a
picture-postcard prospect
Above Looking across the River Tweed to the Eildon Hills from Scott’s View. 41
13 Scottish Borders
59 st mary’s loch and tibbie shiel’s inn
The James Hogg monument is an imposing statue of the Ettrick Shepherd, seated and
looking out over the loch and down to the Inn, where he and many friends would gather
for long, convivial conversations. They were great men for binges. The surrounding area
by Yarrow Water is James Hogg territory, a constant presence in numerous novels, songs
and poems, including The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1817), The Three Perils of Man (1822) and
‘Kilmeny’ (1813).
60 smailholm tower
and S
sandyknowe farm
Smailholm Tower is a striking Border keep, a lookout tower commanding a bleak and
forbidding panoramic vista, and the nearby farm was where Walter Scott, when he was
a wee boy, lived with his uncle and aunt to recover from illness, and where tales and songs
of the Borders were poured into his imagination and happily fermented for years to come.
Two dramatic, vivid modern novels that draw on this atmospheric world are The Hanging Tree
(1990) by Allan Massie and The Candlemass Road (1993) by George MacDonald Fraser.
42 Top St Mary’s Loch. Bottom Smailholm Tower.
The Writers
A S before an author’s name indicates that a short introductory book about them and their
work is available in the Scotnotes series, published by the Association for Scottish Literary
Studies.
Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair James Barke

/ Alexander MacDonald (c.1695–c.1770), (1905–58), novelist whose works include
Gaelic poet, a Jacobite soldier with Prince the socialist classic Major Operation (1936);
Charles in 1745, author of ‘The Birlinn of the epic The Land of the Leal (1939); and the
Clanranald’. 9 47 sequence based on the life of Robert Burns:
The Wind that Shakes the Barley (1946);
Marion Angus The Song in the Greenthorn Tree (1947);
(1866–1946), poet, author of many The Wonder of All the Gay World (1949);
Scots-language poems, eerie with a sense The Crest of the Broken Wave (1953);
of unspoken stories, things happening The Well of the Silent Harp (1954); and the
that are only suggested, mysterious and posthumous Bonnie Jean (1959). 56
uncomfortable. 22
J.M. Barrie
Eleanor Atkinson (1860–1937), playwright and novelist,
(1863–1942), American novelist, journalist author of the perennially popular Peter
and teacher, author of popular children’s Pan (1904), but also of novels such as
novel about Greyfriars Bobby. 40 Sentimental Tommy (1896) and the classic
S Iain Banks Farewell Miss Julie Logan (1932). 21
(b.1954), novelist, author of numerous George Blake
sensational works combining fluent (1893–1961), journalist, novelist, editor,
storytelling, political engagement and moral publisher, historian of the River Clyde, its
indignation, and many science fiction novels. ships and yards. The Garvel (Greenock)
36
sequence of novels chronicles episodically
John Barbour the life of Garvel families, rich and poor,
(c.1320–95), poet, whose epic historical in the 130 years between the Napoleonic
chronicle The Bruce picks up the story wars and the Clydeside blitz; between The
of Scotland’s foundation in the Wars of Constant Star (1946) and The Westering Sun
Independence where Blind Harry leaves off. (also 1946). 46
17 34 40 51
Blind Harry
(1450–93), poet, whose epic, episodic saga
of the life and deeds of Sir William Wallace,
43
The Writers
the Guardian of Scotland, has proved S George Mackay Brown

popular and influential over centuries. (1921–96), poet, novelist, essayist,
34 40 51
journalist, resident of Orkney and a writer
James Boswell whose imagination was deeply marinaded
(1740–1795), memoirist and biographer, in a lifetime spent almost entirely in that
accompanied Samuel Johnson on his tour archipelago of North Sea islands. 3 41
of the Hebrides and wrote vibrantly and Bill Bryden
quirkily about the London of their day. (b.1942), brought up and educated in
19 47
Greenock, achieved success as a playwright,
James Bridie director and screenwriter and has been
(1888–1951), playwright, autobiographer, associate director of the National Theatre in
founder of Glasgow’s Citizens’ Theatre, his London. His work includes several vigorous
works bristle with vulnerable people, moral plays and documentaries on Scottish themes.
ambiguity and controversial ideas. 47 Willie Rough (1972) explores the tensions of
an industrial dispute in one of the Greenock
Christopher Brookmyre shipyards in 1915, memorably set against the
(b.1968), crime genre novelist, some books beauties of the Clyde estuary. 46
centred on an investigative journalist main
character, all full of hot opinions and Anna Buchan (O. Douglas)
sparky provocations; in A Big Boy Did It (1877–1948), novelist, whose works
and Ran Away (2001), he is one of the best give richly detailed depictions of middle-
writers about children since John Buchan in class characters in family and domestic
Huntingtower. 47 circumstances in the early twentieth century.
44
Dan Brown
(b.1964), popular American novelist, the
S John Buchan
conspiracy-theory murder-mystery The Da (1875–1940), novelist and poet, whose
Vinci Code (2003) was an international best espionage adventure novels retain a
seller. 42 freshness, lucid narrative style, brilliant
descriptions and real political urgency.
S George Douglas Brown 36 44 47
(1869–1902), novelist, whose classic work,
The House with the Green Shutters (1901), George Buchanan
describes with surgical detachment the (1506–82), poet, playwright, historian,
horrific end of a small-town Scottish family. humanist scholar, teacher of Montaigne,
52 Mary Queen of Scots and her son James
VI of Scotland and I of England; joined the
Reformed Protestant church in the 1560s
and published De Jure Regni apud Scotos in
44
The Writers
1579. Here Buchanan says that all political Thomas Carlyle

power resides in the people, and that it (1795–1881), Victorian thinker and
is lawful and necessary to resist kings if essayist, influential on Herman Melville
they become tyrants. There were constant and Karl Marx, his book On Heroes and
attempts to suppress this work in the Hero-Worship (1867) clearly relates to the
century following its publication. 37 Calvinist doctrine of the elect and led him to
authoritarian and racist pronouncements in
S Robert Burns
later life. 54
(1759–96), poet, known as the national poet
of Scotland, Burns was equally important as Catherine Carswell
a writer of songs and song-collector. (1879–1946), novelist, her classic book
34 40 47 49 53 Open the Door! (1920) described the
Glasgow School of Art and the middle-class
John Burnside
Glasgow of the early modern world and
(b.1955), poet, novelist, memoirist and
presents one of fiction’s great women, Joanna
autobiographer. His fiction includes: Living
Bannerman. 47
Nowhere (2003), The Devil’s Footprints
(2007) and Glister (2008); his memoir, A Robert Crawford
Lie About My Father (2006) was followed by (b.1959), poet, critic and Professor of
Waking Up in Toytown (2010). 37 Modern Scottish literature at St Andrews.
His collections include: A Scottish Assembly
John Byrne
(1990), Masculinity (1996), The Tip of My
(b.1940) playwright and artist, author of
Tongue (2003), and Full Volume (2008);
The Slab Boys (1978), a trilogy of plays and
The Bard: Robert Burns, a Biography, was
a film, and the television serials Tutti Frutti
published in 2009. 37
(1986) and Your Cheatin’ Heart (1990), both
hugely popular, combining American music, A.J. Cronin
pop, rock and country & western, and a west (1896–1981), popular novelist, creator of Dr
of Scotland ethos and location; unique, vital, Finlay’s Casebook, a series of stories that was
ironic, wise. 47 turned into a long-running television series
in the 1960s, revived in the 1990s. 47
Lord Byron
(1788–1824), poet, aristocrat, satirist and Helen Cruickshank
ironically disdainful commentator on his (1886–1975), poet, memoirist, suffragette,
contemporaries. 17 generous and friendly with many members
of the 1920s Scottish Literary Renaissance,
Thomas Campbell her memoir Octobiography (1987) includes
(1777–1844), poet, widely read in his day, affectionate portraits of her contemporaries.
especially for the book-length narrative 22
poem with the unlikely title, Gertrude of
Wyoming (1809). 47
45
The Writers
Lavinia Derwent Robert Fergusson

(1909–89), author of Greyfriars Bobby, (1750–1774), poet, Burns’s great
children’s writer and creator, in the 1920s predecessor, but unlike Burns, a great poet of
of the immortal Tammy Troot who first the city, Edinburgh, Auld Reekie, and of the
uttered the words, ‘The world canny be a’ bad many, various kinds of men and women who
if I’m still in it!’ 40 were its residents; also a coruscating satirist
of enlightenment pretensions, especially of
Gavin Douglas Henry Mackenzie and Samuel Johnson.
(c.1476–1522), poet, translator of Virgil and 37 40
churchman, first author to insist on the use
of the term Scots to designate his language Ian Hamilton Finlay
as distinct and of equal validity alongside (1925–2006), poet, artist, story-writer and
Gaelic, English, Latin and French. gardener, whose sense of humour comes
23 37 40 through in razory puns, verbal and visual
gestures of deeply subversive implication. 45
Arthur Conan Doyle
(1859–1930), novelist, story-writer, creator Ronald Frame
of Sherlock Holmes and of the scientist- (b.1939), novelist, writer of short stories,
adventurer Professor Challenger in The Lost radio and TV dramatist. Stylish, literary,
World (1912). 41 cosmopolitan in his settings, he explores
the shifting sands of human personality in
William Drummond many landscapes. Time in Carnbeg (2004),
(1585–1649), deftly poised English- developed from an earlier radio series, is a
language poet, friend of the playwright Ben collection of disturbing and cleverly crafted
Jonson, with whom he had a series of witty tales about lonely people in what looks very
conversations, later written out. 42 like a Pitlochry resort. 25
S William Dunbar George MacDonald Fraser
(c.1460–c.1520), major poet at the early (1925–2008), novelist, memoirist, historian,
Renaissance court of James IV, a priest and scriptwriter, author of the Flashman series
devout churchman whose poems abound in of novels and an account of Hollywood
satiric edge and linguistic energy. 34 35 37 historical films. 60
Douglas Dunn Graham Fulton
(b.1942), poet and formerly Professor at (b.1959), poet, satiric humour, sharp scorn
St Andrews University, his books include and irony abound in his poems, very much
Terry Street (1969), Elegies (1985), Northlight in the Paisley tradition illuminated by Tom
(1988) and as editor, The Oxford Book of Leonard in his anthology Radical Renfrew.
Scottish Short Stories (1995) and The Faber 46
Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry
(2006). 37
46
The Writers
Edward Gaitens S Lewis Grassic Gibbon

(1897–1966), novelist and story-writer ( James Leslie Mitchell) (1901–35), novelist,
of closely-observed tales of working-class essayist and story-writer, the most important
characters in Glasgow, full of realistic detail, innovator in prose fiction, creating a Scots-
keen imaginative accuracy and pathos. 47 language idiom for the narrative of his best
novels and stories and thereby relativising
Janice Galloway
the narrative authority of the English
(b.1956), novelist and story-writer, starting
language, he also consistently placed the
from self-analysis and anatomisation of
experiences of women at the centre of all his
social experience in her first novel, she went
greatest fiction. 18 57
on to the full, fragmented portrait of Clara
Schumann in Clara (2002), one of the most James Graham
unpredicted, yet most-deserved successes of Marquis of Montrose
modern Scottish fiction. 47 (1612–50), the ‘Scottish cavalier poet
par excellence’. Educated at St Andrews
John Galt
University he became Charles I’s Captain
(1779–1839), prolific novelist, biographer
General in Scotland during the English
and entrepreneur. Born in Irvine and reared
Civil War. His brief, brilliant and bloody
in Greenock, he tried his commercial luck
campaigns ended in his execution in 1650.
without success in London and Canada and
His fifteen elegant and moving lyrics are
finally retired to Greenock. 46
collected in Robin Bell’s edition of 1990. 37
Robert Garioch
R.B. Cunninghame Graham
(1909–81), poet, great translator of
(1852–1936), story-writer and memoirist,
the Roman poet Giuseppe Belli, a local
undervalued author of short fiction and
anecdotal poet of Edinburgh, characterised
essays whose collected achievement amounts
by wry humour and reductive irony, yet also
to greatness; a socialist, optimist, Scottish
a poet of totally focused compassion and
nationalist, Jamesian and Joycean ironist,
moral judgement, not a warrior but one of
good friend of Joseph Conrad, aristocrat,
the humble men, like Schweik, Brecht or
a working politician and founder-member
Bloom. 39 41
of the National Party of Scotland and of
Patrick Geddes the Labour Party, who believed that neither
(1854–1932), social thinker, could effectively work in Scotland without
environmentalist and town planner, editor of the support of the other. 30
The Ever Green magazine, first pronounced
W.S. Graham
the term ‘Scottish Renascence’ in the 1890s
(1918–86), poet, born in Greenock but
and met MacDiarmid decades later, in time
spent much of his adult life in Cornwall,
to spur forward the Scottish Renaissance
producing intensely memorable poems and
movement of the 1920s and 1930s. 40
remarkable correspondence. 46
47
The Writers
Alasdair Gray S James Hogg

(b.1934), novelist, artist and story-writer, (1770–1835), novelist, story-writer, song-
one of the key writers of the late twentieth writer, shepherd, man of letters, prolific
century, author of numerous novels author of fashionable poems whose most
including the seminal Lanark (1981) and unpredicted novel, The Confessions of a
the lucid, startling novella The Fall of Kelvin Justified Sinner (1824), is essential in world
Walker (1985). 47 literature. 12 40 57 59
Andrew Greig Gerard Manley Hopkins
(b.1951), poet, novelist and memoirist, (1844–89), proto-modern Victorian English
author of a diverse range of work, from the poet with connections to Wales, Ireland and
irreverent, austere and funny poem-sequence Scotland. 32
Men on Ice (1977) to the comic John Buchan
pastiche The Return of John Macnab (1996). James Hunter
10 (b.1948), historian of Scotland and the
Scottish Highlands, especially of land
Neil Gunn use and ownership, and the Highland
(1891–1973), novelist, essayist and Clearances. 15
memoirist, one of the major novelists of
modern Scotland, with a series of works Violet Jacob
giving a panoramic vision of the Highlands (1863–1946), poet, novelist, short-story
and extending to Scotland’s cities, from writer, memoirist, diarist, author of
prehistoric times to the twentieth century. numerous books of poems, novels and
13 16 memoirs of her life in India. 22
Hamish Henderson Kathleen Jamie

(1919–2002), poet, essayist, folklorist, song- (b.1962), poet and essayist, her collections
collector, teacher at Edinburgh University’s include The Way We Live (1987), The
School of Scottish Studies. 41 47 Queen of Sheba (1994), Jizzen (1999) and
a selected poems, Mr & Mrs Scotland Are
S Robert Henryson (c.1450–c.1505), Dead (2002). Findings (2005) is a collection
major poet of the late medieval, early of essays. 37
Renaissance era of Kings James III and
James IV. 35 47 Robert Alan Jamieson
(b.1958), poet and novelist, grew up in
Archie Hind Shetland and writes fluently yet accessibly
(1928–2008), novelist, author of only in the language-idiom of the islands of that
one complete work set in Glasgow, which archipelago. 1
remains a classic of modern Scottish fiction,
The Dear Green Place (1966). 47
48
The Writers
S Robin Jenkins Andrew Lang

(1912–2005), novelist and story-writer, (1844–1912), a versatile and stylish man of
one of the most prolific of modern Scottish letters, minor poet and translator of Homer,
novelists, with work ranging from Scotland made major contributions to the study of
to the Far East. 47 folklore and anthropology. He wrote several
novels for young readers and his twelve
Samuel Johnson collections of international fairy tales, from
(1709–84), self-defining Englishman, editor The Blue Fairy Book (1889) to The Lilac Fairy
of the first seminal Dictionary (1755) of Book (1912) are still available today. 37
the English language, refused to familiarise
himself with the Scots language and Tom Leonard
denigrated Gaelic, yet condescended to visit (b.1944), poet, essayist, critic, anthologist,
Scotland and the Hebrides. 19 37 always politically engaged, whose
breakthrough poems in Glasgow urban
James Kelman voices, and whose critical reassessments of
(b.1946), novelist and story-writer, nineteenth-century urban poets, significantly
major novelist of working-class Glasgow, revised canonical parameters. 46 47
although not limited by that gravitational
emphasis, with work centred on middle- Eric Linklater
class experience including the fine novel A (1899–1974), novelist, story-writer, poet,
Disaffection (1989). 47 anthologist, whose prolific works reflected
a surgical objectivity in analysis and ironic
James Kennaway detachment, but also a comic engagement,
(1928–1968), novelist, scriptwriter and capable of both satire and celebration.
publisher. Brought up and educated 1 4
in Perthshire, Kennaway worked
autobiographical detail into his complex Bernard de Linton,
fictions of bitter goings-on in a Highland Abbot of Arbroath (c.1260–1331),
regiment and among county families, most churchman and political thinker,
memorably in Tunes of Glory (1956) and considered the principal author of the
Household Ghosts (1961). 25 essential document of Scottish identity, the
Declaration of Arbroath. 20
Robert Kirk
(1644–92), Gaelic poet, minister and S Liz Lochhead
occultist, author of famous but elusive (b.1948), poet and playwright, beginning
classic about the underworld, The Secret with lyrical, autobiographical poems,
Commonwealth (1691), a work of some developing a knack for dramatic
fascination for Walter Scott and later monologues, then writing full-length plays
authors. 28 and modern adaptations of Greek plays, a
major figure in modern Scottish writing. 47
49
The Writers
John Gibson Lockhart Highlands, The Albannach (1932) and And

(1794–1854), biographer, novelist, the Cock Crew (1945), deal respectively with
Walter Scott’s son-in-law and biographer, early twentieth-century Scotland, and the
conservative member of the genteel classes, period of the Highland Clearances. 16
and somewhat limited by this. 56
S Hugh MacDiarmid
H. Kingsley Long (C.M. Grieve) (1892–1978), poet,
(dates unknown), journalist and novelist, political thinker, story-writer, essayist,
co-author of No Mean City (1935), the most autobiographer, the major figure in
famous depiction of working-class Glasgow twentieth-century Scotland.
people of the 1930s, their lives in the slums 2 15 22 30 37 41 43 47 55
and gangs: the Irvine Welsh phenomenon of
Finlay J. MacDonald
its time, and still with historical value. 47
(1925–87), storyteller and memoirist,
S Sir David Lyndsay whose books are ample and beautifully-
(1490–1555), poet and playwright, author paced with anecdotes, affection and accurate
of the great play Ane Satire of the Thrie descriptions of a way of life now gone. 7
Estaits (first performed in 1540; published in
Peter McDougall
London in 1602), a classic of world literature
(b. 1947), TV screenwriter; grew up in
and possibly an influence on Shakespeare’s
Greenock. In the 1970s he was nurtured as
King Lear. 34 35 37
a dramatist by BBC Television’s innovative
Alexander McArthur Play for Today series. He has recalled that
(1901–47), novelist, co-author of No Mean he drew some of his harsh, violent themes
City (1935), the most famous depiction of and his wild humour from early shipyard
working-class Glasgow people of the 1930s, experiences on the Clyde. His scripts for
their lives in the slums and gangs, sensational television films include Just Your Luck
in its day. 47 (1972), Just Another Saturday (1975),
The Elephant’s Graveyard (1976) and Just a
S Norman MacCaig Boy’s Game (1979). 46
(1910–96), poet, his collected works are
almost entirely made up of short poems, Pittendrigh MacGillivray
lucid, wry and immediately accessible, an (1856–1938), poet, editor of the obscure
encyclopaedia of metaphors and similes, and but significant periodical The Pictish Review
a gazette of places in the Highlands around (1927), and a brilliant sculptor, technically
Lochinver, and in Edinburgh. close to Rodin, an undervalued political and
7 10 16 39 41 cultural catalyst. 17
Fionn Mac Colla John McGrath

(1906–75), novelist, cultural critic and (1935–2002), playwright, essayist,
political thinker, his two major novels of the scriptwriter, born near Liverpool in England,
50
The Writers
forever acclaimed as author and spark of Perthshire. These proved to be bestsellers

The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil in what came to be known as the Kailyard
(1973), a play which changed the idea of tradition. 26
what theatre in Britain could achieve. 16
John MacLean
James MacGregor (1879–1923), essayist, journalist, political
(c.1480–1551), Dean of the island of thinker, teacher, activist and Communist
Lismore and vicar of Fortingall, Perthshire, delegate for Scotland appointed by Lenin.
where he compiled the poems that make up 47
The Book of the Dean of Lismore (completed
1512-1542), the most important early Sorley MacLean
Scottish Gaelic collection. 24 (1911–96), Gaelic poet, translated his own
work into English, most profoundly moving
Stuart MacGregor in the sequence of love poems, Dain do
(1935–73), novelist, author of The Myrtle Eimhir (1943), and in ‘Hallaig’. 14 15 41
and Ivy (1967) and The Sinner (1973),
memorably depicting Edinburgh University Robert McLellan
and the pubs surrounding it. 41 (1907–85), playwright, poet, story-writer,
long-term resident of the island of Arran,
Donnchadh Ban Mac an t-Saoir / author of the Scots-language Linmill Stories
Duncan Ban MacIntyre (1724–1812), Gaelic (1977), set in the beautiful orchard valley of
poet, one of the greatest of all Gaelic poets, the river Clyde. 50
whose ‘Praise of Ben Dorain’ is a major poem
in European literature. 29 40 Donald MacLeod
(c.1790s?–c.1860s?), Highland crofter,
Compton Mackenzie reporter, memoirist and political thinker,
(1883–1972), novelist and autobiographer, author of Gloomy Memories (1857), the
astonishingly prolific author, classical music most searing contemporary account of the
fanatic, initiated Vox in the 1930s, the first Highland Clearances. 16
magazine devoted to reporting the new
invention of radio, co-founder in 1928 of the Mary Macleod
National Party of Scotland. Author of the / Mairi Nighean Alasdair Ruaidh (c.1615–
famous Whisky Galore! novel (1947). 6 1707), Gaelic poet, born in Rodel, Harris,
and buried there, at St Clement’s Kirk.
Ian Maclaren Notable for using vernacular language
was the pseudonym of Rev John Watson and idioms in courtly praise-songs and
(1850–1907), a Presbyterian Minister in evocations of heroic ideals. 7
Liverpool. A popular preacher and raconteur,
Watson was persuaded by an astute critic
to publish collections of nostalgic fictions
based on his first charge at Logiealmond in
51
The Writers
Mary Macpherson minded novelist, poet, children’s writer and

(1828–97), poet, writing in the context of champion of socialist and progressive causes.
the Highland Clearances and protesting 25
against them; known as Mairi Mhor nan
S Edwin Morgan
Oran, Big Mary of the Songs. 15
(1920–2010), poet, critic, teacher, man of
Allan Massie letters, Professor at Glasgow University, an
(b.1938), novelist, judicious commentator, encourager of other writers and perceptive
author of a wide range of historical novels, critic of Scottish literature. Of all modern
many set either in ancient Rome or in cold- poets, the one with the greatest range of
war Europe, probing questions of loyalty voices and forms. 24 40 41 47
and political attachment. The Last Peacock
John Morrison
(1980) and These Enchanted Woods (1993)
/ Iain Gobha (c.1796–1852), poet, known
are wry comedies of the mannners and
as the Harris Blacksmith, a spiritual leader
morals of Perthshire gentry. 25 60
with the Free Church after 1843, a powerful
Gavin Maxwell preacher and passionate revivalist, author
(1914–69), memoirist and naturalist, of predominantly spiritual verse but with a
popular author of various books describing range of subjects, capable of strong satires on
the natural world, including Ring of Bright churchmen he disliked and celebrations of
Water (1960), The Rocks Remain (1963), seafaring. 7
The House of Elrig (1965) and Raven Seek
Edwin Muir
Thy Brother (1969). 56
(1887–1959), poet, novelist, essayist and
Hugh Miller critic, the trajectory of his life, from farming
(1802–56), essayist, memoirist and Orkney to industrial Glasgow and Europe
geologist, also a newspaper editor and through the Second World War assumed an
folklore-collector, and a poet, but most allegorical power in his writing.
significant for his politically engaged writing 5 37 46 47
and his searching explorations of what was
Willa Muir
to become the science of geology. 11
(1890–1970), author of two novels,
William Miller Imagined Corners (1931) and Mrs Ritchie
(1810–72), children’s poet, author of (1933), both of which explore the
Victorian classic ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ (1841), limitations of small-town Scottish life. Her
memorised by generations of children. 47 speculative non-fiction, Mrs Grundy in
Scotland (1936), is a notable examination of
Naomi Mitchison the experiences and potential opportunities
(1897–1999), a Haldane of Geneagles for women. 22 37
and proud of it, a prolific, independently
52
The Writers
Stephen Mulrine Rosamunde Pilcher

(b.1937), poet, teacher, playwright and (b. 1924), a mainstream romantic novelist
translator, an encourager of other writers with a wide international readership. Born
and artists, author of the classic children’s in Cornwall she has lived for many years
poem ‘The Coming of the Wee Malkies’. 47 in Perthshire. Several of her later novels
are set in Scotland. September (1990)
Bud Neill deals affectionately with country life style
(1911–70), cartoonist and author of the social and sexual complications in a lightly
Lobey Dosser strips for the Glasgow Evening fictionalised rural Perthshire. 25
Times. 47
Beatrix Potter
Ian Niall (1866–1943), popular children’s writer who
/ John McNeillie (1916–2002): Niall or holidayed in Perthshire, creator of numerous
McNeillie was a novelist of great distinction animal-characters whose adventures, habits
and a writer about the animal, elemental, of conduct and appearance, are among the
non-human world of immense, sustained most memorable in all children’s fiction. 23
accuracy. His novels, Wigtown Ploughman
(1939) and No Resting Place (1948) and Allan Ramsay
autobiographies, A Galloway Childhood (1685–1758), poet and playwright, editor of
(1967), are treasures. Andrew McNeillie’s crucial anthologies such as The Ever Green
biography of his father: Ian Niall: Part of His (1724), bringing back into circulation work
Life (2007), is published by Clutag Press. 56 by poets of earlier centuries; author of the
seminal play The Gentle Shepherd (1796). 40
S Neil Munro
(1863–1930), novelist and story-writer, S Ian Rankin
significant for a series of visually impressive (b.1960), popular crime genre novelist,
and morally pessimistic novels and many his books address contemporary historical
perennially-popular comic stories, especially events through the last decades of the
the Para Handy tales (first published in book twentieth century, mainly in Edinburgh but
form 1906). 31 also in Glasgow and further afield, bluntly
exposing the crime-strata of the economy.
Mungo Park 1 39 41
(1771–1806), explorer of Africa, memoirist,
friend of Walter Scott, and subject of a Thomas the Rhymer
biography by Lewis Grassic Gibbon ( James (c.1220–98), poet, and the main character in
Leslie Mitchell). 57 Nigel Tranter’s clever and entertaining novel,
True Thomas (1981). 56
Don Paterson
(b.1963), poet. His collections include Nil James Robertson
Nil (1993), God’s Gift to Women (1997), (b.1958), novelist and poet, publisher of
Landing Light (2003) and Rain (2009). 37 Scots-language books, his novel Joseph
53
The Writers
Knight (2003) remains an important the Clyde shipyards and his first novel A
exploration of Scottish involvement in Green Tree in Gedde (1965) has a Greenock
slavery and the foundations of Scotland’s autobiographical background. Writing for
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonial film he has been notable for his harrowing
wealth. And the Land Lay Still (2010) is Westerns in, for example, Ulzana’s Raid. In
a modern historical novel set in Scotland, 1995 he scripted the film Rob Roy. 46
spanning the second half of the twentieth
century. 28 40 Adam Smith
(1723–90), political and economic thinker,
J.K. Rowling often wrongly credited with advocating greed
(b.1965), popular children’s novelist, creator and laissez-faire market economy capitalism
of the series of novels about the boy-wizard but in fact an advocate of market regulation
Harry Potter, which were made into an and a shrewd Enlightenment economist. 47
equally successful series of films. 39 40
Alexander McCall Smith
Archie Roy (b.1948), novelist, Emeritus Professor of
(b.1924), popular novelist and Emeritus Medical Law at Edinburgh University and
Professor of Astronomy at Glasgow creator of the popular No. 1 Ladies’ Detective
University, whose quasi-supernatural Agency series of of novels and numerous
thrillers are based on scientific speculation books for children. 41
about the paranormal. 50
S Iain Crichton Smith
Alexander Scott (1928–98), poet, novelist and story-writer,
(1920–89), poet and university lecturer, prolific in all genres, thoughtful and shrewd,
first Head of the Department of Scottish pessimistic in matters of religious austerity
Literature at Glasgow University; there is yet attractively given to various capacities:
an excellent biography, Auld Campaigner comic, quizzical, passionate. 8 12 16
(2007), by David Robb. 17 47
Sydney Goodsir Smith
Sir Walter Scott (1915–75), poet and playwright, flamboyant
(1771–1832), poet, novelist and memoirist; character and conversationalist, author
in the shortest list, Henryson, Dunbar, of The Wallace (1960), a play that was
Burns, Scott, Stevenson and MacDiarmid enthusiastically welcomed by massive
are Scotland’s greatest writers in English audience support when national television
and Scots; each one should be read companies and film-makers had failed to
comprehensively. 1 12 28 32 33 39 40 make anything about Scotland’s Wars of
41 51 56 57 60 Independence.
39 41
Alan Sharp
(b. 1934), novelist and latterly a Hollywood
screenwriter. As a young man he worked in
54
The Writers
Tobias Smollett number of summer holidays at Cruden Bay,

(1721–71), novelist and poet, trained Aberdeenshire. It was here he found much
as a surgeon, worked on board ship as a inspiration for his Dracula novels (1897). 19
naval surgeon and travelled widely, later
Stella Sutherland
writing satirical, ironic novels anatomising
(b.1924), poet, based in Shetland and
newly formed British identity and the
writing in the language-idiom of those
establishment of national stereotypes.
islands as well as English, in an immediately
47 48
accessible, directly compassionate way. 1
William Soutar
William J. Tait
(1898–1943), poet and memoirist, lyric poet
(1921–93), poet, lived in Shetland, helping
of intense quality, haunting and personal
to found The New Shetlander and writing
loss, yet also a poet of large social vision and
in the Shetland language-idiom as well
a brilliant children’s poet, with fast, twisty-
as standard English, works of vision and
turning rhymes and ‘whigmaleeries’; his
serious ambition. 1
diaries are deeply moving. 27
Andrew Tannahill
S Muriel Spark
(1900–86), poet, translator and song-writer,
(1918–2006), novelist and poet, arguably
in the Burns tradition of social justice,
the most widely recognised major late
domestic affection, political egalitarianism
twentieth-century Scottish novelist,
and the priorities of human sensitivity and
a sophisticated ironist and satirist of
openness. 46
convention, she claimed she was a poet, pre-
eminently in the dark vision that inspired Robert Tannahill
her best work. 39 (1774–1810), poet, song-writer and
collector. Working in a handloom weaving
S Robert Louis Stevenson
community, he composed lyrics of
(1850–94), novelist, poet, essayist and
sentimental romance, humour and landscape
memoirist, a crucial prophet of the modern
set to traditional tunes, and saw himself
world, in his analysis of the relation between
very much in an affinity with Burns. When
childishness, adulthood and violence, in
he could not find a publisher, he committed
his shrewd counterbalancing of semi-
suicide. 46
reliable narratives and in his increasing
understanding of cultural relativism. Derick Thomson
39 40 41 (b.1921), poet, teacher, Glasgow University
Professor, literary historian and critic,
Bram Stoker
one of the most important figures in the
(1847–1912), Irish novelist, a Dublin
revitalisation of Gaelic in the modern world.
man and theatre manager, Stoker spent a 8
55
The Writers
James Thomson Irvine Welsh

(1700–48), poet, his sequence of English- (b.1958), novelist and story-writer,
language poems, The Seasons (1730), was Trainspotting (1993) was a livre de cachet
a radical new departure, initiating pastoral in its era and Welsh has developed a high
landscape poetry internationally, most moral tone alongside his sensationalist style,
unexpectedly followed up by James Grainger throughout his depictions of bad people and
and James Montgomery in the West Indies. bright young addicts. 39 41
58
Louise Welsh
John Tonge (b.1967), novelist; the crime or murder-
art critic, journalist and historian, author mystery genre does not fully encapsulate
of the important book, The Arts of Scotland the range of her writing; Naming the Bones
(1938) and as A.T. Cunninghame, (2010) is closely descriptive of Glasgow
contributor to the 1930s periodical The University and the island of Lismore. 47
Modern Scot, edited from St Andrews by
James H. Whyte. 37 William Wordsworth
(1770–1850), English Romantic poet deeply
Nigel Tranter indebted to Burns, writes at a walking pace
(1909–2000), popular historical novelist, and has an uncanny accuracy about eternal
prolific author and activist in the National truths, e.g. his phrase, ‘the still sad music
Trust for Scotland. 38 of humanity’: this certainly sounds good,
but it also makes you ask, why music? And
Alexander Trocchi why sad? And why does it feel so right?
(1925–84), novelist and poet, both Young Wordsworth writes movingly of various
Adam (1957) and Cain’s Book (1960) are aspects of his experience of Scotland in his
essential novels of post-World War Two Scottish poems of 1803. 32
literary Scotland, the latter introducing the
word ‘cool’ for the first time. 47
Jules Verne
(1828–1905), French novelist who visited
Scotland and toured through Glasgow and
Ediburgh, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs,
and travelling as far as the Hebrides,
including Mull and Staffa. 33
56
Top The wooden footbridge at Aberlady Bay, East Lothian.
Middle left Exhibits on display at the Burns Museum, Alloway, South Ayrshire.
Middle right Dunkeld and the River Tay, Perthshire.
Bottom left Gavin Maxwell memorial, Dumfries & Galloway.
Bottom right Cherry Blossom along the Burn of Sorrow, Dollar, near Gleneagles.
For information on literary festivals and events log on to
www.bookfestivalscotland.com
To find out more about literature in Scotland log on to
www.literatureforumscotland.org.uk
This guide has been produced and supported by:
Alan Riach author

Professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow
University and President of the Association
for Scottish Literary Studies, 2006-10. He is
the general editor of the Collected Works of
Hugh MacDiarmid, the author of Representing
Scotland in Literature, Popular Culture and
Iconography (2005) and co-author with Alexander
Moffat of Arts of Resistance: Poets, Portraits ASLS
and Landscapes of Modern Scotland (2008),
ASLS promotes the languages and literature of
described by the Times Literary Supplement
Scotland, publishing classic and contemporary
as ‘a landmark book’. His fifth book of poems,
Scottish writing, journals, teaching notes,
Homecoming (2009), follows Clearances (2001),
and study guides to major Scottish authors.
First & Last Songs (1995), An Open Return
www.asls.org.uk
(1991) and This Folding Map (1990).
VisitScotland
VisitScotland is Scotland’s national tourist
board. For more information on what to see
and do and where to stay in Scotland visit
www.visitscotland.com
Creative Scotland
The arts, culture and creative industries make
Scotland the place it is today, and Creative
Scotland is the national leader – here to nurture
the talent in Scotland, and to champion Scotland’s
creativity at home and abroad.

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A Traveller’s Guide to

1 Shetland (locations 1–2) p4

Above The Edinburgh International Book Festival, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh. 3

The Orkney island of Wyre

On the outskirts of the town is Bayble,

This was the favoured territory of the novelist

It is the ruined Slains Castle

18 Above Ben Dorain, near Tyndrum, Argyll.

33 loch katrine and the trossachs

35 dunfermline 36 forth bridges

Above St Salvator’s College, University of St Andrews. 23

Above View over Edinburgh’s Old Town. 25

Many of them frequented

Here MacDiarmid was visited

‘Here comes Langholm! Birthplace of Hugh MacDiarmid!’ –

At St Medans is the Gavin Maxwell

57 abbotsford, near melrose

40 Above Abbotsford House on the south bank of the River Tweed.

Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair James Barke

the Guardian of Scotland, has proved S George Mackay Brown

1579. Here Buchanan says that all political Thomas Carlyle

Lavinia Derwent Robert Fergusson

Edward Gaitens S Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Alasdair Gray S James Hogg

Hamish Henderson Kathleen Jamie

S Robin Jenkins Andrew Lang

John Gibson Lockhart Highlands, The Albannach (1932) and And

Fionn Mac Colla John McGrath

forever acclaimed as author and spark of Perthshire. These proved to be bestsellers

Mary Macpherson minded novelist, poet, children’s writer and

Stephen Mulrine Rosamunde Pilcher

Tobias Smollett number of summer holidays at Cruden Bay,

James Thomson Irvine Welsh

Alan Riach author

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