“It was a bright cold day in April,” said Richard Blair, “and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Blair is seventy-three and the son of George Orwell. To witness him stand at a lectern and read the opening line of his father’s great final novel, 1984, is to experience a sense of completion, an equation solved…. Read more »
Runrig: The Last Dance
First published August 11th, 2018 in The Herald
On a blazingly hot afternoon towards the end of June, the Cuillin ridge zigzagging above Skye like God’s own ECG, Donnie Munro stops outside his childhood home: a roughcast semi on Kitson Crescent, Portree, and points up to what had been his bedroom window. “I always said,” he smiles, “that this must be the best… Read more »
Alasdair Macleod
First published 24th February 2018 in The Herald
Late in the summer of last year, around ten weeks before his own death, the fisherman Alasdair Macleod was visiting the island of Lismore and stopped in to pay his respects to the son of a farmer who had passed away. Over a dram, they reminisced, honouring the old man’s life in whisky and memory…. Read more »
A garden in Govan
First published October 27, 2018 in The Guardian
Look at Wee Jackie go. Four-foot-nine, 43 years old, gabbing non-stop, grafting non-stop, her Sunday name – Jacqueline – tattooed on the back of her neck, she shoves that wheelbarrow around the garden like Glasgow’s own Sisyphus. She’s a force of nature in whose life nature has become a positive force.
The Broons
First published September 13th, 2016 in The Guardian
Jings, these actors look familiar. Eleven of them, conga-lining their way across the floor of a theatre studio in Glasgow, not yet in costume, but imagine them in silhouette; imagine them in pen and ink. The little woman at the back, holding the teddy, is in her mid-fifties and not quite five feet tall. The… Read more »