Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray

Author: Rodge Glass

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2012-04-05

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1408833352

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Alasdair Gray, author of the modern classics Lanark, Poor Things and 1982, Janine, is without doubt Scotland's greatest living novelist. Since trying (unsuccessfully) to buy him a drink in 1998, Rodge Glass, first tutee and then secretary to the author, takes on the role of biographer, charting Gray's life from unpublished and unrecognised son of a box-maker to septuagenarian "little grey deity" (as Will Self has called him). A Jewish Mancunian Boswell to Gray's Johnson, Glass seamlessly weaves a chronological narrative of his subject's life into his own diary of meeting, getting to know and working with the artist, writer and campaigner, to create a vibrant and wonderfully textured portrait of a literary great.

Holding Fast to an Image of the Past
Holding Fast to an Image of the Past

Author: Neil Davidson

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2014-05-27

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 1608463338

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Davidson discusses how Marxism can retain a sense of historical tradition without becoming fossilized.

Walking the Corbetts Vol 2 North of the Great Glen
Walking the Corbetts Vol 2 North of the Great Glen

Author: Brian Johnson

Publisher: Cicerone Press Limited

Published: 2013-08-27

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1849659095

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A guidebook presenting 90 routes visiting 109 of Scotland’s Corbetts (mountains between 2500 and 2999ft). Covering the area north of the Great Glen, including the Hebrides, the walks require good fitness and navigation skills plus experience in remote mountainous terrain: while many are straightforward ascents, some involve scrambling and river crossings. The routes range from 7 to 41km (4–25 miles) and include hikes around Knoydart, Glen Affric, Torridon, Strathcarron and the Isle of Skye. Part of a 2-volume set: an accompanying Cicerone guidebook, Walking the Corbetts Vol 1 South of the Great Glen, is also available Clear route description illustrated with 1:100,000 mapping Difficulty notes for each route detailing terrain, challenges and hazards Information on maps, parking, local bases, facilities and ferry services Alphabetical list of the Corbetts

Glengarry Collection: The Highland Fiddle Music of Aonghas Grant Volume 2
Glengarry Collection: The Highland Fiddle Music of Aonghas Grant Volume 2

Author: Aonghas Grant

Publisher: Mel Bay Publications

Published: 2016-01-26

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 1619116162

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book, with accompanying video, is the second and final volume in the Glengarry Collection of Aonghas Grant's Highland fiddle repertoire. The book contains 188 additional slow airs, marches, strathspeys, reels, jigs and hornpipes. Accompanying stories, history and photographs provide additional background to the tunes. This collection focuses on the core of Grant's music - Highland fiddling, and its connections to pipe tunes and Gaelic songs. Some of these tunes have never been published before, while others are only available in out-of-print books and pipe settings. The collection also includes a number of tunes composed by Grant, and ones composed in his honor. The tunes are fully chorded in a style representative of Grant's band experience. Transcriptions of his bowings, grace notes and stories provide insight into his playing style. Accompanying photos richlyillustrate Grant's music, including images of musicians, family, and scenes from his various careers. The accompanying video download available online includes recordings of Grant's impromptu and passionate performances, featuring 81 selections

Modern Irish and Scottish Poetry
Modern Irish and Scottish Poetry

Author: Peter Mackay

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-04-14

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1139499947

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The comparative study of the literatures of Ireland and Scotland has emerged as a distinct and buoyant field in recent years. This collection of new essays offers the first sustained comparison of modern Irish and Scottish poetry, featuring close readings of texts within broad historical and political contextualisation. Playing on influences, crossovers, connections, disconnections and differences, the 'affinities' and 'opposites' traced in this book cross both Irish and Scottish poetry in many directions. Contributors include major scholars of the new 'archipelagic' approach, as well as leading Irish and Scottish poets providing important insights into current creative practice. Poets discussed include W. B. Yeats, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley MacLean, Louis MacNeice, Edwin Morgan, Douglas Dunn, Seamus Heaney, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Michael Longley, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala ni Dhomhnaill, Don Paterson and Kathleen Jamie. This book is a major contribution to our understanding of poetry from these islands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Traditional Literatures
Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Traditional Literatures

Author: Sarah Dunnigan

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2013-08-20

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0748645411

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This collection of essays explores the historical importance and imaginative richness of Scotland's extensive contribution to modes of traditional culture and expression: ballads, tales and storytelling, and song. Its underlying aim is to bring about a more dynamic and inclusive understanding of Scottish culture. Rooted in literary history and both comparative and interdisciplinary in scope, the volume covers the key aspects and genres of traditional literature, including the Gaelic tradition, from the medieval period to the present. Key theoretical and conceptual issues raised by the historical analysis of Scotland's rich store of ballad, song, and folk narrative are discussed in separate chapters. The volume also explores why and how Scottish literary writers have been inspired by traditional genres, modes, and motifs, and the intermingling of folk and literary traditions in writers such as Burns, Scott, and Hogg. It also uncovers the folkloric and mythopoetic materials of early Scottish literature, and the vitality of neglected aspects of Scottish popular culture.

Voicing Scotland
Voicing Scotland

Author: Gary West

Publisher: Luath Press Ltd

Published: 2013-07-22

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1909912352

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Voicing Scotland takes the reader on a discovery tour through Scotland's traditional music and song culture, past and present. West unravels the strings that link many of our contemporary musicians, singers and poets with those of the past, offering up to our ears these voices which deserve to be more loudly heard. What do they say to us in the 21st Century? What is the role of tradition in the contemporary world? Can there be a folk culture in the digital age? What next for the traditional arts? REVIEWS Can folk stay true to tradition and still be genuinely contemporary? Can its pride in place counter globalisation- without collapsing into narrow nationalism? The answer for, Gary West, is a resounding Yes. SCOTSMAN Voicing Scotland...is an engrossing assessment of where Scottish Traditional Music standsl, at a time of resonant political developments in the nation's history but also of globalisation and the threat of cultural homogenisation in todays 'liquid society'. SCOTSMAN

Scotland’s Harvest
Scotland’s Harvest

Author: Richie McCaffery

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-07-24

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9004679286

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This study is the first exploration of the impact of World War Two on Scottish poets of both the front line and the home front. World War One has always been thought of as a poet’s war, one of horror and futility. The poetry of World War Two, by contrast, has long languished in its shadow, though there was a much greater amount of it written. This book asks whether these poets felt they were grown for war or rather that they grew through war experience, with an emphasis on the possibilities of the future instead of cataloguing the senseless horror of the battlefield. How were the hopes of Scottish poets different from their English counterparts? How was their poetry different, and how did it impact on their later lives?

Folksongs & Ballads of Scotland
Folksongs & Ballads of Scotland

Author: Ewan MacColl

Publisher: Oak Publications

Published: 1965-06-01

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 178323427X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Great Ballad Tradition of Scotland is one of the most important influences on the folk songs of the English-speaking world. The descendants of the old Scottish ballads appear in countless variants in England, Canada, Australia and the United States. Now Ewan MacColl, himself raised in this tradition, has drawn on this great wealth of tradition to fashion an outstanding collection of Scottish folk songs and ballads. Here are 70 songs,complete with words,music, historical notes, and appropriate guitar chords (supplied by Peggy Seeger). Documentary illustrations and a glossary of the Scottish idioms employed help to make this a book that is both useful to the musician and singer, and a fine work of art as well.

Bannockburns
Bannockburns

Author: Robert Crawford

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2014-01-14

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0748685855

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Poet and critic Robert Crawford explores in eloquent detail the literary-cultural background to Scottish nationalism in the lead-up to the referendum on independence for Scotland from the United Kingdom in September 2014. He begins with the totemic Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, in which the Scots routed the English and preserved their independence until the two nations' parliaments united in 1707. Paying particular attention to Robert Burns and continuing up to the present day, he examines how writers have set out in poetry, fiction, plays and on film the ideal of Scottish independence. Publication coincides with the 700-year anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn.