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Scotland, Bloody Scotland
Sep. 23rd, 2012 02:00 pmSeveral months ago, I found out that the retired University of Wisconsin professor who organised our Agatha Christie, Daphne Dumaurier, Sherlock Holmes and Hay-on-Wye tour prior to Crimefest 2010 in Bristol was planning a similar tour around the first-ever Bloody Scotland crime-writing festival, held last weekend in Stirling. As plans for the festival firmed up, I learned that not only would there be some of my favourite authors from Scotland and the rest of the UK (Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Karen Campbell, A.D. Scott, Ann Cleeves, Aline Templeton) but also a couple of my favourite Scandinavian crime-writers (Karin Fossum, Yrsa Sigurdardottir) plus other writers whose works I hadn't read but which sounded very interesting. Then there was the strong Canadian dollar, the fact that they were having trouble getting enough people to make the trip cost-effective (they had allowed for up to 30 people; they priced things based on 25 enrolling; and in the end, we only had 20 in our group) and the news that the Bloody Scotland organisers would pre-release the Bloody Scotland programme and allow us to pre-purchase tickets for the events of our choice BEFORE the programme was released to anyone else - and I was convinced that it was fate that I should go!
Barry Forshaw, who has written copiously about crime fiction, recently penned a book entitled something like "Crime in a Cold Climate" exploring the links between Scottish and Scandinavian crime-writing. Very appropriately, he chaired a panel on the Sunday morning with Val McDermid, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Jade Chandler discussing "The Next Big Thing". It was there that I acquired some insight as to why I find both Scottish and Scandinavian mysteries so appealing. Margaret Atwood famously wrote how Canadian literature is all, in one way or another, about survival. And similarly, it seems, survival is a very prevalent theme in both Scottish (and other UK "distinct societies'") crime fiction. There's the obvious theme of physical survival in the challenging climes of the northern latitudes, but there's also the aspect of survival of minority languages and cultures. Perhaps it was prophetic that I started my tour on the very day that Quebec was re-electing a PQ government - Scotland, of course, will have its own referendum on independence in the autumn of 2014. It already has its own Parliament and its own banknotes.
The tour consisted of: one night in Dunkeld; two nights in Grantown on Spey; three nights in Broadford on the Isle of Skye; four nights in Edinburgh; and four nights in Stirling at the conference hotel. While in Stirling, we also made a day trip to Glasgow but because I felt that wouldn't be nearly enough to take in everything I wanted to see, I arranged an additional night in Glasgow on my own at the end of my trip. We did stop at some significant spots when en route between cities and towns (e.g. Clava Cairns, which for my money rivals Stonehenge as an interesting site to visit; or Leakey's bookshop in Inverness, the largest second-hand bookshop in Scotland) and we did have a reasonable amount of time to explore independently - while it sounds like rather a whirlwind trip (and there were certainly SOME places where I would have liked a little more time), you have to remember that distances in Scotland are much shorter than in Canada!
As enjoyable as the conference itself was, I think the highlights of the tour would certainly involve the private "audiences" we had with some of the local authors, usually over tea, coffee or lunch. In Torguish, we had afternoon tea with Shona MacLean (author of the 17th century Alexander Seaton trilogy) at an inn which was the childhood home of her uncle, thriller-writer Alistair MacLean. In Inverness, we had coffee with Clio Gray (who is the author of Envoy of the Black Pine and other historical mysteries, as well as an expert on Josephine Tey). We had tea with John Buchan's granddaughter, Lady Deborah Stewartby. In Edinburgh, of course, you can hardly turn around without running across literary references. We saw Fleshmarket Close and other Ian Rankin sites. We saw sites immortalized in the work of Alexander McCall Smith. We had coffee with an Arthur Conan Doyle expert (a Dr. Mackaill) at the medical school there and saw a major Conan Doyle exhibit at the Bell (as in Dr. Joseph) Library there. Then there was the Writers Museum, which is devoted mainly to memorabilia of three major Scottish writers: Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns. In Glasgow, we had lunch with Lin Anderson (author of the Rhona MacLeod series) and did a walking tour with her (in the pouring rain) of some of her favourite haunts on the University of Glasgow campus and nearby.
It seems everywhere we went, there was a castle, one or more cathedrals or chapels to explore (including Rosslyn Chapel, immortalized in The Da Vinci Code - though one of the highlights for me was the resident cat, William). And that's before all the various museums, art-galleries, libraries and bookshops.
History and culture everywhere. And that's all I'm going to say for now.
Barry Forshaw, who has written copiously about crime fiction, recently penned a book entitled something like "Crime in a Cold Climate" exploring the links between Scottish and Scandinavian crime-writing. Very appropriately, he chaired a panel on the Sunday morning with Val McDermid, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Jade Chandler discussing "The Next Big Thing". It was there that I acquired some insight as to why I find both Scottish and Scandinavian mysteries so appealing. Margaret Atwood famously wrote how Canadian literature is all, in one way or another, about survival. And similarly, it seems, survival is a very prevalent theme in both Scottish (and other UK "distinct societies'") crime fiction. There's the obvious theme of physical survival in the challenging climes of the northern latitudes, but there's also the aspect of survival of minority languages and cultures. Perhaps it was prophetic that I started my tour on the very day that Quebec was re-electing a PQ government - Scotland, of course, will have its own referendum on independence in the autumn of 2014. It already has its own Parliament and its own banknotes.
The tour consisted of: one night in Dunkeld; two nights in Grantown on Spey; three nights in Broadford on the Isle of Skye; four nights in Edinburgh; and four nights in Stirling at the conference hotel. While in Stirling, we also made a day trip to Glasgow but because I felt that wouldn't be nearly enough to take in everything I wanted to see, I arranged an additional night in Glasgow on my own at the end of my trip. We did stop at some significant spots when en route between cities and towns (e.g. Clava Cairns, which for my money rivals Stonehenge as an interesting site to visit; or Leakey's bookshop in Inverness, the largest second-hand bookshop in Scotland) and we did have a reasonable amount of time to explore independently - while it sounds like rather a whirlwind trip (and there were certainly SOME places where I would have liked a little more time), you have to remember that distances in Scotland are much shorter than in Canada!
As enjoyable as the conference itself was, I think the highlights of the tour would certainly involve the private "audiences" we had with some of the local authors, usually over tea, coffee or lunch. In Torguish, we had afternoon tea with Shona MacLean (author of the 17th century Alexander Seaton trilogy) at an inn which was the childhood home of her uncle, thriller-writer Alistair MacLean. In Inverness, we had coffee with Clio Gray (who is the author of Envoy of the Black Pine and other historical mysteries, as well as an expert on Josephine Tey). We had tea with John Buchan's granddaughter, Lady Deborah Stewartby. In Edinburgh, of course, you can hardly turn around without running across literary references. We saw Fleshmarket Close and other Ian Rankin sites. We saw sites immortalized in the work of Alexander McCall Smith. We had coffee with an Arthur Conan Doyle expert (a Dr. Mackaill) at the medical school there and saw a major Conan Doyle exhibit at the Bell (as in Dr. Joseph) Library there. Then there was the Writers Museum, which is devoted mainly to memorabilia of three major Scottish writers: Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns. In Glasgow, we had lunch with Lin Anderson (author of the Rhona MacLeod series) and did a walking tour with her (in the pouring rain) of some of her favourite haunts on the University of Glasgow campus and nearby.
It seems everywhere we went, there was a castle, one or more cathedrals or chapels to explore (including Rosslyn Chapel, immortalized in The Da Vinci Code - though one of the highlights for me was the resident cat, William). And that's before all the various museums, art-galleries, libraries and bookshops.
History and culture everywhere. And that's all I'm going to say for now.
