287- ] English Literature , Glen Duncan

287- ] English Literature

Glen Duncan

Professor Duncan Munro Glen (11 January 1933 – 20 September 2008) was a Scottish poet, literary editor and Emeritus Professor of Visual Communication at Nottingham Trent University. He became known with his first full-length book, Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance. His many verse collections included from Kythings and other poems (1969), In Appearances (1971), Realities Poems (1980), Selected Poems 1965–1990 (1991), Selected New Poems 1987–1996 (1998) and Collected Poems 1965–2005 (2006). His Autobiography of a Poet appeared with Ramsay Head Press in 1986. He edited Akros magazine for 51 numbers from August 1965 to October 1983. His work to promote Scottish poets and artists included Hugh MacDiarmid and Ian Hamilton Finlay, among others. Some of his poetry was translated into Italian.

Early life and career

Glen was born in Westburn, Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, the son of a white-collar worker in The Steel Company of Scotland, Hallside, near Newton Station. He was educated at West Coats Primary School in Cambuslang, then at Rutherglen Academy, but left at 15 to become an office boy and apprentice printer in Glasgow and Kirkcaldy, before studying at Edinburgh College of Art. After national service in the RAF as a photographic interpreter, he became a typographic designer with the HMSO and did freelance typographic design for publishers in London.

Glen then moved into graphic-design education, first at Watford College of Technology. After a brief spell as an editor in Glasgow with Robert Gibson & Sons Ltd, educational publishers, at what was to become Preston Polytechnic, he was appointed Professor of Visual Communication at what would be Nottingham Trent University. Glen served on the Council of National Academic Awards.

Glen founded Akros Publications in 1965, to publish Scottish poetry and literary criticism; from 1965 to 2006 over 250 works appeared under the Akros imprint. They included poetry, critical and historical studies, Akros magazine (51 issues) and Zed 2 0 (19 numbers), and fiction by Robert McLellan, John Herdman and others. His aim as editor of Akros magazine was to publish modern Scottish poetry in Scots and English, cutting across the "fighting cliques" of the time.[1] Alongside his own poetry, he produced several studies of Scottish literature, anthologies, and a range of publications in other areas, including a history of typography, the definitive history of Cambuslang, a place for which he retained a affection, and an illustrated history of Kirkcaldy, where he latterly lived.

Glen was elected a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers in 1977. In 1974 and 1998 he received awards from the Scottish Arts Council "for services to Scottish literature" and "in recognition of his many years as a publisher and editor and entrepreneurial activities for Scottish literature". In 1991 he received the Howard Sergeant Memorial Award "in recognition of long and devoted services to poetry". In 2000 he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters by Paisley University.

Bibliography

Works and anthologies produced by Duncan Glen, to be found in the National Library of Scotland and the British Library:

21 poems after drawings, etc. by George Hollingworth, et al., 2000

Antigruppo Palermo, gruppoanti, 1974

Apprentice angel/Hugh MacDiarmid, 1963

Autobiography of a poet, 1986

Bibliography of Scottish poets from Stevenson to 1974 compiled with an introduction by Duncan Glen with a preface by Hugh MacDiarmid, 1974

Bonnie fechter [sound recording]: Alexander Scott 1920–1989, 1990

Bright they shine: Cambuslang poetry/by Patrick Hamilton... et al.; with an introduction by Duncan Glen, 2001

Buits and wellies, or, Sui generis a sequence of poems by Duncan Glen with illustrations by George Hollingworth, 1976

Christmas fable for Margaret Duncan Glen

Cled score poems Duncan Glen, 1974

Clydesdale a sequence o poems by Duncan Glen, 1971

Clydeside kinsfolk: the lives and times of a typically extended Lowland *Scottish family 1694 to 1994: Cambuslang, *Rutherglen & East Kilbride/by Duncan Glen, 1995

Collected poems, 1965–2005/by Duncan Glen, 2006

Echoes: frae classical and Italian poetry/by Duncan Glen, 1992

Elegies: a selection from 1966–2003/by Duncan Glen, 2006

Essay in response to critical essays on contemporary Scottish poetry in Akros magazine/George Bruce; edited by Duncan Glen, 2005

European poetry in Scotland an anthology of translations edited by Peter France & Duncan Glen, 1989

Evergreen song lyrics : a selection from the poetry of the British Isles & America/chosen by Duncan Glen with commentaries, 2000

Extended Glen family of Cambuslang, Lanarkshire, Scotland & their descendants 1694–1998/by Duncan Glen, 1998

Familiar epistles between William Hamilton of Gilbertfield in Cambuslang and Allan Ramsay in Edinburgh: with an extract from William Hamilton of Gilbertfield's version of Blind Harry's Wallace/edited with an introduction by Duncan Glen; with prefaces by R. K. D. Milne and Neil McCallum, 2000

Feres poems by Duncan Glen, 1971

Five literati an anon (Scot lit. anti lit. pop) symposium created by Duncan Glen, 1976

Follow! Follow! Follow! and other poems by Duncan Glen, 1976

Forward from Hugh MacDiarmid, or, Mostly out of Scotland being fifteen years of Duncan Glen, Akros Publications 1962–1977 by Duncan Glen with a check-list of publications, August 1962 – August 1977, 1977

Four Scottish poets of Cambuslang & Dechmont Hill, 1626–1990: Patrick Hamilton, Minister at Cambuslang 1626–1645, Lieutenant William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, Cambuslang [c. 1665–1751], John Struthers, born at East Kilbride, and poet of Dechmont [1776–1850 and Duncan Glen, 1996

Friars of Berwick: a narrative poem in Scots, edited with an introduction by Duncan Glen, 2002

Gaitherings poems in Scots by Duncan Glen, 1977

Geeze! a sequence of poems by Duncan Glen, 1985

Graphic lines, 1975

Historic Fife Murders at Falkland, St. Andrews & Magus Muir: journeys through Fife between Forth and Tay/by Duncan Glen, 2002

Hugh Glen and the Victoria Drinking Fountain, Cambuslang: a family memoir, 2005

Hugh MacDiarmid & Duncan Glen: a prospect from Brownsbank: poems, biographical notes and a bibliography, 1998

Hugh MacDiarmid, a critical survey edited by Duncan Glen, 1972

Hugh MacDiarmid, an essay for 11 August 1977

Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance, 1964

Hugh MacDiarmid, or, Out of Langholm and into the World

Hugh MacDiarmid: rebel poet and prophet. A short note on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, 1962

Illustrious Fife: literary, historical & architectural pathways & walks, 1998

In appearances, 1971

In place of wark, or, Man of art: a sequence in thirty pairts, 1977

In search of Serif Books, the Stanley Press & Joseph Mardel, publisher of Maurice Lindsay's Hurlygush and Sydney Goodsir Smith's Under the Eildon tree, & taking serious note of William Maclellan & Callum Macdonald: with photographs and illustrations, 2006

In the small hours, or, To be about to be a poem in thirty parts, 1984

Individual and the twentieth-century Scottish literary tradition, 1971

Inextinguishable part 14 of realities poems, 1977

Ither sangs, 1978

John Atman and other poems; with an introduction by Leonard Mason, 2001

Journey into Scotland: poems, 1991

Journey past – a sequence of poems, 1971

Keepsake for New Year 2000 from Akros Publications: poems, 2000

Kirkcaldy: a new illustrated history, 2004

Kirkcaldy: a photographic guide and introduction to the history of the town, 2005

Lanark & the Falls of Clyde...: Lanarkshire past and present, a rediscovery & anthology, 2001

Literary masks of Hugh MacDiarmid. [Illustrated], 1964

Long Calderwood, old East Kilbride; and its associations with John & William Hunter and the poetry of Anne Hunter, Joanna Baillie & John Struthers, with a selection of poems by Anne Hunter and Joanna Baillie, 2005

Makars' walk. Walks in the old town of Edinburgh, with an anthology of poetry selected and walked by Duncan Glen, 1990

Morning taken with the sun : an anthology of poems in short shining stanzas/[selection and design, Duncan Glen], 2001

Mr & Mrs J. L. Stoddart at home, a poem by Duncan Glen, 1975

Nation in a parish: a new historical prospect of Scotland from the parish of Cambuslang, 1995

New history of Cambuslang, 1998

Nottingham: a poem, 1984

Nuova poesia Scozzese/[edited by] Duncan Glen, [translated by] Nat Scammacca, 1976

Nuova Scozia : undici poesie di Duncan Glen/scelte e tradotte dallo scozzese da Enzo Bonventre, 1996

Of marks & memories : a gallimaufry of printers', publishers' and others' marks, devices, emblems, crests, arms, symbols or logos, 2005

Of philosophers and tinks. A sequence of poems, 1977

On midsummer evenin merriest of nichts? 1981

Orchardlands & Avondale & Bothwell...: Lanarkshire past and present, a rediscovery & anthology, 2001

Out to the Calf of Man, September 1989: a poem and etchings, 1990

Photographic celebration at the ruins of Bighty Farm, 2002

Poems in Scots Hugh MacDiarmid [edited by Duncan Glen], 1963

Poems on art works: a selection by Duncan Glen, 2003

Poetry of the Scots: an introduction and bibliographical guide to poetry in Gaelic, Scots, Latin and English, 1991

Poets & paintings : reinterpretations: an essay, 2003

Preston Polytechnic poets : Duncan Glen, Ian Harrow, Philip Pacey, Hugh Probyn/edited by Duncan Glen ; with illustrations by John Hodkinson, 1977

Preston's new buildings by John Brook and Duncan Glen with photographs by Myra Jones and John Brook, 1975

Printing type designs : a new history from Gutenberg to 2000, 2001

Querencia: saggio di traduzione poetica/Enzo Bonventre, 1994

Ravenscraig Castle: with illustrations of Pathhead, Sinclairtown & Dysart, 2001

Realities poems by Duncan Glen, 1980

Robert Louis Stevenson and the Covenanters on the Bass Rock & 'The tale of Tod Lapraik', 2002

Ruined rural Fife churches/photographed and introduced by Duncan Glen, with a selection of photographs of other ruined buildings, 2002

Ruins of Newark Castle, St. Monans, autumn 2002/introduced and photographed by Duncan Glen, 2003

Scottish literary periodicals: three essays/David Finkelstein, Margery Palmer McCulloch, Duncan Glen, 1998

Scottish literature: a new history from 1299 to 1999, 1999

Scottish poetry now as seen from London by Simon Foster, 1966

Seasons of delight: an anthology of poems on gardens, flowers, greenwoods & the sea/compiled and edited by Duncan Glen & Margaret Glen, 1998

Selected elegies: poems with photographs/by Duncan Glen, 2001

Selected essays of Hugh MacDiarmid edited with an introduction by Duncan Glen, 1969

Selected new poems: nineteen-eighty-seven to nineteen-ninety-six, 1998

Selected poems 1965–1990, 1991

Selected Scottish and other essays/by Duncan Glen; with an introduction by John Herdman, 1999

Seventeen poems, 1997

Situations – a sequence of poems by Duncan Glen with illustrations by Derek Carruthers, 1984

Something of the night and of the sun/[selection and design, Duncan Glen] 2001

Splendid Lanarkshire: past and present: a rediscovery and anthology of prose & verse/written and compiled by Duncan Glen, 1997

Spoiled for choice poems by Duncan Glen, 1976

The State of Scotland, a poem by Duncan Glen, 1983

Stevenson's Scotland/edited by Tom Hubbard & Duncan Glen, 2003

Stones of time. A sequence of poems by Duncan Glen, 1984

Sunny summer Sunday afternoon in the park? 1969

Tales to be told – poems by Duncan Glen, 1987

Ten bird sangs by Duncan Glen, 1978

Ten sangs by Duncan Glen, 1978

Ten sangs of luve by Duncan Glen, 1978

"This is no can of beans": a prospect from the window of a small-press publisher by Duncan Glen], 1999

Three/trittico translators of poems by Duncan Glen: Nat Scammacca, Enzo Bonventre, Marco Scalabrino: Scots and English, Italiano and Siciliano, 2001

Traivellin man. A sequence of poems by Duncan Glen with frontispiece by John Hodkinson, 1977

Trittico scozzese : Duncan Glen, J. K. Annand, Hugh MacDiarmid/cura e traduzione dallo Scots di Enzo Bonventre; traduzione in siciliano di Marco Scalabrino, 2001

Turn of the earth a sequence of poems by Duncan Glen, 1985

Twenty of the best: [and one more for good measure]: a Galliard anthology of contemporary Scottish poetry/edited by Duncan Glen ; with drawings by Alfons Bytautas, 1990

Unnerneath the bed/a poem by Duncan Glen, 1970

Upper Clydesdale...: Lanarkshire past and present, a rediscovery & anthology/by Duncan Glen, 2001

Weddercock; or, Tale of the ill-taen caller at Easter Greenlees Ferm on 3 August 1910 a poem by Duncan Glen, 1976

Whither Scotland? a prejudiced look at the future of a nation. Edited by Duncan Glen, 1971

William Maclellan's Scottish journal/images chosen and introduced by Duncan Glen, 2004

William Williamson: Kirkcaldy architect by Duncan Glen, 2008

Winter: a poem: and other verses/by James Thomson; edited with an introductory essay by Duncan Glen, 2002

Reviews

N. S. Thompson, 1980, review of Realities Poems: Cencrastus No. 4, Winter 1980–1881, p. 40, ISSN 0264-0856

Cairns Craig, 1984, Lourd on My Hert, which includes a review of The State of Scotland: A Poem. Sheila G. Hearn, ed., Cencrastus No. 15, New Year 1984, pp. 54 and 55, ISSN 0264-0856

  

286- ] English Literature , Glen Duncan

286-] English Literature

Glen Duncan

Glen Duncan is a British author born in 1965 in Bolton, Lancashire, England to an Anglo-Indian family. He studied philosophy and literature at the universities of Lancaster and Exeter.

In 1990 Duncan moved to London, where he worked as a bookseller for four years, writing in his spare time. In 1994 he visited India with his father (part roots odyssey, part research for a later work, The Bloodstone Papers) before continuing on to the United States, where he spent several months travelling the country by Amtrak train, writing much of what would become his first novel, Hope, published to critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic in 1997.

His novel I, Lucifer was published in 2002. The premise of the book is that Lucifer has been given a month to live in mortal form to get himself back into God's good graces before the end of the world. The film rights have been sold. The book was provided with a "soundtrack" by Duncan's longtime friend Stephen Coates and his band The Real Tuesday Weld, a cross-platform collaboration repeated for Duncan's book The Last Werewolf. The pair have toured and performed at various live events and festivals together including at the British Film Institute.

According to critic William Skidelsky in The Observer, Duncan "specialises in writing novels that can't easily be pigeon-holed". Similarly, David Robson in The Daily Telegraph has noted that Duncan is "an idiosyncratic talent", adding,"You never know quite which way he is going to turn."

In 2013, Glen Duncan took the pseudonym of Saul Black to publish a thriller, The Killing Lessons, in 2015.

Bibliography

Hope (1997)

Love Remains (2000)

I, Lucifer (2002)

Weathercock (2003)

Death of an Ordinary Man (2004)

The Bloodstone Papers (2006)

A Day And A Night And A Day (2009)

The Last Werewolf (April 2011)

Talulla Rising (June 2012)

By Blood We Live (February 2014)

Valerie Hart series

Published under the pseudonym Saul Black:

The Killing Lessons (2015)

LoveMurder (2016)

Anything for You (2019)        

  

285- ] English Literature , Louis de Bernieres

285  ] English Literature 

Louis de Bernieres 

Louis de Bernières (born 8 December 1954) is an English novelist. He is known for his 1994 historical war novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin. In 1993 de Bernières was selected as one of the "20 Best of Young British Novelists", part of a promotion in Granta magazine. Captain Corelli's Mandolin was published in the following year, winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book. It was also shortlisted for the 1994 Sunday Express Book of the Year. It has been translated into at least 11 languages and is an international best-seller.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2006. In 2008, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by De Montfort University in Leicester, which he had attended when it was Leicester Polytechnic.

Politically, he identifies himself as Eurosceptic and has voiced his support for the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union.

Biography

Louis H. P. de Bernières-Smart was born near Woolwich in London in 1954 and grew up in Surrey. The name de Bernières is inherited from a French Huguenot ancestor. He was educated at Grenham House school—where he reported the pupils were subjected to "hellish abuse"—and at Bradfield College, and joined the army when he was 18, but left after four months of the officer training course at Sandhurst. He next attended the Victoria University of Manchester and the Institute of Education, University of London. Before he began to write full-time he held a wide variety of jobs, including being a mechanic, a motorcycle messenger and an English teacher in Colombia. As of 2008 he lived near Bungay in Suffolk.

In 2009 he separated from his partner, actress Cathy Gill, who took custody of their children, Robin and Sophie. Eventually, he gained equal custodial rights. He has never remarried.

De Bernières is an avid musician. He plays flute, mandolin, clarinet and guitar, although he considers himself an "enthusiastic but badly-educated and erratic" amateur. His literary work often references music and the composers he admires, such as the guitar works of Villa-Lobos and Antonio Lauro in the Latin American trilogy, and the mandolin works of Vivaldi and Hummel in Captain Corelli's Mandolin. He has dystonia, which affects his playing.

Books

Latin American trilogy

According to de Bernières, his experiences in Colombia, and the influence of writer Gabriel García Márquez—he describes himself as a "Márquez parasite"—profoundly influenced his first three novels, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1990), Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991) and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992).

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

De Bernières' most famous book is his fourth, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, in which the eponymous hero is an Italian soldier who is part of the occupying force on the Greek island of Cephalonia during the Second World War. In the US it was originally published as Corelli's Mandolin.

In 2001, the book was turned into a film. De Bernières strongly disapproved of the film version, commenting, "It would be impossible for a parent to be happy about its baby's ears being put on backwards." He does however state that it has redeeming qualities, and particularly likes the soundtrack.

Since the release of the book and the movie, Cephalonia has become a major tourist destination, and the tourist industry on the island has begun to capitalise on the book's name. Of this, de Bernières said: "I was very displeased to see that a bar in Agia Efimia has abandoned its perfectly good Greek name and renamed itself Captain Corelli's, and I dread the idea that sooner or later there might be Captain Corelli Tours, or Pelagia Apartments."

Red Dog

His book Red Dog (2001) was inspired by a statue of a dog he saw during a visit to the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It was adapted as a film of the same name in Australia in 2011.

Birds Without Wings

Birds Without Wings (2004) is set in Turkey, and portrays the tragic fate of the diverse people in a small village, who belong to different language-speaking groups and religions, towards the end of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Kemal Atatürk, and the Gallipoli Campaign of the First World War from the Turkish viewpoint. The book was shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread Novel Award and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).

A Partisan's Daughter

A Partisan's Daughter (2008) tells of the relationship between a young Yugoslavian woman and a middle-aged British man in the 1970s, set in London.

Notwithstanding

Notwithstanding (2009) is a collection of short stories revolving around a fictional English village, Notwithstanding, and its eccentric inhabitants. Many of the stories were published separately earlier in de Bernières's career. Notwithstanding is based on the village of Hambledon in Surrey where he grew up, and he muses whether this is, or is no longer, the rural idyll. Some of the stories are autobiographical, such as "Silly Bugger 1" about a boy who brings up an abandoned rook, which becomes his companion, the rook sitting on his shoulder as he goes about his life – de Bernières is pictured on his website with a rook sitting on his shoulder. Notwithstanding is rich in local detail, containing references to the nearby villages and towns of Godalming, Chiddingfold, and Haslemere, as well as to Waitrose, Scats, the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences, the Merry Harriers pub and the "suicidal driving" of the nuns at St Dominic's School. De Bernières reflects in the Afterword:

"I realised that I had set so many of my novels and stories abroad, because custom had prevented me from seeing how exotic my own country is. Britain really is an immense lunatic asylum. That is one of the things that distinguishes us among the nations... We are rigid and formal in some ways, but we believe in the right to eccentricity, as long as the eccentricities are large enough... Woe betide you if you hold your knife incorrectly, but good luck to you if you wear a loincloth and live up a tree.

Blue Dog

The movie Red Dog: True Blue (2016) is adapted from a screenplay by Daniel Taplitz. In this prequel to the Red Dog, a boy named Mick is sent to the outback to live with his Granpa after a tragedy befalls on him, it looks as if he has a lonely life but while exploring the floodwaters, he finds a lost puppy covered in mud and half-drowned. Mick and his dog immediately become inseparable as they take on the adventures offered by their unusual home, and the business of growing up, together. Louis de Bernières tells the story of a young boy and his Granpa, and the charismatic and entertaining dog..

The Daniel Pitt Trilogy

The Daniel Pitt Trilogy, comprising the three novels The Dust that Falls from Dreams (2015), So Much Life Left Over (2018), and The Autumn of the Ace (2020), follows the life of its central character Daniel Pitt, a flying ace in WWI, and the McCosh family through the 20th century. The story was strongly inspired by de Bernières' own grandfather's life.

Bibliography

Novels

The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1990)Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991)The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992)

Captain Corelli's Mandolin (1994), originally published as Corelli's Mandolin in the US Red Dog (2001) Birds Without Wings (2004)A Partisan's Daughter (2008)The Dust that Falls From Dreams (2015)Blue Dog (2016) So Much Life Left Over (2018)The Autumn of the Ace (2020) Light Over Liskeard (2023)

Short story collections

Notwithstanding: Stories from an English Village (2009)

Labels and Other Stories (2019)

Plays

Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World (2001)

Poetry

A Walberswick Goodnight Story (2006) Imagining Alexandria (2013)

Of Love and Desire (2016)The Cat in The Treble Clef (2018)

Non fiction

The Book of Job: An Introduction(1998)

Notwithstanding is a short story collection by British author Louis de Bernières. Published in 2009, it was inspired by Hambledon, the Surrey village in which he grew up during the 1960s and 1970s.

Inspiration

In the Afterword to the collection, Louis de Bernières addresses the nation. He looks back wistfully to a time when "Villages were proper communities", with pubs and shops and a rectory "with a proper rector in it". The stories in Notwithstanding, he explains, with just a hint of a huff, are a celebration of the "quirky people" he remembers from his childhood in Surrey: "the belligerent spinsters, the naked generals, the fudge-makers, the people who talked to spiders".

Stories

It contains 20 stories, first publication in brackets :-

"Archie and the Birds" (Punch, March 1997) - Communicating with his mother via walkie-talkie, the narrator sticks seeds to the living-room window in an attempt to stop his retriever Archie from bringing dead birds into the house.

"Obadiah Oak, Mrs Griffiths and the Carol Singers" (Country Life, Nov/Dec 1996) - Mrs Griffiths makes punch and mince pies in preparation for the visit of carol singers, but ends up giving them to Obadiah, "the last peasant in the village".

"Archie and the Woman" (The Independent, 15 August 1998) - Still walkie-talking, the narrator's mother asks him to find a wife. He begins his search with the help of Archie.

"The Girt Pike" (The London Magazine, Jul/Aug 2002) - How 12-year-old Robert caught the infamous 'Girt pike'.

"The Auspicious Meeting of the First Two Members of the Famous Notwithstanding Wind Quartet" - The new music teacher, who plays the clarinet stops to help a fellow Morris Minor driver who has broken down, only to find she is collecting pheasant feathers to clean her oboe.

"Mrs Mac" (Daily Telegraph, 27 Dec 1997) - Amateur spiritualist Mrs Mac, accompanied by her husband, visits his graveside.

"Colonel Barkwell, Troodos and the Fish" - Colonel Barkwell is suspicious of the poached salmon he has prepared as host of a dinner party, so tests it on his cat Troodos without incident. However, after dinner the cat is reported dead.

"All My Everlasting Love" - 13-year-old Peter has reached puberty, fallen in love with a friend's sister and left a note in her handbag to meet her on a secluded bench.

"The Devil and Bessie Maunderfield" - Bessie the new housemaid at Notwistanding Manor catches the eye of Piers De Mandeville, the squire's son, who promises that if he does not marry her then the Devil may have his soul. Bessie falls pregnant and Piers' resolve weakens.

"The Auspicious Meeting of the Third Member of the Famous Notwithstanding Wind Quartet with the First Two" : Brian and Jenny are practicing Devienne duets, when Jenny's husband catches Piers de Mandeville (a descendant of the Lord of the Manor) loitering in the flowerbed and listening intently.

"Footprint in the Snow" - The rector is told that Sir Edward Rawton is dying, and needs Communion. Then on Christmas Day the church bells ring what the Rector recognizes as a passing bell for a death.

"The Happy Death of the General" (Sunday Times, 8 July 2001) - The general often forgets to dress and one day is found in Godalming, naked from the waist down and soon finds himself in Belleview home, the largest house he has ever had with "an enormous staff of servants".

"Rabbit" (New Writing 10, Picador, March 2001) - The Major puts down a rabbit dying of myxomatosis which brings back unwelcome memories of killing from war.

"This Beautiful House" (The Times, 18 Dec 2004) - a man considers the house in which he grew up in before a fire started by candles on a Christmas Tree killed himself and his family.

"Talking to George" : John the gardener complains about his dull life, Alan his assistant is in love with Sylvie the stable girl, and George the spider sits in his web.

"The Auspicious Meeting of the First Member of the Famous Notwithstanding Wind Quartet with the Fourth" : Jenny now works in a music shop in Goldalming where she is offered a Buffet clarinet to buy, but she is suspicious as it is stamped 'Property of the ILEA'.

"Silly Bugger " - Robert is given an abandoned rook fledgling to look after which he names Lizzie. His Uncle Dick resolves to teach it to say 'Silly Bugger'.

"Silly Bugger " - Royston Chittock, having retired to Notwithstanding takes up golf and determines to construct a putting green on his mole-ridden lawn, with the assistance of Dick, with Lizzie making her last appearance as she utters the fateful words 'silly bugger'.

"The Broken Heart" (Saga Magazine, Jan 2003) - Obadiah Oak's daughter persuades him to sell up and move to Devon, but he cannot let go of his old home.

"The Death of Miss Agatha Feakes" (BBC Radio 4, 1996) - The last day in the life of the title character and with her menagerie of pets.

"Afterword" - The author explains his inspiration for the stories in the collection.

Reception

Ian Sansom in The Guardian writes "Notwithstanding is a village where "strange things happen from time to time". There is a case of suspected food poisoning. Someone kills a rabbit. Someone catches a fish. A grumpy old lady sends Christmas cards. All the stories have that well-told, underwritten quality of the fairytale or the fable: occasionally, and at their very best, they also have the necessary fairytale bite and discomfort...The experience of reading this collection is rather like being wrapped in a tartan blanket and handed a nice mug of cocoa. Treats on offer include the adventures of Colonel Pericles "Perry" Barkwell, tales of the pipe-smoking Polly Wantage, and the sorry story of the poor old general who is slowly losing his mind. There is a mysterious "hedging and ditching" man and a dog called Archibald Scott-Moncrieff. And of course Obadiah Oak, the village's literal and proverbial last peasant, who "exudes the aromas of wet leather and horse manure, costive dogs, turnips, rainwater and cabbage water, sausages, verdigris, woollen socks, Leicester cheese, fish guts, fraying curtains, mice under the stairs, mud on the carpet and woodlice behind the pipes"."

Carol Ann Duffy in The Telegraph notes "de Bernières here has his eye and ear firmly on English eccentricity and individualism. His intention may well have been to make the familiar strange, but his stories achieve the opposite. While not quite the vanished world that the author feels it to be – the emotional intensity of de Bernières’s sense of the “better laughter, warmer rain” of the past serves up a comforting fictional world that his many loyal readers will find delicious" and concludes "it is interesting that the most haunting stories, literally, are about ghosts: a woman who lives happily with the ghost of her dead husband; a man’s death protectively foretold by the spirit of his grandmother. It is here that de Bernières’s sentimental attachment to his lost boyhood village comes closest to narrowing the gap between then and now."

284-] English Literature , Louis de Bernieres

284- ] English Literature

Louis de Berniere 

Louis de Bernières is the author of eight critically acclaimed novels and one collection of short stories. He was selected by Granta magazine as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (Vintage, 1994) was an international bestseller and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. A Partisan’s Daughter (Vintage, 2008) was short-listed for the Costa Novel Award. His second collection of poetry, Of Love and Desire, was published in 2016 (Harvill Secker).  In November 2018, Harvill Secker published Louis’ third collection of poetry, The Cat in the Treble Clef, which looks at family and the connections we make through place, time, music and love. His most recent book, Labels and Other Stories, was published by Harvill Secker in April 2019. It features tales from throughout his career as a masterful storyteller and transports us around the globe, from the London Underground to Turkish ruins to the banks of the Amazon.

His historical trilogy that began with The Dust That Falls From Dreams (Vintage, 2016) and continued with So Much Life Left Over (Vintage, 2019), was completed in 2021 with The Autumn of the Ace (Vintage). The Mail on Sunday call de Bernières ‘a single cherishable voice’.

Louis’ latest book, The Light Over Liskeard was published by Harvill Secker in October of 2024.

As of December 2024, you can find a graphic novel adaptation of the cult classic, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, with illustrations from Arnaud Ribadeau Dumas (Cyressa).

Louis de Bernières (born 8 December 1954) is a British novelist most famous for his fourth novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin. In 1993 de Bernières was selected as one of the "20 Best of Young British Novelists", part of a promotion in Granta magazine. Captain Corelli's Mandolin was published in the following year, winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book. It was also shortlisted for the 1994 Sunday Express Book of the Year. It has been translated into over 11 languages and is an international bestseller.  

283- ] English Literature , Andrew Crumey

283- ] English Literature

Andrew Crumey's Novels 

The Great Chain of Unbeing

The Great Chain of Unbeing is the eighth fiction book by Andrew Crumey, published by Dedalus Books in 2018. It was shortlisted for Scotland's National Book Awards (the Saltire Society Literary Awards) and nominated for the British Science Fiction Awards. The title alludes to the great chain of being and the book consists of stories that range widely in theme and style but are subtly linked. The book has been variously interpreted as a short story collection or novel.

Some of the pieces were previously published in different versions. The opening story, "The Unbeginning", first appeared as "Livacy" in the anthology NW15, published in 2007. Nicholas Royle commented then, "Andrew Crumey's unique blend of impenetrable physics and penetrating imagery, in 'Livacy', is as subtle and affecting as the best of his work." Another piece, "The Last Midgie on Earth" (a cli-fi set in a globally-warmed Scotland) first appeared in Headshook, published in 2009. Milena Kalicanin commented on it, "Scotland becomes Crumey's synonym for a postmodern utopia." A piece titled "The Burrows" first appeared in The Seven Wonders of Scotland (2012). Stuart Kelly wrote that it "imagines a subterranean Scotland, simultaneously a new frontier, an exploitable territory, and a metaphysical conundrum" and found it "both intellectually nimble and eminently re-readable."

Reception

Adam Roberts wrote in Literary Review: "Andrew Crumey’s new book is a quasi-novel built out of connected short stories. It’s something for which we English have no specific term, but for which German critics have probably coined an impressively resonant piece of nomenclature (Kurzgeschichtenverkettung, maybe?). It’s as good an example of the form as I know... The Great Chain of Unbeing is unboring, unusual and quite brilliant."

Alison Bell wrote in the Scottish Review of Books: "Crumey has the perfect pedigree for what turns out to be something of a genre-romp through historical fiction, sci-fi, dark comedy and Brooklyn-twang McCarthy era spy thriller... He understands nuclear fission, the Big Bang theory, radio waves, the life cycle of the bed bug, and they’re all here... It’s clever stuff, ingenious, occasionally baffling and deeply satisfying."

Stuart Kelly wrote in The Scotsman: "This subtle stitching is reminiscent of previous works by Crumey. D’Alembert’s Principle was a triptych of stories where things interlinked. Both Mobius Dick and Sputnik Caledonia were again tripartite novellas that by winking between the stories became novels... In “Between The Tones” we meet Conroy, a concert pianist who narrates his life in the style of a Raymond Chandler hard-man."

Conroy also appeared in Crumey's novel The Secret Knowledge. Other names recurring from previous novels include writers Alfredo Galli (from Music, in a Foreign Language) and Heinrich Behring (from Mobius Dick). The book therefore fits T.C. Baker's description of Crumey's work as a whole: "These novels, crucially, do not amount to a sequence, nor is the relation between events in them ever straightforwardly causal. Instead, each novel covers similar ground in a series of overlapping folds, while remaining narratively distinct."

Jack Deighton wrote in Interzone: "His latest novel is unconventional even in Crumey’s terms... What we have here is perhaps a literary expression of sonata form – 'in the development the tunes get mixed up,' but with something to be discovered between the tones yet nevertheless totally accomplished."

 

Contents

Title	Description	Publication history
The Unbeginning	John Wood, a blind cosmologist, describes how his father witnessed an atom bomb test. He has a tribologist friend named Roy Jones.	An earlier version, "Livacy", appeared in NW15: The Anthology of New Writing, Volume 15, edited by Bernardine Evaristo and Maggie Gee (2007).
Tribology (or The Truth about my Wife)	In Moscow, Roy Jones is mistaken for an author named Jones, whose writing is praised by critic Richard Sand.	An earlier version, An Expedition to the Taiga, appeared in Magnetic North, edited by Claire Malcom (2005).
Introduction	An interviewer waits to meet Richard Sand at Cafe Mozart. Mention is made (p39) of Heinrich Behring and Alfredo Galli – fictional authors who featured in the novels Mobius Dick and Music, in a Foreign Language.	An earlier version, Meeting Mr Sand, appeared in Gutter 9 (2013).
Fragments of Behring (Four historical sketches)	The pieces are "Silk", "A Room in Delft", "Parable" (about Montaigne), "A Lesson for Carl" (about Beethoven).	"A Lesson for Carl" appeared in So, What Kept You: New Stories Inspired by Anton Chekhov and Raymond Carver edited by Tess Gallagher, Claire Malcolm, Margaret Wilkinson (2006).
Singularity	Patrick, a cosmologist and colleague of John Wood (p74), waits for results of a cancer scan. Another patient is Jack Fisher (p71). While waiting, Patrick sees a poster of a Greek island (p72).	An earlier version was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2016.
The Assumption	Jack Fisher and his wife Fi are visited at their Greek island home by Jack's daughter Anna. The novella-length story ends with the words "a great chain of unbeing". It marks the mid-point of the book. The second half is mostly comical in tone and increasingly surreal.
Between the Tones	Surreal comedy in multiple parts about a classical pianist called Conroy (namesake of a character in The Secret Knowledge) who thinks there is a plot against him, led by Richard Sand. Conroy discovers an old memoir by a radio engineer and amateur sf writer who assisted Edwin Howard Armstrong in the 1940s and met Theodor Adorno (a philosopher fictionally portrayed in The Secret Knowledge). The engineer also met Heinrich Behring (who was writing a novel about Beethoven) and was hired by the Rosier Foundation (a name from Mr Mee and Mobius Dick) for an obscure assignment possibly involving nuclear weapons.
Fragments of Sand (Six little pieces)	The pieces are "The Post Artist", "Bug", "The Burrows", "Scenes from the Word-Camera", "The Last Midgie on Earth", "That Place Next to the Bread Shop".	"The Last Midgie on Earth" appeared in Headshook, edited by Stuart Kelly (2009).[20] "The Burrows" appeared in The Seven Wonders of Scotland, edited by Gerry Hassan (2012).
Impossible Tales	Harry Blue, a "freelance philosopher", meets Richard Sand at Cafe Mozart. Sand is working on a translation of Alfredo Galli's Racconti Impossibili, or "Impossible Tales" (a book mentioned in Music, in a Foreign Language). The story is intercut with a science fiction story about the drug-taking crew of a "space trawler", and the storylines come together at the end.
The Unending	Fantasy about a child born like a plant into a world of ice.	An earlier version, "Water of Life", was published in the Sunday Herald (2009).

 

282- ] English Literature , Andrew Crumey

282- ] English Literature

Andrew Crumey's Novels 

The Secret Knowledge

The Secret Knowledge (2013) is the seventh novel by Scottish writer Andrew Crumey. It was his first since returning to his original UK publisher Dedalus Books, and was awarded a grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Part of the writing was done while the author was visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study. It was longlisted for the Guardian's "Not the Booker" prize.

Synopsis

In 1913, composer Pierre Klauer envisages marriage to his sweetheart and fame for his new work, The Secret Knowledge. Then tragedy strikes. A century later, concert pianist David Conroy hopes the rediscovered score might revive his own flagging career. Music, history, politics and philosophy become intertwined in a multi-layered story that spans a century. Revolutionary agitators, Holocaust refugees and sixties’ student protesters are counterpointed with artists and entrepreneurs in our own age of austerity. All play their part in revealing the shocking truth that Conroy must finally face – the real meaning of The Secret Knowledge.

Themes

Some of the action is set in Scotland at the time of the Battle of George Square. Other parts are set in France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the United States.

Specific reference is made to the socialist Louis-Auguste Blanqui, and the philosophers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, who appear as characters in the novel. A chapter set on Capri and based on Benjamin's love for Asja Lacis is written in the collage style of One Way Street. Benjamin's suicide at Portbou is also made part of the plot.

The novel is, in part, concerned with the concepts of the multiverse and quantum suicide, which have featured in previous novels by Crumey, and in articles and conference talks. Reference is made to motifs from Crumey's earlier novels, particularly the Rosier Corporation which appeared in Mobius Dick. The missing wife of pianist David Conroy (called Laura) appears to be the same character of that name, who appeared in Mobius Dick and is referenced again in The Great Chain of Unbeing.

Reception

Publishers Weekly called it an "intelligent work of speculative fiction" with "heavy-handed melodrama" in places, but said "the philosophical questions the book raises are clever and insightful."

Reviewing it for the Historical Novel Society, Lucinda Byatt wrote: "Whether this qualifies as historical fiction is a moot point: it’s set in multiple pasts... Described as an “intellectual mystery”, the book explores the illusion of progress in history, perhaps also in our individual lives, a tribute to Benjamin’s own theories. Interestingly, the women are the most coherent and linear characters: Yvette and Paige, in particular, but even the historical figure, Hannah Arendt, who appears in the book alongside Theodor Adorno.

The Sunday Herald reviewer Lesley McDowell called it a "novel of ideas... more accessible than some may expect, and more gripping and more encompassing, too."

James Smart wrote in The Guardian, "With its enthusiasm for secret societies and acts that echo through time, The Secret Knowledge mines the fruitful ground between Cloud Atlas and Foucault's Pendulum, but fails to reach the heights of either. The dialogue can be tooth-wrenchingly annoying... but some scenes – a febrile union meeting, a loaded meeting between rival pianists – are wonderful."

Sputnik Caledonia

Sputnik Caledonia (2008) is a novel by British writer Andrew Crumey which won the Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award, the UK's largest literary prize at the time.

It depicts a Scottish boy who longs to be a spaceman, is transported to a parallel communist Scotland where he takes part in a space mission to a black hole, and returns to the real world in middle age, possibly as a ghost. The novel is in three “Books”, with the central one (set in the alternate world) being longest, predominantly serious in tone, while the outer sections are shorter and more humorous. The title refers to the Russian Sputnik program and the alternative name for Scotland, Caledonia, suggesting the idea of Scotland as a satellite state of the Soviet Union.

The book was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, losing to Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture. The other shortlisted authors were Mohammed Hanif, Adam Mars-Jones and Toni Morrison. It was also shortlisted in the fiction category of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards, losing to James Kelman's Kieron Smith, Boy.

Plot

Book One

Robbie Coyle, nine years old at the start of the book, lives in Kenzie in Scotland's Central Belt in the early 1970s. He dreams of going into space; but because of his father's anti-American, pro-Soviet views, he wants to be a cosmonaut rather than an astronaut. He picks up an Eastern European radio station called Voice of the Red Star, imagines it to be a telepathic signal from another planet, and begs to be taken there.

Book Two

Nineteen-year-old Robert Coyle lives in the British Democratic Republic – a Communist state founded after the overthrow of Nazi occupation in the “Great Patriotic War” – and has arrived at the Installation, a secret military base in Scotland, to take part in a space mission. A strange new object has been detected in the Solar System, believed to be a black hole, and the volunteers are to explore it telepathically. Robert has confused memories of the time before his arrival, and the reader is left guessing the connection between Books One and Two. Perhaps the Robbie of Book One has been transported to the other world as he wished; or perhaps the Robert in Book Two is a “parallel” version of the younger Robbie in Book One. The Installation itself is like a “black hole” in the sense that people arrive from the outside, but nobody ever seems to leave - except perhaps in death.

Book Three

In a present-day recognisable reality, Robbie's parents from Book One are now pensioners. Their story alternates with that of “the kid”, a runaway 13-year-old obsessed with science fiction stories such as Doctor Who, and with the idea that “in an infinite universe everything is possible”. He meets a middle aged man (“the stranger”) who claims to be a spaceman on a mission. The stranger could be the parallel-world Robert grown older - or a terrorist engaged in identity theft. Resisting logical resolution, the novel reprises and reworks themes that have recurred throughout the course of the book, creating an aesthetic unity that is emotionally ambivalent: a juxtaposition of the comic tone of Book One with the dark pessimism of Book Two.

Reception

Jonathan Coe called Sputnik Caledonia "the most impressive achievement yet from a still undervalued writer: in its combination of dystopian science fiction with warm but unsentimental childhood memoir, it struck me as being firmly in the tradition of - and worthy of comparison with - Alasdair Gray's Lanark."

In The Scotsman David Stenhouse wrote that Sputnik Caledonia was one of "very few" Scottish literary works that "actually does come close to 'envisioning' an alternative version of Scottish statehood".

Ken MacLeod called it a "very fine novel", adding "it looks like SF. But it can't be read as SF... In Sputnik Caledonia, the parallel world is a metaphor of what is lost in every choice. That's why the book is literary fiction and not SF, and is all the better for it."

Critical analysis

David Goldie in The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction Since 1945 considered Sputnik Caledonia "reminiscent of Gray's Lanark in the way it doubles its central character, Robbie Coyle, a Scottish boy fixated on space exploration, with Robert Coyle, trainee cosmonaut in a parallel British People's Republic, contrasting homegrown Bildungsroman with dystopian counterfactual history."

Lisa Harrison compared Sputnik Caledonia with Matthew Fitt's But'n'Ben A-Go-Go. "Their fictive worlds are Scotland, though not as we know it - they each present a Scotland stripped of stereotyping, thus reformed and redefined through fiction."

 

281- ] English Literature , Andrew Crumey

281- ] English Literature

Andrew Crumey's Novels 

 Music, in a Foreign Language

Music, in a Foreign Language is the first novel by physicist Andrew Crumey, published by Dedalus Books in 1994. It won the Saltire Society First Book Award for that year, in a ceremony broadcast on STV.

It is an alternate history novel that imagines Britain occupied by the Nazis during World War 2, becoming a communist state afterwards. The central character, Charles King, is a physicist and musician involved in a dissident journal. His story is embedded within that of a narrator writing in post-communist times. Crumey has said that inspiration came from the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory, and eighteenth-century philosophical fiction. The title comes from a poem within the novel, written by a character in response to one by C.P. Cavafy.

Crumey explained a further reason for his choice of setting in an interview. "The most significant was a research trip I made to the University of Wroclaw in Poland, whose Institute of Theoretical Physics was situated in what, until only a few years previously, had been the local Communist headquarters. There was still much evidence of the former occupancy, and this labyrinthine building captured my imagination. But the only way I could bring it into my own domain, was to imagine such a building existing in Britain."

Music, in a Foreign Language was published in the United States in 1996 by Picador USA. Translated editions were published in Greece, Denmark, Italy, Russia, Taiwan and Romania.

The book shares its title with a 2003 album by Lloyd Cole.

Reception

Kirkus Reviews called it "a genuine novel of ideas, more than a little disorienting in the early going, as we labor to understand how its several parts will intersect—and surprisingly stimulating and exciting, as we see how Crumey imperturbably puts it all together. A formidable debut, from a writer whose possibilities, so to speak, seem virtually unlimited." Publishers Weekly called it "a thought-provoking but somewhat too ambitious debut."

Brian Stableford, in The A-Z of Fantasy Literature, called it "a polished exercise in postmodern/metafiction set in alternative world". The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction Since 1945 commented on the "inventive intertwining of science with literary and musical culture" in both Music, in a Foreign Language and Crumey's later novel, The Secret Knowledge. The book has been described within postcolonial scholarship as a "mock dystopia". Hartmut Hirsch related it to the theories of Michel Foucault, calling the novel "a spatial utopia that, at the same time, is a heterotopia... By giving Britain the characteristics of a socialist regime, one historical and cultural space is superimposed on another to produce a third, heterotopian space, which defamiliarizes Britain as well as socialist regimes in general. A fragmented history of this alternate Britain is reproduced in a text which is itself fragmented... The intertextual references to Borges, Svevo, Calvino and Eco are clear."

Pfitz

Pfitz is a 1997 novel by Scottish physicist and author Andrew Crumey. It concerns an 18th-century German prince who dedicates his life to the construction of imaginary cities. The name Pfitz is taken from an inhabitant of one of the prince's fanciful cities, Rreinnstadt.

In 1997, the book was named a notable book of the year by The New York Times. In that newspaper Andrew Miller said it, "makes for rewarding reading – cerebral, adroit, not afraid to take chances but never allowing itself to be seduced by theory, by mere cleverness."

It was published in Germany as Die Geliebte des Kartographen ("The Cartographer's Lover") and was the subject of a prize-winning television feature by Eva Severini.

In 2013 the Scottish Book Trust selected it as one of the 50 best Scottish books of the last 50 years.

Critical analysis

Mark C. Taylor related the multiple "authors" in Pfitz to complexity theory. "Pfitz is not just about emergent complexity but is a brilliant enactment of it. One of the strategies Crumey and his coauthors use to generate complexity is to create multiple self-reflexive loops by folding authors and readers into each other until the line separating them becomes obscure."

Stephen J. Burn sees Pfitz, Tom McCarthy's Men in Space and David Mitchell's Number9dream as examples of a subgenre he terms "multiple drafts" novels, with Pfitz being "the earliest—and arguably the most representative—example of this form." Burn's term "multiple drafts" is borrowed from Daniel Dennett's model of consciousness. Burn writes that Pfitz shows "evident familiarity with Daniel Dennett's work" and says it "might be considered to provide the hidden internal blueprint for different levels of the novel's action."

Toon Staes sees Pfitz as a "systems novel", a term coined by Tom LeClair who applied it to writers including Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth and Ursula Le Guin. In Staes' usage, "systems novels feature multiple nonlinear and fragmented narrative strands that gradually fix the reader's attention on a network of relationships," with Pfitz being "an interesting test case."

Colin Manlove described Pfitz as a "'postmodernist' fantasy" with "a vision of a universal machine of wheels and cogs that churns out infinite textual universes, each of which has no 'reality' as we commonly know it."