Search results for ""Author Alistair McCleery""

Water and Life pursues the goal of the previous volume, Nation and Nationalism, to bridge the often ivory-tower concerns of academic critics and the interest of a wider public in the works and thought of Neil Gunn, considered the foremost Scottish novelist of the twentieth century. The 'circle' in the title reflects its use within Gunn's novels to symbolize both wholeness and the cyclical nature of life. It also represents the group of enthusiasts for Gunn's work that ranges from the energetic volunteers who created and maintain the commemorative centre at Dunbeath in Caithness and those in the Dingwall-based Neil Gunn Trust who actively promote his work to the authors whose own writings owe much to his example and insights. The circle also embraces the scattered community of dedicated readers, within and outwith Scotland, that renews itself with each generation.Water and Life contains eloquent autobiographical pieces from two of those dedicated readers, Mike Vass and Victoria Bernie, who were inspired in their own work in other media.Mike Vass recounts how he read Gunn's Off in a Boat while recovering from a serious illness and, when better, set out to recreate the voyage himself and then to write in song and music about his own experience. Victoria Bernie was moved by Highland River to record in photographs, reproduced in this volume in full colour, the changing nature of the Girnock Burn. Christopher Stokoe also recalls in his autobiographical account how an almost fortuitous encounter with The Serpent led to a lifetime's devotion to the understanding and promotion of all Gunn's writings.Jim Mather, the former Government Minister, begins also with water as a source of life and industry and, in asking the question of who should own this vital resource, outlines a vision, shared by Gunn, of a successful Scottish society built upon principles of community and cooperation. Alistair McCleery discusses this theme in relation to Gunn's novel, The Green Isle of the Great Deep, and recounts the novelist's promotion of individual freedom, collaboration and community as he articulated his opposition to the statist political thought of Naomi Mitchison.The story of Gunn's relationship with another contemporary novelist, Maurice Walsh, is related by Dairmid Gunn, Neil's nephew, to highlight the influence of both men upon one another as well as the continuing example of Ireland upon the development of Gunn's political thought. This is further illustrated by the inclusion of two of Gunn's essays within this volume.Water and Life offers fresh insights into Neil Gunn's life and work to both readers already passionate and knowledgeable about his writings and those who are coming to him for the first time. The contributors write in an accessible and engaging manner, bringing their topics to life in a manner appropriate to the great novelist himself.

Read more less

Neil M. Gunn (1891 - 1973) has been widely recognized as the most important novelist of the twentieth-century Scottish Literary Renaissance. Most of his novels are still in print and they continue to find in each generation an enthusiastic popular and academic readership. His novels have been adopted for cinema, television and radio and they have had an important influence on contemporary Scottish writers such as James Robertson. What is perhaps less well known is Gunn's role in the development of contemporary Scottish nationalism as both activist and thinker. Not that he would have agreed to such a division as he believed in a seamless commitment to the goal of a fairer and more equitable Scotland through the delivery of election leaflets and the setting out of the intellectual case for independence. Gunn was instrumental in the foundation of the contemporary SNP, through the bringing together of disparate groups in favour of independence, and continued to play a part in its development and in the development of the Highlands and Islands throughout his life.This collection of essays on Gunn's involvement in politics and his ideas about nation and nationalism represents a guide to both for the reader of his novels and those interested in contemporary political developments in Scotland. Alistair McCleery draws parallels between the situation in 1931, using Gunn's account of it in his diary, and the present day. Michael Russell, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, examines Gunn's debt to Ireland, the role of the writer in nationalism, and the need for Scottish literature within the Scottish curriculum. Ewen Cameron, now Professor of History at Edinburgh University, considers the gaps in his own school education in the Highlands and how he was led to fill them through an enthusiastic teacher leading him to Gunn's novels and thereby to the history and culture of his own locality. Dairmid Gunn draws on his intimate knowledge of his uncle to provide an account of his home in Inverness as a centre for lively company and stimulating discussion of art and politics. This picture is reinforced in the late Neil MacCormick's memoir of Gunn and the influence he had on John MacCormick, his father.The collection also contains two of Gunn's essays on writing and politics as well as a complete bibliography of his political writings by Christopher Stokoe.The collection as a whole is timely in its contribution to understanding of Scottish nationalism just under a year before the Scottish people come to decide, as Gunn hoped they would have the opportunity to, on Scotland's future as an independent state or not.

Read more less

Although Neil M. Gunn is well-known as one of Scotland's foremost writers of the 20th century, he is less well-known as a perceptive and meditative essayist who wrote on a variety of subjects - from landscape, nature and the sea to literature, politics and matters of the spirit. Written in parallel with his novels, these essays contain many of the ideas and speculations that inform them. In this collection the focus is on landscape and the stimulus it provides for a journey of an enquiring mind from the observation of everyday life to a state of self-realisation. The essays mark the route. For example, in The French Fishing Smack there is a sense of freedom that only the sea can give; in The First Salmon a primal sense of adventure captivates; The Heron's Legs cannot but engender a sense of wonder and Light is a signal that the inner journey of the spirit has all but ended. Products of the uneasy and uncertain 1930s, the Second World War and the Cold War, the essays lead not only to a more imaginative and enlightened way of looking at life in troubled times but also to a greater understanding of the mind of this profoundly thoughtful writer. They can be understood as a miniature biography of the writer himself in terms of being a series of moments of revelation and delight experienced during walks in the countryside, fishing expeditions and chance encounters with people and books. Covering 40 years of the writer's life, the essays show that the ideas derived from them evolve rather than change; there is always a sense of movement. In the later essays it is the smallest social entity of all, the human psyche, that fascinates Gunn and becomes the essential ingredient in the search for self-enlightenment. Encounters with Zen Buddhism and other disciplines and philosophies were to reassure him that he had been moving in the right direction throughout his life.

Read more less

In this volume a range of distinguished contributors provide an original analysis of the book in Scotland during a period that has been until now greatly under-researched and little understood. The issues covered by this volume include the professionalisation of publishing, its scale, technological developments, the role of the state, including the library service, the institutional structure of the book in Scotland, industrial relations, union activity and organisation, women and the Scottish book, and the economics of publishing. Separate chapters cover Scottish publishing and literary culture, publishing genres, the art of print culture, distribution, and authors and readers. The volume also includes an innovative use of illustrative case studies.

Read more less