Search results for ""Scotland Street Press""

Jenni Daiches has astonishingly re-created a lost world... I wept and laughed and wished I had written it.'MIRIAM MARGOLYES'An urgent exploration of the fragility and beauty of our shared humanity, here and elsewhere.'HANNAH HOLTSCHNEIDER, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGHAbout the bookRosa Roshkin is five years old when her family are murdered in a pogrom and she is forced to leave behind everything she knows with only a suitcase of clothes and her father's violin. An epic generational novel about womanhood and Judaeo-Scottish experience across two World Wars, the creation of Israel and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Jenni Daiches's Somewhere Else explores today's most difficult and urgent questions, not least of which: how to find identity in displacement.

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Alan Riach’s The MacDiarmid Memorandum is a work of epic, category-defying scope; blending biography and national history, poetry and prose; an intimate portrait of an old friend and mentor, and a political manifesto calling for revolution. Riach’s poems begin with MacDiarmid’s childhood in Langholm and his first attempts to navigate the Scottish landscape. We travel from the Borders to Shetland, from Edinburgh to rural Lanarkshire. The poems map a nation where nature is inseparable from political history. They explore a peculiarly Scottish kind of consciousness, willing itself to be free yet bowed under the weight of self-suppression. There is confrontation on various fronts. MacDiarmid experienced trauma, divorce, breakdown, wildness and later, domestic affection. At the same time, Scotland endured two world wars, each triggering a continuing renaissance of Scottish artists and intellectuals, struggling to regenerate international recognition and self-determination. Alongside Riach’s poems, the book includes reproductions of paintings by the artists Alexander Moffat and Ruth Nicol, focusing on some of the landscapes, friends and associates MacDiarmid knew most closely through his long life, plus a frontispiece portrait by William Johnstone and a song-setting by Ronald Stevenson.

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What’s the Difference… Between Me and You? is a highly original picture book filled with delicate, characterful drawings and an important central message: everyone is different, and difference is exciting. Like Charlie Mackesy’s international bestseller, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse, Christina Findlay’s What’s the Difference will delight young and old readers alike, with its fun illustrations and witty, rhyming couplets. Taking us on an enchanting journey from The Scottish Highlands to Parisian cafés, Kew Gardens to Minnesota, this book celebrates diversity in all of its various forms.

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'As uplifting as it is sad. A beautiful book which teaches us to live every minute and appreciate what we have.' – The Times Andreea is thirteen and looking forward to taking part in a Romanian dance performance on a trip to Paris with her friends. She skips school one day and gets in a car with a boy she doesn't know. They have a terrible crash which leaves her paralysed from the neck down. At thirteen she is forced to confront the feeling of losing her entire reality in just one moment. This is the story of the operations, the hospitals, the friendships, the long waits, the pain, and the discovery of what it means to be courageous. In this "beautiful" memoir (The Times), Andreea shares her inner journey which led her to re-evaluate what really matters and which is bound to make us reflect on how much we take for granted in our own lives.

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These poems reflect a journey from a past delineated by racism, trauma and violence towards a present life of peace and intense natural beauty. Permeated with nostalgia and loss; songs of an immigrant community alienated in their own land, but pierced with fierce hope, faith in redemption, and a determination that we should all belong.

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This explosive collection of poems documents life as a daughter trying to support her artist father who is overseas struggling with dementia and drug addiction during a pandemic. Interspersed with the frantic cycle of overdoses, escapes from care, disappearances and urgent international phone calls are moments of reflection on her father's artwork and her seaside surroundings.

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A transnational collection of 'Pandemic Poetry' and paintings which, among other themes, compares India with Scotland. Vibha's oil paintings complement Bashabi's evocative poetry.

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A collection of 154 sonnets reflecting on love, death, marriage and economic theory, each taking its inspiration from Shakespeare's 154. These poems have wit and a kick coming from a middle-aged woman in the middle of Scotland in the twenty-first century.

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This is a triumph. A love letter to the ghosts of Edinburgh. I feel its hand upon my shoulder. – Sara Sheridan As a writer of fiction, I found myself itching to lift some of these characters from the page into the fertile fields of my own imagination. – Val McDermid Anyone who loves Edinburgh and is fascinated by its private histories will be entranced by this book. – The Scotsman About the book 10 Scotland Street – the story of an Edinburgh home and its cast of booksellers, silk merchants, sailors, preachers, politicians, cholera and coincidence and its widespread connections over two centuries across the globe.

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"[The book explores] how lives interconnect, how we are all creatures of our time, how rich and complex life is in this sometimes shy and reticent city. Not for a moment does our interest flag."—Alexander McCall Smith Set in 66 Queen Street, a townhouse in Edinburgh’s New Town, this book tells the story of people and events associated with the house for 210 years from 1790 and whose lives were empowered by the Scottish Enlightenment. From the builder of the White House, the hero of Aboukir Bay, a murderer who inspired Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, to a decadent society hostess, the diverse characters range from heroes to villains and from people of conscience to subjects of tabloid scandal and moral prurience. Edinburgh emerges from its past to become the intellectual, banking and professional capital of an enlightened Scotland. The story reflects how our modern world is shaped but above all it is about its people; some masters of their circumstances and others prisoners

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The masterful English debut of Alhierd Bacharevic, a new voice from Belarus Alicia and her brother Avi are imprisoned in a camp on the edge of a forest where children are trained to forget their language through therapy, coercion, drugs, and larynx surgery. The Leid (or Belarusian language) is considered a sickness to be cured and replaced by the only pure form of language, the Lingo (Russian). A contemporary Hansel and Gretel adventure, the children escape into the forest and end up in even greater danger... A feat of translation, Bacharevic’s story is brilliantly rendered into English and Scots from Russian and Belarusian.

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This is a story about hope overcoming evil, written with satisfying moral complexity. Ruth's devastation breaks apart time. She sees that her hopes and dreams are a visceral halo of rainbow colours spinning to white... and that evil dream thieves are severing these halos from sleeping victims, many of whom she knows. Those disturbing dreams of black snow lead Ruth to a perilous discovery: one dream thief is connected to her grandfather and the candle-maker's bou Jude from long ago.

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This is a triumph. A love letter to the ghosts of Edinburgh. I feel its hand upon my shoulder. Sara SheridanAs a writer of fiction, I found myself itching to lift some of these characters from the page into the fertile fields of my own imagination. Val McDermidAnyone who loves Edinburgh and is fascinated by its private histories will be entranced by this book. The ScotsmanAbout the book10 Scotland Street the story of an Edinburgh home and its cast of booksellers, silk merchants, sailors, preachers, politicians, cholera and coincidence and its widespread connections over two centuries across the globe.

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The first book in a brand new series charting the extraordinary rise to power of Irini of Athens, Empress of the Byzantine Empire. Seventeen-year-old Thekla needs her quick wits and knife to track down her betrothed, a soldier who has left her at the altar for the third time. Elias the monk travels with her to Constantinople where she meets Irini of Athens, an extraordinarily beautiful orphan who has been brought by powerful Emperor Constantine to marry his son, Co-Emperor Leon. The two women join forces to survive this vigorous, glittering capital of the East, rocked by division and strife. But will Thekla help the ambitious and ruthless Irini of Athens find the power that she craves? More from the Empress Irini Series Poison is a Woman's Weapon Seizing Power (coming soon!)

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The second book in The Empress Irini Series, charting the extraordinary rise to power of Irini of Athens. Irini’s conniving mother-in-law, her five jealous step-brothers, and her own husband, Co-Emperor Leon, threaten Irini’s safety in Constantinople. She summons Abbess Thekla, her knife-wielding friend, to bring her sharp wits and courage to get Irini safely through childbirth in the Great Palace. Thekla owes Irini her life and thus her loyalty but she is staggered by Irini’s powerful ambitions which far exceed being docile wife and mother. Can Thekla survive Irini’s vengeful nature and the bloody aftermath of Irini’s ruthless ambition? More from the Empress Irini Series Betrothal and Betrayal Seizing Power (coming soon!)

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The long-awaited sequel to 'Errant Blood' , a second crime thriller set in the Scottish Highland village of Duncul. Eamon's new found happiness is shattered by the type of murder that the government doesn't want to believe happens anymore. Detective Maclean thinks he has the killer, but something worse than a body has been found beneath the waters of The Minch, something that should never have been brought to the surface, and now its not just TV crews that are watching the village.

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Christian Small lived and painted in West Linton for over 60 years. Her work was of remarkable quality and range in many different media. Her choice of subjects was wonderfully imaginative: pears on a window sash, an armchair with slippers, her paint box – all so evocative of her life. Her landscapes were drawn from around the village, their colour and draftsmanship brilliantly capturing the countryside she loved: wind-bent trees, pale green grasses and the rolling Pentland Hills. Woven in and out of the paintings are poems by Gerda Stevenson, and Christian’s thoughts in prose as imagined with poignant eloquence by her daughter Jenny Alldridge – an unusual blend of word and image telling the unique story of a prolific and gifted artist

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‘I had only one eye, I was hungry and cold, yet I wanted to live… so that I could tell it all just as I’ve told you.’ - From Zofia Nalkowska’s Medallions (1947). Witness to two world wars and Poland’s struggle for independence, Zofia Nalkowska’s commitment to recording all is her gift to European literature. Her own story of love affairs, family loyalty and survival is remarkable in itself. Yet, her determination to record others’ truth, however painful, ties her fate to a nation whose battle for identity is both brutal and romantic. Her most renowned work, Medallions, a collection of short stories, exposes and restores dignity to people reduced, through Nazi occupation, to burnt out ghettos and guillotined heads heaped ‘like potatoes’. In contrast, as a keen and visionary observer of beauty, Nalkowska is innovative in exploring motherhood’s psychological imprint and the blurred boundaries of male and female relationships. Drawing on her own background as a poet and Polish Studies graduate, Jenny’s Robertson’s literary biography celebrates the achievements of a pioneering writer whose love of life not only propelled her to fame, but gave her the courage to witness atrocity. In doing so, Nalkowska’s life and writing reflect and inform Europe's cultural heritage.

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Firkin and the Grey Gangsters is a collection of four tales in which animals are the heroes. Firkin and the Grey Gangsters was in 1936 a metaphor for the fear of takeover by corporate America – Firkin is a young red squirrel who leads his people in a battle against a horde of grey squirrel invaders from America. Firkin speaks in Scots. The Sheep who wasn’t a Sheep is about the thoughts going through the head of a sheep, swimming between one Outer Isle and the other. The White Drake is a farmyard drake in Perthshire learning about flying.

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Errant Blood is a literary crime thriller by a startling new Scottish writer. The story follows Eamon Ansgar, war veteran and reluctant young laird of Duncul Castle, as he uncovers a plot involving people-trafficking, big pharma, the green energy boom, crypto-archaeology and the Latvian mafia during a rain soaked winter in the Scottish Highlands. The book explores some of our most troubling contemporary issues with a relentless pace, intricate plot, memorable characters and an epic finale. It is the first in series set in and around the Highland village of Duncul.

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Known above all for his translations of Proust, Charles Scott Moncrieff also had his own poetry, short stories and war serials regularly published in literary periodicals. Here for the first time is a collection of these, put together with an introduction by Jean Findlay, author Chasing Lost Time – the life of CK Scott Moncrieff, Soldier, Spy and Translator (Chatto and Windus 2014, Vintage 2015, Farrar Straus and Giroux 2015)

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The third book in The Empress Irini Series, charting the extraordinary rise to power of Irini of Athens. Constantine’s father dies unexpectedly, making Constantine emperor at age nine with Irini as Regent. Abbess Thekla’s loyalty to Irini shifts to Constantine as she watches Irini block his authority and keep the power herself. Irini makes Constantine wed the disliked Maria, prevents the Senate from naming him Emperor in his own right at age 18, and imprisons him when he tries to stop her henchmen from amassing wealth and power. Constantine’s army friends free him, arrest her, and raise him to the throne. Resourceful as ever, Irini will not be thwarted. Can Thekla prevent them from murdering each other? More from the Empress Irini Series Betrothal and Betrayal Poison is a Woman’s Weapon

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Creative genius, war artist, adventurer, lover. These are just some of the words that can be used to describe Aberdeenshire-born painter and printmaker James McBey (1883-1959). McBey was a Scottish superstar amongst the creative spirits that fuelled the Etching Revival of the late nineteenth century and Etching Boom of the early twentieth century, and in an historical context, was the acknowledged heir to Whistler and Rembrandt. But after his death in Tangier, Morocco, in 1959, his renown as one of Britain’s most accomplished artists – who took the art world by storm – faded from public consciousness. Born illegitimately in the tiny parish of Foveran, Aberdeenshire, in the late Victorian era, he was brought up by his blind mother and elderly grandmother amid the rigid Presbyterian confines of Scotland’s north-east. Tragedy, dreary work as a bank clerk and a craving for success on his own terms all precipitated his leaving Aberdeen to live the life of an artist in London where he quickly became one of the most-talked about creatives of his generation. At the heart of this biography – the first ever to be published on McBey – is his time as a war artist in the Middle East during the Great War – where he would meet and paint T. E. Lawrence – his many love affairs, marriage to the beautiful American, Marguerite Loeb, and his enduring passion for Morocco. Drawing on his many diaries and letters and artistic creations, this is the story of one man who – clever, kind, intrepid, dashing, insecure and flawed – triumphed against the odds.

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Against the frightening backdrop of World War II, a young Scottish woman took ten children by ship through the waters of the Atlantic from Scotland to South Africa, where she set up a home for them called Bairnshaven. An unusual portrayal of motherhood, nuclear family and love, Marjorie's story comes to life through diary pages, letters, telegrams and photographs. This true story is a fresh take on the role that women played during the war, highlighting the strength and courage shown, and focusing on hope and unconditional kindness.

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Nominated for the 2019 CILIP Carnegie Medal In 1592, a girl with spirit is a threat. Ruth has secrets. An old book of heresy belonging to her long-absent father. A dream that haunts her. And a love that she and Silas hide from the world. When she is robbed of all she holds true, her friends from Crowbury slide into terrible danger. Hope is as faint as a moonbow. Dare Ruth trust the shadowy one who could destroy them all? This is a story about hope overcoming evil, written with satisfying moral complexity. Ruth’s devastation breaks apart time. She sees that her hopes and dreams are a visceral halo of rainbow colours spinning to white… and that evil dream thieves are severing these halos from sleeping victims, many of whom she knows. Those disturbing dreams of black snow lead Ruth to a perilous discovery: one dream thief is connected to her grandfather and the candle-maker’s boy, Jude, from long ago. It’s a fight to the death. To save Ruth, Jude makes the ultimate sacrifice.

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Hector is an 11-year-old boy living near Edinburgh with his great auntie Robbo who is in her eighties. A woman calling herself his step-mother arrives from England and Hector and Auntie Robbo realise that they have to run away. The chase leads all over the north of Scotland, narrowly escaping police and the authorities, adopting three homeless children on the way. Originally refused publication in London because it was deemed critical of the English, Auntie Robbo was first published in the U.S. in 1940. After success in print it was taken on by Constable in 1959 and later was published in India, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and Germany.

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Jean Findlay was born in Edinburgh and studied Law and French at Edinburgh University and theatre in Cracow, Poland. She has worked as a playwright and as a journalist has written for The Scotsman, The Guardian, The Independent, and the BBC. She is the author of Chasing Lost Time - The Life of C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Soldier, Spy and Translator published in 2014 by Chatto & Windus, London 2014, by Vintage paperback 2015 and by FSG, New York 2015, and now Picador 2023. For writing The Queen's Lender she won a Hawthornden Fellowship 2017 and a Lavigny International Fellowship 2018.

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Sepideh Jodeyriis an award-winning Iranian poet and translator living in Washington DC, USA. She is the author of 11 books.Sepideh Kouti is an Iranian poet, author, translator, and editor. She began her literary career in 2000, authoring entries for the Encyclopedia of Persian Literature. Previous works include On the Heights of Despair (translation) and The Creeping Shadow of Objects.Anna Krasnowolskais a Professor and esteemed specialist in Persian literature and Iranian culture. She was Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies (1999-2002), and Head of the Department of Iranian Studies (2000-17) at Jagiellonian University.Anahita Rezaeiis an award-winning Iranian writer and literary critic living in Tehran, Iran. Previous works include

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WINNER OF ENGLISH PEN AWARD 2023 LONG-LISTED FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE 2024 ‘How did these stories get into your hands? They flew, as if painted by Marc Chagall, through prison walls, borders, and languages.’ - Valzhyna Mort ‘It’s a terse account of painful experience, prison, bewilderment; hugely atmospheric and extremely funny – full of dry wit and small biting observations.’ - Anna Vaught 100 stories written from prison in Belarus with 'echoes of early Chekhov, Zoshchenko and Samuel Beckett' (Michael Purs). Despite its bleak context, this is a fundamentally optimistic book, engaging comically, yet honestly, with what it means to be human. Translated from the Russian by Jim and Ella Dingley. With an introduction by ‘risen star of the international poetry world’ Valzhyna Mort.

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‘The crossbill is a bonny bird An she sings wi a guid Scots tongue Jip-jip-jip A’ll gie ye gip Gin ye meddle wi me nor ma young’ As a result of his travels across the North American continent in the eighteenth century Alexander Wilson pioneered the science of ornithological writing and illustration, becoming an inspiration for most of the ornithological works which followed. This new book celebrates the artwork of Alexander Wilson by reproducing his illustrations alongside new poems in Scots by Hamish MacDonald, looking at the habits, habitats, and characteristics of birds.

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A virulent disease carried by foxes is spreading across Europe. In London an urgent cull is underway, spearheaded by Frank Smith, the young master of the Hyde Park Hunt. But for Britain's paranoid Prime Minister, fox flu is a chance to foist the ultimate in surveillance technology on an unsuspecting population: the Mulberry Tree system, secretly bought from the Chinese. When biochemist Christophe Hardy discovers the conspiracy, he finds himself caught up in a chase which starts in Beijing and ends in Northumbria involving animal rights activists, a beautiful female missionary, high-society Chinese assassins, and the world most innovative catering venture, the Pu Dong Pudding Company.

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Scotland, 1850. The penalty for murder is death by hanging. Why then employ a young defence lawyer with no trial experience who is surely destined to fail? And why does his client refuse to tell him what happened on the night the crime took place? “Edward Kane and the Parlour Maid Murderer” follows the young Advocate, Edward Kane, and his manservant, Mr Horse from the great houses of Edinburgh to the taverns and alleyways of the Old Town in search of answers - and defence. Written by Ross Macfarlane QC (“Noted legal expert” - Legal 500), the novel evokes the sights and sounds of Victorian Scotland, introducing a rich cast of characters.

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'An exciting new background read on an aspect of Romans in Britain that I have not seen covered in children’s literature before.' - Veronica Price, chartered librarian and blogger Scotland, 158 AD, is a divided country. On one side of the Antonine wall, thirteen-year-old Felix is trying to become a good Roman soldier like his father. On the other, twelve-year old Jinny is vowing revenge on the ‘metal men’ who have invaded her Damnonii tribe’s homeland. At the Damnonii’s sacred circle of standing stones, her planned attack on Felix goes badly wrong, awakening a legend that threatens to bring fire and destruction down on them all. Can Jinny and Felix overcome their differences and soothe the stones back to sleep before it’s too late?

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"The stories have a steely rectitude and an uncompromising determination to face down humiliation and inequality...economical, moral and compassionate."—The Guardian Dilys Rose has been compared to Katherine Mansfield. Stories include one of two musicians in an airport watching a bombing of the home town they have left; restless teenagers running riot during lockdown, with disastrous consequences. In others Albert Einstein's reputation grows, as does his absence as a father; a cantankerous ninety-nine year old contributes to the chaos of a night ward. Rose conjures the essence of a situation with insight, economy and dark wit, and vividly presents an uncompromising view of the world where everyone is searching but few find what they hope for. Each story vividly creates the inner world of a compelling yet disparate cast of characters, and these brief glimpses into the lives of others leave a lasting afterglow.

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Elizabethan Secret Agent: The Untold Story of William Ashby (1536-1593) is the biography of William Ashby, Elizabethan intelligence agent and diplomat who served as ambassador to Scotland during the Spanish Armada crisis. It provides a fresh social, political and foreign policy insight from the perspective of a gentleman spy who took part in some of the most important events of his time. Much of the book is focused on the Anglo-Scottish geo-political relationship during the decade of 1580-1590, with its machinations and bizarre background stories. Prior to Ashby’s ambassadorial appointment, he served as a senior ‘intelligencer’ for Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spymaster.

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'Royal court intrigue at its finest.' – Historical Writers Association 'A stunning novel about the birth of the United Kingdom that demonstrates the scholarship of the author, as well as her imaginative power.' – Richard Holloway George Heriot, jeweller to King James VI and I, moves with the Court from Edinburgh to London to take over the English throne. It is 1603. Life is a Babel of languages and glittering new wealth. The Scottish court speaks Danish, German, Middle Scots, French and Latin. King James gives Shakespeare his first secure position, and to calm the perfidious religious tensions, he commissions his translation of the Bible.George becomes wealthier than the king as he creates a fashion for hat jewels and mingles with Drummond of Hawthornden, Ben Johnson, Inigo Jones and the mysterious ambassador Luca Von Modrich... However both king and courtier bow before the power invested in their wives.

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Declaration on Freedom for Writers and Readers is an anthology of poetry and prose exploring freedom of expression. The year 2020 marks the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath in which the Scottish nobility appealed to the Pope to support the nation’s fight for freedom from ‘the rule of the English’. The need to hear and understand each other is as urgent now as it ever was. This project was conceived and realised by Scottish PEN which, for nearly 100 years, has been campaigning for freedom of expression and the free exchange of ideas across borders. Declarations includes many voices, featuring some of Scotland’s leading writers such as Karen Campbell, A C Clarke, Carl MacDougall, and James Robertson, as well as writers from overseas.

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Five children escape from a Children’s Home, run away and steal a boat, which they sail around the Outer Hebrides. The book had a huge print run from London Methuen, but their warehouses were bombed in 1940 in Paternoster Row; 5 million books were lost in the fires caused by tens of thousands of incendiary bombs. Consequently, there were very few copies in circulation. This is the resurrection of a successful children’s adventure story.

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‘North-east the Firth, a bracelet merging with mist; south-west the Pentlands, sharply defined. Directly opposite, the Castle. A sudden gust makes me lose my footing. Gulls slip past, eyeing us disdainfully.’ – from From Arthur’s Seat The history and character of Edinburgh infuse every piece in Stewart Conn’s new collection. Stewart’s poems, paired with John Knight’s beautifully detailed illustrations evoke the spirit of the city and its unique aspects. Knight’s pieces are not simply illustrative. The poems and illustrations complement and enhance each other, showing us how the essence of the city infuses every stone.

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“I can see the disgust on the face of one neighbor when Jack, the farmer, asked to lend a man, produced a land girl.” Mona Macleod worked in Kirkubrightshire during the second World War, providing the skilled labour needed on farms before mechanization. The girls were given heavy agricultural work in fields, with animals, carrying hundred weight sacks, sawing wood, felling trees, filling up rat holes. It was a tough way to grow up, but this illustrated memoir provides a record of a time when women faced the rigorous physical challenges involved in winning the war at home.

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These three plays, composed between 1994 and 2004 are linked by the theme of war: actual, remembered or threatened. They are all tragicomic and each written for a strong female lead.

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‘A combination of all that is best in memoir, biography and history.’ – Caroline Moorehead 'In this remarkable book... Jauncey has performed the great service of reminding us of a wonderful figure from Scotland’s recent history.' – Alexander McCall Smith It would be impossible to invent Don Roberto today – a fantastic combination of Don Quixote and Sir Gawain, Indiana Jones and the Lone Ranger. He was so multi-faceted, so complex, that every chapter in his story reveals some new and contradictory aspect of his personality. He is best known as the co-founder, with Keir Hardie, of the Scottish Labour Party, and later as the founding president of the Scottish National Party. But in a long and extraordinary life he was many other things besides.

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Sitting by her window with a glass of cranberries in sugar syrup bought from a woman in the market who assured her they came from Karelia, she muses “Perhaps they have some other kind of effect when you eat them. Spiritual maybe? So I eat and wait for the Karelian cranberries to work their magic on me.” Skarynkina is impelled to spend the last of her money on a trip to Krakow to meet Czeslaw Milosz but never finds his address, so he remains to her an idol like Elvis Presley dressed in gold lame. Each story has a charm and imaginative flight of its own.

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