Showing posts with label The Physic Garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Physic Garden. Show all posts

Researching and Writing Historical Fiction - Ten Tips to Get You Started

The Cottar's Saturday Night
Last week, I was asked to give a talk to the excellent Ayr Writers' Club about researching and writing historical fiction. It strikes me that quite a lot of other people might be interested in this too, whether they want to write novels, short stories or even plays with historical settings and themes. So I've tried to boil it all down into ten points: something to get you started while the year is still reasonably new.

1 Do your research. 
This is the key but just how much you need to do varies with the genre in which you're writing. You can do so much of it online now, that the risk is always that the research will take over, because let’s face it, it’s fascinating, and you can get engrossed in it, following one idea after another down the world wide rabbit warren. It’s important to try to immerse yourself in your chosen time and place, although this doesn’t necessarily mean reading dry academic histories. Think about social and domestic history, how people lived and worked, how they dressed and ate. Read letters too if you can find them. Don't dismiss the novels of the period. When I was writing The Jewel, one of my most useful finds was an early novel by John Galt called The Annals of The Parish, an accurate and at times hilarious account of life in a rural Ayrshire parish at just the right time for my novel. This kind of research will also help you to avoid howlers and anachronisms which will throw your reader right out of the world of the story.

2 Know when to stop. (For a bit) 
Research is its own reward and if you're that way inclined (and I am) you can easily get sidetracked by its endless fascination. Sometimes you have to take a conscious decision to stop researching and start writing.The trick is to do enough research so that you can ‘be’ in the time and place of your novel or story as you are writing it but also to recognise that ...

3 You can't know everything. 
Whatever you don’t know will become obvious as you write. Once you have a first draft under your belt, you will be able to check things, find things out, answer your own questions later on. You don’t know exactly what you don’t know until you realise you don’t know it. And that's fine.

4 Use your imagination. 
The questions writers have to ask themselves are: who, what, when, where, how and why. And what happened next, of course. But the question ‘what did that feel like?’ is the preserve of writers of fiction, mostly. Even biographers tend to be wary of venturing on that one, but novelists can go where angels fear to tread. And historical novelists – especially when they’ve done a lot of research – really have to give themselves permission to tackle the ‘what did that feel like’ aspect of the story, because it’s the biggest thing that will stop the factual research taking over and slowing the novel down. You have to try to treat your research lightly. It's the seasoning, rather than the big indigestible hunk of fat in the soup -  and wondering about feelings is one way of making sure that the story is deliciously readable and recognisable.

5 Allow yourself to make things up. 
When the historical record isn’t clear, you can make good guesses from the evidence before you, and since you’re writing fiction, you’re allowed to make things up. Within the bounds of possibility. You have a lot more freedom than a historian. But you should remember that even when you are making things up about known characters, you must consider what might conceivably have happened. If something seems incredible, then it probably is. And if it seems incredible to the reader it will throw him or her right out of the world of the story.

6 Make timelines and check dates. 
Especially when you’re writing from fact, timelines are invaluable. Find out not just what was going on in the wider world, but in detail. Find out what time of the year something happened. What was the weather like? (There are websites that will tell you this and sites that will tell you what day of the week a certain date fell on.) Knowing when something happened in relation to something else will often tell you a whole lot about the why and the how. If you're writing about real people, consider their ages. Often the extreme youth of certain characters tells you a lot about their behaviour or their relationships. In The Physic Garden, Thomas and William are based on real characters about whom we don't know very much except that there was some connection between them. I started out by thinking that an older professor had taken a very young gardener under his wing, as a professional man will sometimes mentor a younger man. Then I found out that they were of very similar ages, and my whole perception changed. They were friends. And the betrayal of that friendship gave me my story.

7 Choose a point of view. 
Are you telling the story as a first person narrative (as in The Physic Garden) or third person (as in The Jewel) - and if in the third person, are you still in the mind and point of view of one character in particular (The Jewel, Jean) or are you omniscient, the all seeing eye, and do you know how hard this can be to handle? If you are going for omniscient third person – you, as the author, seeing everything - you are going to have to be very careful about when and where you switch points of view. If you do it too abruptly, it disorientates the reader. Whole articles have been written about this and there's plenty of advice online, but it needn't be as complicated as it seems. The story itself will often dictate the persona in which it is told. Consistency is the key. 

8 Choose the language and dialect. 
This is closely related to (7) above. In the Jewel, I decided quite early on that it had to be a third person 'he said/she said' tale, but we are pretty much always with Jean in that novel – so it can be her story, but without too many of the challenges of trying to tackle a first person narrative for a genuine Ayrshire lass. Jean's voice was an 18th century Mauchline voice. In my novel, she uses the words and - largely - the patterns of speech you would expect. But the narrative, the storytelling, helps to make Jean accessible to a 21st century reader. As a writer you want to communicate, and you are always juggling marketability, the wants and needs of your readership, with what you want and need to do to make the characters authentic.   

9 Forge on. 
Get that first draft down, come hell or high water. Do Nanowrimo if you want or invent your own. You may find that - eventually - you can stop to polish along the way, but with a first novel in particular, it's important to get to the end, so that you have something to work on. When you are working, day to day, don't stop at the end of a chapter. Stop at a point where you really want to go on.  That way you'll want to start the next day. Once you have a first draft, however clumsy and unsatisfactory, however bad you think it is, let it lie fallow for a while, do some more research if you have to, and then go back to it and begin the real work of editing, rewriting, polishing. It's always easier to do this on an 'entity' - a whole novel - than on a small part of an unwritten whole. Printing out often helps at that stage. I write onto a PC but I often revise on paper.

10 Use Pinterest. 
I sometimes forget about this when I'm doing talks, but it really is an invaluable resource for writers, just because it contains so many wonderful images of costume, fashions, people, places, things - and often with links back to amazingly informative blog and websites. You can also set up secret boards that only you can see - mood boards for your particular project - where you can gather all sorts of images, add to them, go back to them time and again for inspiration, and eventually make them public if you want. Or delete them if you don't. A great resource. 

Timelines, Killer Details and Thank God for Google: Researching Historical Fiction.

So many reference books ...
As usual, I'm reblogging my latest post for Authors Electric here on my own blog, for anyone who might be interested. This time it's about the process, the joys  - and the occasional pitfalls - of historical research.

Those of us who write historical fiction will be well aware that there are various ways of setting about it. There’s no single right or wrong way and the volume of research needed will vary not just according to how well you know the period, how immersed you are in a particular time and place, but will also depend upon the kind of fiction you’re writing, and reader expectations too. One reader’s unacceptable anachronism may well be excused by another reader who is happy to focus on the story rather than the detail. Most writers know their readers, know what they want and I’m not about to argue with that.

Personally speaking, I do masses of research. In fact I have to persuade myself to stop, give myself permission to get on with the writing, because there’s a part of me that enjoys the research too much, especially going back to primary sources: letters, contemporary accounts, old documents of the kind where you have to ‘get your eye in’ even to read them. It’s justified procrastination. But sooner or later, you have to write the book.

The book in question is a new novel called The Jewel, all about Robert Burns’s wife, Jean Armour, due to be published next spring. So you set the research aside, and immerse yourself in the world of the novel. Then two things happen. You realise that you have to go easy on what’s included. Historical research informs the novel, informs the way the characters behave, but if you try to put in everything you now know, the novel will suffer from great indigestible chunks of fact for fact's sake. At the same time – paradoxically - it's only when you begin to write that you discover all the things you really need to know, but that have somehow eluded you.

My favourite Jean and Rab:
Clare Waugh and Donald Pirie
When I was planning this post, it struck me that there are three key points to researching historical fiction. Well, in truth, there are lots more, probably as many as there are writers. But these three issues always loom very large for me, so it’s worth sharing them.

I think of them as TimelinesKiller Details and TGFG or Thank God for Google.

When you’re researching something that really happened, even if you’re going to allow yourself to make up all kinds of things that might or might not have happened, timelines are vital. Knowing your dates. And I don’t just mean what year something happened, but what time of the year something happened – and what else was going on at the same time. It is amazing how often knowing precisely when something happened in relation to something else gives you an interesting perspective on your subject: one that may even be counter intuitive. For example, it soon became clear to me that Jean didn’t actually fall pregnant for the first time in summer, even though the imagination loves to conjure pictures of outdoor dalliance among the mountain daisies, but in the middle of a damp, chilly, Ayrshire winter. Which immediately makes you wonder about the how and the where of it, especially at a time when houses were crowded, privacy was at a premium and both parties knew that her parents disapproved of the poet to the point of paranoia. I have plenty of ideas about the how of it, and I’m pretty sure I’m right, but you’ll have to read the book to find out what I think! 


Time and again, the juxtaposition of dates and events either explained something satisfactorily, or threw up a conundrum that served to make the story more interesting.

Alongside these timeline issues though, are what I like to think of as killer details. These are more likely to come from primary sources: statistical accounts, parish records, surviving letters; and it’s vital to go back to them wherever you can. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, quite like seeing the real signatures of your protagonists, and knowing that the people you are writing about were once there in the flesh, holding a pen, making those marks on that particular piece of paper. (OK, I admit it, I shed a tear when I thought about that one!) There’s the fact that in another document, the word ‘child’ suddenly becomes ‘children’ long before the babies in question were born, suggesting that the midwife must have heard two heartbeats. There’s a contemporary description of the internal geography of an alehouse that allows you to ascertain the truth or otherwise of a particular piece of gossip. There’s the sudden realisation that you have - serendipitously, and while looking for something else - come across the details of another birth that has significance for the plot you want to construct. These are small details that may seem insignificant but they add authenticity. And the excitement of discovering them is incomparable.

Jean lived in a room here. So did Rab - on and off.
Finally, there’s Google. Thank God for Google. Take the tiny, unimportant example of Ballachulish slate. I live in a house – a listed building - with a Ballachulish slate roof. (You can see something similar in the picture above.) This kind of slate is no longer available except in reclaimed and reconditioned form although substitutes are generally used. For a small and relatively unimportant detail in the story, I found myself assuming that Jean Armour’s father – a prosperous Ayrshire stonemason - would have used Ballachulish slate, especially on the houses of the wealthy. But rereading the chapter, it tripped me up. Just how old is Ballachulish slate? When did they start quarrying it? In the olden days before Google, I would have had to go to the library, look it up and waste precious writing time checking when the quarry was in its heyday and how likely it was that an Ayrshire stonemason and building contractor would have had his roofers using it some thirty years before our own house was built. Or - more likely - I would have deleted Ballachulish altogether and reverted to the simple word ‘slate’. Well, it wouldn’t have mattered. It was a minor detail. But in terms of authenticity, all the Ayrshire builders I know have used the description Ballachulish slate. So, it turns out, might Jean Armour's dad. Thank God for Google in dozens of small but interesting ways.

So those are my three important issues. But of course there are plenty more. If you're writing historical fiction, or even considering it - what's the most important challenge for you? 


Even more research books...

My historical novel The Physic Garden is still available
in paperback and as an eBook from most outlets.
If you want to see my first 'take' on Rab and Jean, you can read my play
  Burns on the Solway on Kindle and on most other eBook outlets too.
The Jewel is scheduled for publication next spring.
Watch this space!
Catherine Czerkawska
www.wordarts.co.uk 






Physic Gardens, Gardeners and Poets

The Physic Garden is on special offer on Amazon at the moment - 99p for the eBook, and I'm not at all sure how long that is going to go on! It could go back to full price any moment, so if you're reading this and have missed the boat, apologies. Not that it's terribly expensive at full price. And because the cover is so beautiful - many thanks to Glasgow Museums for supplying my publisher, Saraband, an image of a sampler that was not only right for the novel, but pretty much right for the date too - the paperback is a lovely book as well. It's one you might be glad to have on your shelves, even if, like me, you prefer reading novels on a Kindle.

Did I really say that? Well, I'm afraid it's true. But sometimes, when I like a particular book a lot, I want to have it in both versions.

And I'm a small time collector of antiquarian books as well, so my shelves are fairly cluttered with old volumes, not even very valuable old volumes either: just extremely pre-loved.

Extremely pre-loved books.
I really do like the smell of those. I honestly don't care about the scent of new books, even my own new books. They sort of smell of paper and nothing else and so does bog roll or printer paper. But old books, very old books - oh, like old textiles, they smell of time, and the perfume of the past, and I can get quite sentimental over those.

When I was researching the Physic Garden - a book I sometimes think I ought to have called The Psychic Garden, because that's what so many people want to call it! - it struck me that my narrator/gardener/bookseller, William, of whom I'm still very fond indeed, would have known all about Robert Burns. The lives of the two would have overlapped, in terms of time although they would never have met. Burns would have died only six years before William first met his sweetheart, Jenny Caddas, taking her swarm of bees. So when William, whose narrative voice was so strong that I was never quite sure what he was going to say next, mentions Robert Burns, and the challenges he must have faced in the houses of the Edinburgh gentry, it seemed perfectly feasible. 'But then, I believe, the poet's father was a gardener too, and it was that work which first took him to Ayrshire where Rab was born,' writes William.
The cottage William Burness built. 

Much more recently, as regular readers of this blog will know, I've been finishing a new historical novel about Jean Armour, the wife of that same Robert Burns. This is no coincidence. I was already immersed in the time and place and had previously written a couple of plays about the poet, but had always wanted to write more, a lot more, about Jean.

Because the new novel, titled The Jewel, is primarily about Jean, the poet's father - also called William - only figures peripherally. He was dead by the time the family moved to Mossgiel farm outside Mauchline. He comes across in most of the biographies as a kindly father, intelligent and thoughtful but very strait-laced and rather grim. His son felt that his father was disappointed in him. Yet it struck me that William  Burness, as he signed his name, must have had some spirit of adventure as a young man. He moved from the North East where he was born, first to Edinburgh to work as a gardener, and thence to Ayrshire. Moreover, he met Agnes Broun, the poet's mother, at the fair in Maybole and married her with a certain amount of precipitation, so it must have been a whirlwind courtship! Perhaps the poet, whose chief virtue was genuine kindliness and who could be impulsive, was more like his father than he knew.

Greenside, Maybole, Ayrshire.

The Physic Garden on a Kindle Daily Deal - Another Grown Up Love Story.


Today, that's 20th May, the Physic Garden is on Amazon on a Kindle Daily Deal, for one day only, so if you haven't read it and you're fond of historical fiction, you can give it a go for 99p. It was the Sunday Times's pick of historical fiction last spring and their reviewer liked it very much.

The physic garden of the title is the old medicinal herb garden of the mediaeval college of Glasgow University, back when it was in the centre of town, quite close to the cathedral. I never realised, when I named the book, how many people would read that word as psychic. But there's nothing spooky about it, although I'm not averse to writing about the paranormal! Just not in this novel.

When students studied botany back in the very early 1800s, they needed plant specimens and the physic garden was supposed to supply them. But at that time, the garden was suffering from industrial pollution from the nearby type foundry, and was dying. The lecturer in Botany, Dr Thomas Brown, asks William Lang to go out into the surrounding countryside to gather herbs for him and the two men strike up an unlikely friendship. It is on one of these expeditions that William meets weaver's daughter and bee keeper Jenny Caddas, and falls in love with her.

But there's a lot more to it than that. The story is told by William, in old age, looking back on the events of his youth. And we quickly become aware that something bad has happened. What that something is, you'll need to read the novel to find out. This is a book about a terrible betrayal, but also about a city on the cusp of the industrial revolution - a book about medical developments, about the early days of surgery, and how we treat women and their bodies. It's also a story about the painful getting of wisdom.

It's not as racy as some of my novels - Ice Dancing, for instance or Orange Blossom Love - nor as gentle as The Curiosity Cabinet. Nor does it have the big. bold, tragic central story of Bird of Passage (my current favourite!) or The Amber Heart although it's just as heartbreaking. I never seem to be able to write twice in a similar vein although I think the style is all me. But these days, when I'm asked what kind of things I write, I find myself saying 'Grown up love stories' - and that's what this is: literary fiction for sure, the voice a little dry and ironic, because of who is telling it - but essentially a love story. Who loves whom, though - well, that's the interesting part.

There's a Pinterest board too, where you can find out some more about the visual inspiration behind the novel.

Historical Fiction Four: The Physic Garden - What If?


So many things I write begin as plays, and the Physic Garden (published this year in paperback and as an eBook by Saraband), is no exception. It began as a two hander, a conversation between the two central characters. I wrote it initially with the Oran Mor ‘A Play, A Pie and a Pint’ season in mind, encouraged by the lovely, late David McLennan. But it soon became apparent that there was much more to the tale and not nearly enough elbow room in a short play to tell it. It needed to be a novel.

The Physic Garden is set in the very early 1800s, in and around the gardens of the old college of Glasgow University. I had the idea for this many years ago, long before I even tackled it as a play. Browsing one day, I found an old book in the Oxfam shop on Byres Road. It was called The Lost Gardens of Glasgow University- a factual history of the gardens and the gardeners who had worked there, through the ages. I read it and was intrigued by the (real historical) story of William Lang in particular.

Briefly, his father Robert was the head gardener. William himself was born and brought up at the old college and became a gardener in turn. But the gardens were suffering from industrial pollution, especially the physic garden. The university had allowed a ‘type foundry’ to be built close by and the heavy metals and other pollutants were killing the plants. But the university needed printing, and they needed metal type for that printing, so the gardens lost out. It was clear that the gardeners knew something was up, but Faculty wouldn't listen. (Sounds familiar, eh?)

There was a professor of botany, one Dr Thomas Brown. He had been engaged to deliver the botanical lectures instead of Professor Jeffray who was far more interested in surgery than in physic or medicine. (I sometimes think I ought to have called this novel the Psychic Garden, because that's what so many people call it!) But to do that he needed lots of plant specimens which the gardens couldn’t supply. So he asked William to go out into the surrounding countryside to gather them for him. When William was only 19, his father died quite suddenly. William was left with a widowed mother and a number of younger siblings to support. He applied for and was given the position of head gardener, on the recommendation of Thomas Brown. But he had taken on far too much – including the specimen gathering. And he soon got into trouble with Faculty for neglecting the gardens although it is clear from the records that the state of the gardens had more to do with pollution than with William’s neglect.

So much is true, a matter of historical fact.

I thought at first that Thomas was a much older man who had taken the younger man under his wing, but it was when I realised that he was only a few years older than William that my story fell into place. It seemed clear that these two young men had become friends across a divide of class and background. William, at least, disappeared almost completely from historical record. But when I browsed Glasgow directories of the time, some years later, a printer and publisher called William Lang suddenly appears. There is, of course, no indication at all that it really was the same man. But as a novelist , you can say ‘what if?’ What if this was the same William, and what might have happened in between?

That ‘what if?’ question is the writer’s best friend.

Most writers find themselves asking it all the time, but especially writers of historical fiction. You begin with the bare facts, but then you interrogate them. What if this happened? What if this character did this, or this? That’s where it becomes interesting. William’s voice was a very clear one for me. I think some of this has to do with the fact that I’ve worked as a playwright for so long. Playwrights definitely hear voices in their heads and I heard William’s voice very strongly indeed. At some point, somebody (not my current publisher, I must hasten to say) suggested that this story would be better told in the third person: he said, she said. I tried to do it and came as close as I’ve ever come to getting writer’s block. I like to think that William wouldn’t let me. By this time, it was almost as though he was shaking me awake in the middle of the night, telling me that he had more to say, and demanding to know when I was going to write it down!

I finally finished it, and it was not so very different from the book you see now. There were a few bits and pieces of editing, things that I worked with the wonderful Ali Moore at Saraband on - but nobody tried to make it into something it wasn’t and structurally it didn’t really change at all.

It is I think, a book about friendship and betrayal. The two central characters are friends against all the odds. But when William begins to tell his story, we are soon aware that things have gone rather horribly wrong – but we don’t know exactly how – although we can guess some of it. There is no big ‘twist in the tale’. It isn’t that sort of novel and it isn’t necessary. I often think Roald Dahl, while a very fine writer, has a lot to answer for. I never mind if a novel doesn’t have a twist in the tale as long as the journey from beginning to end is satisfying and enlightening. You don’t have to surprise me unless I’m reading one of those pieces of crime fiction where you’re not supposed to be able to guess whodunnit till the very end. For the rest, I don’t care as long as I find the ending satisfying. But if you want something swift paced and deeply mysterious, I can tell you right now that this probably isn't the book for you! It's a slow, sweet exploration by an elderly man looking back on a deeply troubled episode in his past - and trying now, in old age, to come to terms with it. 

Jenny's needlework?
The Physic Garden is a book about closeness and trust and affection. It’s also a book about the getting of wisdom. And about – as one colleague said – the price of knowledge. It’s also a love story of sorts, although whether that love is between William and his sweetheart Jenny or William and his good friend Thomas, I leave you to decide. Traditional activities play their part – beekeeping, foraging, fine needlework and embroidery. Tensions between medicine and new developments in surgery are also central to the story, especially the idea that with the burgeoning factories in the city, a ready supply of workers is needed, and there is some idea that you might be able to ‘fix’ workers, just as a machine can be fixed.

But most of all, this is a story about betrayal, a terrible betrayal, and the possibility of coming to terms with it, towards the end of one’s life. It’s a story that asks – what if things changed quite radically for the narrator, the main character? How might he himself have changed in the course of his long and fulfilling life? How did he arrive at this point and how has the wisdom acquired along the way influenced the way he feels now? 

Fatal Flaws - How Do You Like Your Characters?


This was originally posted on the Authors Electric blog, earlier this month - but it seems worthwhile reblogging here on my own blog. Worth thinking about and discussing, anyway! 

A little while ago, I was asked to speak to a group of readers. One of them had spent many years as a professional editor with one of the big, prestigious publishing corporations. All of them had read the Physic Garden and were interested in talking about it and asking questions. I’ve done plenty of these sessions and you don’t expect everyone to like the book. Some of the questions can be challenging, so you have to be able to think on your feet. All of which is a good thing. But on this occasion something happened that brought me up short.

‘How on earth,’ said this ex-editor personage, ‘Did you manage to write in the first person voice of somebody so unlikeable?’

There was one of those dismayed silences in the group, with everyone trying not to catch my eye. An uneasy stirring. A little murmur of protest. I’ll admit I was gobsmacked. It wasn’t that she was questioning my writing abilities. Not really. She was asking me how I could possibly have written 90,000 words in the voice of a totally unlikeable person. Except that of all the characters I have ever created, and if you include my plays and stories that’s a lot of people, I think William Lang is right up there with my favourites.

I simply love him.

Which was all I could say, really. The story was no hardship because I loved William to bits. Still do. And moreover, as somebody else in the group was quick to point out, even though William lived 200 years ago, you can still find his like today. Many of us know them and some of us think ourselves lucky if we do: elderly Scotsmen, very clever and sometimes self-taught, a little prickly on the outside, but with a loving soft centre, dry, humorous and with all the wisdom of their years. They’ll be doting grandfathers too, given half a chance.

Did it matter that she didn’t like him? Not a bit. But it did get me thinking. Because this was a person who had been an editor, a person of some influence within traditional publishing. And if she had still been working in that role, it would have mattered a lot. Because that would have been her judgement and yet it was one that the rest of the group – voracious readers - disagreed with.

And then it struck me that I've had other responses like that. Not, I hasten to add, from the excellent editor who worked on The Physic Garden, a pearl among editors, who confessed that she too loved William. But in the past, I've had agents and editors telling me that a particular character wasn't likeable enough. And although I’m prepared to admit that sometimes they might have been right, I suspect mostly they were wrong. It was a matter of personal preference. Something to do with their own prejudices. We all have them. But when publishing acquisitions stand or fall by them that’s when the trouble starts. Perhaps, like the advice to decorate a house as blandly as possible if you’re putting it up for sale, this goes some way to explaining so much that is anodyne in contemporary fiction emanating from the big corporations.

Do you have to like your main protagonist to write about him or her? Do you have to like this person in order to enjoy the book? I don’t think so. I rather dislike Jane Eyre, the character, I can’t help it, but I do like the book very much. I don’t like Heathcliff and Cathy at all. Who would? But I love Wuthering Heights almost more than any other novel and reread it practically every year. I don’t much like Fanny Price, but I enjoy Mansfield Park.

As for my poor William, she thought him too dour, too Presbyterian, even though he makes determined efforts not to go to the kirk as often as his family would like. And I think she believed that William had been prone to over-reaction, which is an opinion she shares with a few other readers, and makes a good point for discussion. For anyone who hasn’t read the novel, and without giving away any spoilers, our narrator remembers a time when he is reading in the library of his much wealthier friend, Thomas. There, he comes across a book called The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, complete with illustrations, and is shocked to his youthful core by the pictures he sees there. This is a real book. I was able to see a very old and precious facsimile in Glasgow University Library. But you can also find some of the images online. I remember seeing them for the first time. And I, with all my 21st century assumption of sophistication, was also shocked to the core. The images are very beautiful. But the horror lies in realising their beauty and almost immediately becoming aware of the fact that they are depicting the deaths of women and children, mostly through privation and poverty. You can see some of them here. But be warned before you click on the link, they are not at all comfortable to see!

Anyway, we agreed to disagree about William’s likeability or otherwise, although most of the rest of the group seemed to be on William’s side. But it also got me thinking about all those letters of rejection that said, ‘I liked the book but I didn’t love it.’ Or ‘I loved this book but I couldn’t carry marketing with me.’ (i.e. they didn’t love it.) I used to sigh and resolve to do better next time. Now that I only have to submit a novel if I want to, I realise that liking and loving a character are personal judgements and may have nothing to do with the quality of the book – but more importantly, they may have very little to do with whether or not I enjoy reading a book. If that were the case, neither Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, nor the Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner would be the astonishing reads they undoubtedly are. And as for Scarlett O’Hara? Oh dear me no. Consigned to the outer darkness as terminally unlikeable.

I like my characters flawed, sometimes fatally so. How do you like yours?

Ellisland: the long road to a new novel.

Ellisland Farm
Last week, we headed south to Ellisland, near Dumfries, the farm where Robert Burns and Jean Armour spent some three years of their early married life and where he composed - among other memorable poems - Tam O' Shanter. 

The last time I visited this place, I was very young. Even then, I was so 'into' Burns, a fascination that has never really left me, that I was always persuading my mum and dad to drive about the countryside, visiting places with connections to the poet. It helped that we lived within walking distance of Burns Cottage in Alloway and I would wend my way there on fine spring and summer Saturdays, always hoping to see a ghost or two. Rab remained obdurately unwilling to manifest himself, even for such a fan as me. 

Later, much later, I wrote a couple of plays about Burns: one for BBC R4 about the writing of Tam o' Shanter, notable mainly for a stunning performance of the poem from Liam Brennan as Burns, with Gerda Stevenson as Jean and an early appearance by Billy Boyd (of later hobbit fame) who was an absolute joy to work with and made everyone laugh. 

Later, I wrote a play for Glasgow's Oran Mor, about the last few weeks of the poet's life down on the Solway coast. But in both of these plays, Jean Armour, the poet's long-suffering wife, figured largely, her voice more or less demanding to be heard. (Much as William's voice would not be denied in The Physic Garden!) 

Ever since then, I've wanted to write a novel about Jean. Not a piece of non-fiction, although like all my historical fiction it'll be well researched. But I've had this longing to crawl inside Jean's head and try to write her story. You've only to read a few accounts of the poet's life to see how easy it seems to have been for academics to dismiss Jean as 'not quite worthy of the bard.' Creative Scotland, it seems, agrees with me, because they have just awarded me a very welcome sum of money to research the novel and here I am, at the start of a longish road to a new book. 

Donald Pirie and Clare Waugh as Rab and Jean

Anyway, I loved Ellisland. And I loved it not least because it hasn't been overly interpreted. It remains one of those atmospheric places where nobody has got their hands on the displays, nobody has introduced sound and light effects with a hundred buttons for kids to press, and nobody has tried to tell you what you ought to think and feel. 

I don't know how long the Trust in charge of Ellisland will resist the temptation to revamp it, so I'm very glad I saw it as it is. It was a very fine day, there were house martins flying and calling about the old buildings and the walk along the Nith, where Rab is said to have composed Tam, was a green, shady pathway, fringed with wild flowers, dappled with sunshine. The curator, who lives in the cottage, was knowledgeable and helpful, and the exhibits - oh the exhibits were to treasure: Burns's sword, Jean Armour's much mended 'mutch' and the poet's wooden box, hewn from a single log, with his initials on the top. 

This is how these small museums used to be and sometimes I find myself wondering what it is about them that I enjoy so much and what it is about the new museums that - splendid and well thought out as they are - so irritates me sometimes. I can only conclude that where there is too much explanation and interpretation, there is no room at all for imagination. You are always being told what to feel and what to think. 

One of the tricks to writing historical fiction is to do just enough research. But then, you give yourself permission to make things up. And only then do you find out what you don't know, what you actually need to know. So you go back and find some answers. But if you do too much research to begin with, if you dot all the 'i's and cross all the 't's there's a good chance that you won't want to make anything up at all. 

Ellisland is open to the public and it's magic. If you're a Burns enthusiast, go and see it while it's still in it's wonderfully welcoming state. If you're not a Burns enthusiast, you may well have changed your mind by the time you come away! 




Game of Sevens - The Physic Garden

My Authors Electric colleague Pauline Chandler tagged me to take part in this little game. You go to the seventh page of your work in progress, or your newest work if, like mine, your current work in progress consists of a heap of reference books and some notes and not much else! Count down seven lines and post the next seven sentences. Or you can go to the seventy seventh page if you like. We're hoping you don't have a seven hundred and seventy seventh page, but I suppose it's possible. Pauline's extract was from a tantalisingly interesting historical novel - you can find it here, on the Authors Electric blog.

I decided to run with another historical novel - my own new novel, The Physic Garden. When I turned to page seven of the paperback version, and counted down some seven lines, here's what I found:

'I should have started the tale elsewhere and earlier. But I wanted to write about her, the way you want to talk about what you love. Loved. I wanted to bring her to life in words the way I would once have made seeds, bulbs, roots and tubers grow into plants, the way a few green shoots could grow and stretch out and blossom, the way affection grows and blossoms, although you never see it happening, no matter how closely you try to follow the movement of it.

All the same, I should have started the tale earlier. Perhaps I should have begun by telling you about my father, Robert Lang, who had been college gardener for many years, since I was just a lad. Or with myself, who loved green and growing things, even as a boy. Or with Thomas Brown, who had come to teach botany at the college, a few years before I met Jenny.

But I think that would have been the hardest beginning of all. So instead, here I am, telling you about Jenny Caddas and her swarm of bees, the way she smelled of sweat and honey, and how her hair flew about her head and caught the light, a tangle of flax in the sunshine.'


You can see right away that I've cheated! It seemed such a shame to stop, since these few paragraphs are right at the end of a chapter - and I think we need to know that Thomas Brown would have been the 'hardest beginning of all.'

Incidentally, I had occasion to meet a retired editor a little while ago (not my editor, I hasten to add, who was an angel in human form and the kind of editor who is beyond price.) 'How,' this person asked, 'could you write in the persona of such an unlikable character?'

I was, not to put too fine a point on it, gobsmacked. The novel is written in the first person 'voice' of William Lang. He is writing as an old man, remembering his youth in early 1800s Glasgow. Coming to terms with the events of his youth. Coming to terms with a grave betrayal. It would be no exaggeration to say that I loved every last thing about him, and still do. I had no way of answering the question, therefore, except to say that I didn't find him unlikable at all. Fortunately, a few other people agreed with me. They liked him too. What's more, they recognised him. But it got me thinking. And mostly what I thought was how very glad I was that this individual had not been my editor. Because if I had been persuaded to make William conform to somebody else's idea of 'more likable', I may well have destroyed the whole book in the process.

By the way, I'm hesitant to tag individuals in this game - I know how busy writers are. But if you are reading this and feel like doing it - why not just give it a go? And let me know how you get on in the comments below.

The Physic Garden - Ten Discussion Points for Book Groups

There has already been some interest in the Physic Garden from various book and reading groups, which is very encouraging for me. I do feel that it might be a good read for a book group in that it raises a great many issues - issues, moreover, that I can imagine might be quite contentious. Not that it's really an 'issue based' novel. It's a novel in which character is central, a story of friendship and betrayal. It is, now that I come to think about it, a novel with a reliable narrator - but reliable (and lovable) as William is, it's also about his struggle, in old age, to come to terms with the traumatic events of his youth. Although it's undoubtedly quite a literary novel, it's accessible too. And, I hope, readable.

It was favourably reviewed in the Sunday Times this week, which delighted me. It has had wonderful, thoughtful reviews elsewhere, but the Sundays have so many submissions and, on the whole, they review so little fiction that just being noticed seems like an additional achievement!

I've come up with ten points that might be used to spark debate. I'm sure readers will have their own. And I'm anxious not to prescribe any single 'right' response to the novel. All stories are recreated over and over in the minds of individual readers and that's just as it should be. But do feel free to save and copy these and use them in whatever way seems most helpful to you. I'm sure readers will have plenty of additional questions and opinions of their own. I should add that I've tried very hard NOT to add any spoilers. There's nothing in here that you probably couldn't deduce from reading about the book. But if you're in any way worried about it - stop reading now! 

1 The Physic Garden has been described as a ‘beautiful, elegant expression of betrayal’. The author herself has characterised the novel as being about friendship and betrayal. What do you think are the big themes of the book?

2. How did you feel about the novel’s two main characters, William Lang and Thomas Brown? Was your sympathy entirely with William, or did William’s narration allow you to understand something of what motivated Thomas Brown?

3 Did you anticipate the denouement and how did it affect you? Do you think you would have responded to events in the same way as William?

4 Would you describe this as literary or historical fiction? The author describes various traditional activities such as beekeeping, needlework and foraging, but these are important for the story itself. How far does this help the reader to immerse him or herself in the world of the novel?

5 The novel also focuses on the science of the nineteenth century and on the tensions between medicine and the newly developing skills of anatomy and surgery. Did you find yourself agreeing with William, or – from a 21st century perspective – did you find that Thomas had a more balanced view of potential medical developments?

6 Another reviewer has pointed out that the over-arching theme of the novel is ‘the price of knowledge’. This is a dilemma we still face today. Do you think you might have felt differently if you were living in early 19th century Scotland and how much did the novel make you wonder about this?

7 The women in the novel are a little more shadowy than the men but, since it is written from the perspective of one of those male characters in a patriarchal age, this may be inevitable. How do you feel about historical novels in which female characters are given 21st century qualities and freedoms? Do you think it matters? Does it affect your enjoyment of a novel?

8 William’s ‘voice’ has been described as ‘individual, idiosyncratic’ and ‘flexible enough to express emotions from the happiest to the very blackest.’ What were your feelings about William by the end of the novel? Did you like him? Did you feel that he had led a good life, or that he had missed out on something? If he had been alive today, how do you think things might have played out for him, and would he have been any happier as a result?

9 William points out that knowledge is not always the same thing as wisdom. Do you think William has acquired wisdom by the end of the novel? What about Thomas? Apart from his final letter, we only have William’s perspective on him. How much do you think that last letter helps to explain earlier events?

10 William also says of his friend Thomas that ‘it can be a peculiar curse and a burden to be a man whom people love. Better by far to be a man who loves unconditionally.’ Do you think this is true, and if so, why? 






The Physic Garden - Glasgow and Ayr Launches, Coming Soon!

Cover image courtesy of Glasgow Museums
The Physic Garden is, it seems, already 'out there' in paperback. At least that's what some friends and Amazon are telling me (and even sending me pictures to prove it.) But really, the official launch will be on Thursday 27th March, in Waterstones Argyle Street in Glasgow at 7pm and a week later, on Thursday 3rd April, in Ayr's Waterstones at 6.30.  I've been busy inviting friends and acquaintances, and I do hope plenty of people come along.

I'm going to be talking about some of what inspired and lay behind the novel, some of the intensive historical research that went into it and how I feel about my main character, William Lang, who narrates the whole story as an old man looking back on his youth. I'm very fond of him, but there's more to it than that. Actually, I still recall the considered judgement of an 'industry insider' who had better remain nameless that the whole novel was 'just an old man telling his story' which is the kind of remark that burns itself into your heart and stays there, festering slowly. Not even a clutch of excellent reviews and a whole lot of praise can ever quite erase it, although they certainly help!

My publisher Saraband has made a wonderful job of this book - the actual hold-it-in-your-hand artefact  - and the cover, with an image courtesy of the excellent Glasgow Museums, is to die for. This stunning sampler is part of their collection. One of the characters in this literary historical novel, Jenny Caddas, is a fine needlewoman, and in the course of the story she makes an embroidered christening cape. I'm planning to bring a similar cape along to the launches, since I have one in my own textile collection - another source of inspiration, although not the main one.

Now, I'm trying to decide which bits to read out:  just enough to tantalise people into wanting to read more. I've been sitting up late and practising. But really, it's no hardship because I love reading aloud. I suspect most playwrights - and that's what I do when I'm wearing one of my other hats - love reading their work aloud and sometimes even going so far as to act it out. I sometimes think that we're show-offs at heart even though we like to pretend to be quietly self effacing writers.


A Valentine's Day Special: Two Love Stories For the Price Of One

Cover by Alison Bell
If you haven't read the Curiosity Cabinet (and although it has definitely been my best selling novel to date I know there are quite a lot of people out there who haven't!) then I've planned a very special offer for Valentine's Day and the following week. From 13th February to 19th February, The Curiosity Cabinet will be on a 'Kindle Countdown' deal and you'll be able to download it for the bargain price of 99p in the UK and around a dollar in the US. That's a lot less than the price of a cup of coffee.  

Many - but by no means all - of my novels, involve very grown up love stories. But with this book, you'll be getting two love stories for the price of one,  two parallel stories, past and present. 

In present day Scotland,  Alys revisits the beautiful (fictional) Hebridean island of Garve after an absence of twenty five years, and finds herself captivated by the antique embroidered casket on display in her hotel. She discovers that it belongs to Donal, her childhood playmate on the island, and soon they resume their old friendship. 

Another ancient McNeill

But interwoven with the story of their growing love is the darker historical tale of Henrietta Dalrymple, kidnapped by the formidable chieftain, Manus McNeill, and held on Garve against her will and with no inkling of the reason why she has been imprisoned. 

With three hundred years separating them, the women are linked by the cabinet and its mysterious contents, by the tug of motherhood and by the magic of the island itself. But Garve has its secrets, past and present. Donal must learn to trust Alys enough to confide in her and, like Henrietta before her, Alys must earn the right to belong.


The island and its people are fictional, but the landscape is very like the landscape of the beautiful little island of Gigha which I know well. I'm told that it seems like Coll too. 

I'm always a bit bemused by the reviews of this book since they tend to be wildly differing, even when they're positive (and most of them are positive, thanks to my many lovely readers!) But it's clear from reading them that some readers see it as a tightly, tautly written book with great depths, whereas others see it as a frothy 'guilty pleasure'. In house agent's parlance (real estate if you're reading this in the US) it probably means that the book is 'deceptively simple'.

The truth is that whether you find it deceptively simple or genuinely simple, it doesn't matter, just as long as you enjoy it. I hope, at least, that you believe in Alys and Donal, and in Henrietta and Manus. Because I grew very fond of them, and of Alys's little boy Ben, as well.  

It's a book about the present redeeming the past - and also about the ways in which a beautiful and largely unchanging place with an  intense history can hold something of the past, even within its present. 

One of my readers called it a 'beautifully crafted tapestry of a book' and I'm grateful that s/he understood exactly what I was trying to do in the novel - and took pleasure from reading it. Because it was certainly a great pleasure for me to research and write it!

Why not give it a try at the links below? 

You can also visit my website to read a bit more about what I'm working on right now, and find out about my other books, especially my new - and much darker - historical novel, The Physic Garden, which has just been published as an eBook by Saraband, and is due for release in paperback in late March.  











Editors and Artistic Directors - So Much In Common.

Coming back to theatre with a bang: Wormwood
Novelist (and friend) Gillian Philip wrote an excellent piece on editors and editing for the winter edition of the Society of Authors in Scotland newsletter. So many people wanted to read it that she reposted it on her own blog, here and I can very much recommend it. 

I had just been involved in an online discussion about the role of the artistic director in a stage play and reading Gillian’s post, it struck me that there are parallels between a good artistic director and a good editor – just as there are striking and unfortunate parallels between a bad director and a bad editor.
Let me get the horror stories out of the way first.
Back when I was starting out in theatre, I wrote a play about the Solidarity movement in Poland and its effects on one family. I was ecstatic to be told that it would be performed at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre. That, though, was where the ecstasy ended. The first time I met the artistic director I realised that we had opposing views of the play. He took the script away and sent it back to me with massive rewrites on every page. He had torn it to bits, deleted large sections and rewritten it as the play he thought it should be. I fought as best I could, and so did the (lovely) cast, but it was a disaster. I was too young, too naive and too inexperienced. He was an elderly bully and it was years before I went back to theatre - with a play about the Chernobyl disaster for the Traverse in Edinburgh.
Later, this time with a novel, I encountered an editor who tried to do something similar. To be fair, some of the points she made were good, but she also made extensive changes to my manuscript without tracking them, rewriting whole chunks of my work in the kind of voice and idiom she would have used herself. By that stage I was confident enough to dig in my heels, but it was a tedious and time consuming business, going through my version and hers, reinstating my dialogue but trying to do useful rewrites where she had made fair points – which she had.
When I thought about it, I realised that a good artistic director and a good editor share quite similar qualities.
An artistic director will hold the ‘idea’ of the play in his or her head. The buck stops with her. If she is on anybody’s side, she is on the side of the play itself as you have intended it to be not as she might have written it herself. Not even as she wishes you had written it. It is her aim to make it as good as it possibly can be on its own terms. She will never do that by imposing her voice on the voice of the playwright. The process is much more collaborative, more fluid, more fascinating than that and since most directors are freelance she will almost certainly walk away rather than take on a play she dislikes. Since editors are increasingly freelance too, the same thing applies.
Anne Marie Timoney and Liam Brennan in Wormwood
There is an etiquette in theatre, so the actors will talk to the director and the writer will talk to the director, but the writer will not give instructions to the actors and the actors will not ask the writer for changes except through the director. If you know each other and have worked together before, there is a lot of leeway and what eventually emerges is a comfortably collaborative process. But I can think of many occasions where, for example, an actor has asked for changes and the director has said ‘not yet. Try it the way it’s written.’ The good director takes the work seriously, treats it (and you) with respect, but helps the playwright to see what needs to be seen. A little way into the rehearsal process, you can see where something isn’t working but it’s almost always you who make the changes.

Happy days with a very good director: Hamish Wilson
This is how it works with a good editor. I’ve just been working with one on the Physic Garden and it has been a joy. I knew that there was something not quite right somewhere, but I wasn’t sure what it was. It was something small, but it niggled. The editor read the manuscript, said ‘I love this book’ but instantly put her finger on what it was that had bugged me and the publisher. It was indeed something quite small but once she had pointed it out, it also seemed obvious and important. (It was one of those ‘why didn’t I see that?’ moments.) And it had a couple of knock-on effects on the rest of the story.  Essentially, it was a case of finding out how a particular character might really react at that point in the novel, and addressing it. It was the work of a couple of days to make the changes, but it mattered. There were other bits and pieces, of course: punctuation, the odd inconsistency or infelicity. But really, it was her ability to hone in on one small but vital facet of the story that was priceless and I’m glad I made the changes, glad to have worked with her. 

A good editor, like a good director is both unselfish and generous. But I’ve also come to realise that not everyone possesses those qualities, although they may be learned over a period of years. My genuinely bad experiences - I can count about four and that isn’t very many - involved people who were too ignorant to know how little they really knew. (Youth, though, wasn’t an issue because some of them were old enough to know better.) They were on a power trip, over confidently imposing their own views on whatever work they were editing or developing.  It was, I realised eventually, a bit like that scene in the Matrix where Agent Smith converts everything into a clone of himself. Too bad Neo wasn’t around to fight my corner when I needed him.

A Kindle Countdown Special Offer and a New eBook Release as well


I have so much going on at the moment that it's hard to find the time to blog about it! 

But if you're reading this post any time between 30th January and the 5th February, you can download my novel Ice Dancing for less than the price of a cup of coffee. It will be on a Kindle countdown deal for a week. In fact you could get the book to go with your cup of coffee and read about Scottish  village life in all its engaging reality at the same time.

I'm seriously considering rebranding the way this novel is presented. I think the cover, which is very beautiful, actually gives the wrong impression of the book. This is not the artist's fault, but entirely mine. She had much better ideas but I wanted the hockey player. I think I was wrong. I often am! We feel our way into this business and sometimes we make mistakes. So later this spring, I'm going to ask her if she can redesign it for me.

Anyway. What IS it about, if not about hockey? And why the Ice Dancing? 

 It's what I would call a very grown up love story with a lowland Scottish village setting, a novel about the lightning strike of love at first sight, a story of past suffering and the possibility of healing. I think it's quite literary, but then what does that mean? It's intelligent, I hope. But not inaccessible. And - glory be - it has a slightly older heroine. She's approaching forty. And she falls in love. With a younger man. 

Which is probably why this novel just HAD to be indie published. 


It's set somewhere a bit like this.
Helen - who narrates the novel - has almost resigned herself to the downward slide into mildly discontented middle age. She's a Scottish farmer’s wife, living in a rural backwater, with her only child about to fly the nest. But when she meets and falls in love with Joe, a Canadian ice hockey player spending a season with a local team, she realises that nothing will ever be the same for either of them again. 

Joe is nine years younger and a hero to die for, attractive, polite and articulate. But like many of my novels, which so often deal with friendship and betrayal as well as love, this is a story with a dark side. Although Joe skates like an angel, he has his own demons to cope with, a sadder, more complicated and much more shocking past than Helen could ever imagine. 

A bit like this as well!
The title is all to do with partners. Helen has been doing Line Dancing in the village hall. You don't need a partner for Line Dancing. You don't have to touch anybody. But if you're dancing on ice, and you're unsure of yourself, a partner can certainly come in handy.

Anyway, if you'd like to give it a try, and you have a Kindle or a Kindle app, you can get it cheap, here in the UK and also in the USA, (at this link) for seven whole days. You don't have to be a hockey mom or even a hockey fan to enjoy it (although it won't harm) and it might help if you're a wee bit curious about the joys and occasional sorrows of life in contemporary rural Scotland. But really, it's a story about love, about betrayal and damage, and about healing. 

I'm keen to see this novel selling well because I badly want to write the sequel. And I probably will write the sequel sooner or later. But it would be kind of nice if a few people were asking for it!

Meanwhile - but also on the subject of betrayal and friendship as well as a lot of other things besides - my new historical novel The Physic Garden is due to be published in its eBook form on ALL platforms, on 1st February. You'll find it on Amazon, but everywhere else as well. And then, ta-dah! - it will be published in paperback on 27th March with the very beautiful cover below. This one is published in the traditional way by  SARABAND, a publisher in a million and Scottish Publisher of the Year for 2013. Check out some of their other excellent titles. I'm very proud to be published by them, glad to be in such company,  and - if all goes well - I'm hoping to be able to work with them in the future. 

Cover picture, courtesy of Glasgow Museums.

















There Was A Lad - Happy Birthday to Rab.


This post is reposted from my last Authors Electric post. I thought it might be worth another outing on my Wordarts blog. After all, you can't have too much of a good thing, and Rab was a very very good thing!

On 25th January 1759, our national poet (or one of them - we're not short of poets up here) was born.
Or as Rab himself would have it: 

There was a lad was born in Kyle, 
But whatna day o' whatna style, 
I doubt it's hardly worth the while 
To be sae nice wi' Robin. 

Our monarch's hindmost year but ane 
Was five-and-twenty days begun, 
'Twas then a blast o' Janwar' win' 
Blew hansel in on Robin.

Kyle is a part of Ayrshire (the others are Carrick, where I live, and which has lots of Burns associations too) and Cunningham, a bit like the Ridings of my native Yorkshire. The blast of January wind blew down the chimney of the cottage that Burn's father had built for himself and his family in Alloway, near Ayr. You can listen to the whole poem if you like, here, recited engagingly by Alan Cumming for the BBC. 

So this post is a wee pre Happy Birthday shout out to possibly my favourite poet of all time: Robert Burns. 

Here's one we did earlier!
We'll be having a smallish, private Burns Supper in this village about a week later. We'll eat traditional food: cock-a-leekie soup, haggis, steak pie, mashed potatoes, mashed turnips, trifle, oatcakes and cheese. This is not, I have to confess, my favourite meal of the year. I can pretty much take or leave everything except the trifle, the oatcakes and cheese. But the company is always good. There will be plenty of wine, some whisky, excellent conversation, poetry, a few short and entertaining speeches, lots of toasts and some songs.

I have, occasionally, been invited to speak at other, more formal Burns Suppers - on one memorable occasion I had to give the 'Immortal Memory' which is the big speech of the evening. I had a tooth abscess and was on those antibiotics where they warn you not to touch a single drop of alcohol because it will have disastrous effects. (This is true, by the way. The effects are, I'm told, instantly emetic!) So I had to do it completely sober and toast Rab in mineral water.  The poet would have sympathised, both with the toothache and the abstinence.

Not quite how I first saw the cottage.

I've loved his poetry, but most particularly his songs, ever since we first moved to Ayrshire when I was twelve. I used to walk to Burns' Cottage in Alloway - still very atmospheric back then - and spend an hour or two daydreaming. The poems so precisely and heart-rendingly reflect the countryside around here. The poet himself seemed such a mass of contradictions - and the more I researched his life and work, the more intriguing those contradictions became.


My play about Robert Burns on Kindle.
I wrote a full length radio play for BBC R4 all about the writing of Tam O' Shanter, and then a stage play for Glasgow's Oran Mor, called Burns on the Solway.  As the playwright, I found the whole production more illuminating than I had believed possible - when a production goes well, and this one did, it somehow intensifies and enhances the idea you first had. And now, I seem to be writing a novel, about which I can't say any more than that it has been simmering inside me for a very long time. Perhaps since I was twelve and daydreaming in the old cottage. But even while I was writing The Physic Garden, William Lang, in that book, insisted on talking to me about Burns - who would have been a much more recent memory for my narrator. (Burns died in July 1796)


Donald Pirie and Claire Waugh, a compelling Robert and Jean.
First, William says 'I often think Mr Burns and myself might have had a great deal in common if we had had the good fortune to meet and talk about our respective experiences. Burns wrote convincingly and lovingly about the flowers of his native heath. I cannot even now read the lines, oft hae I rov'd by bonny Doon, to see the rose and woodbine twine; and ilka bird sang o' its luve, and fondly sae did I o' mine, without it bringing a lump to my throat, which is a very daft notion after all this time.'

And later, he quotes again: 'The tocher’s the jewel, as the poet Burns wrote. And so many men are but knotless threids who will slide away from lassies at time of need.'

Poets, male and female, don't always practise what they preach, and Burns was very far from being the saint depicted in so many fulsome Burns' Supper speeches. He was, in fact, capable of appalling behaviour, even by the different standards of his day. But any eighteenth century man who can write a song like The Tocher's the Jewel, has got to be applauded. Here's the original - followed by a loose translation for anyone who needs it.

O meikle thinks my Luve o' my beauty,
And meikle thinks my Luve o' my kin;
But little thinks my Luve, I ken brawlie,
My tocher's the jewel has charms for him.
It's a' for the apple he'll nourish the tree;
It's a' for the hinny he'll cherish the bee;
My laddie's sae meikle in love wi' the siller,
He canna hae luve to spare for me.

Your proffer o' luve's an airle-penny,
My tocher's the bargain ye wad buy;
But an ye be crafty, I am cunnin,
Sae ye wi' anither your fortune maun try.
Ye're like to the timmer o' yon rotten wood,
Ye're like to the bark o' yon rotten tree,
Ye'll slip frae me like a knotless threid,
And ye'll crack your credit wi' mae nor me.

Oh much thinks my love of my beauty,
And much thinks my love of my kin
But little thinks my love, I know fine,
My dowry's the jewel has charms for him.
It's all for the apple he'll nourish the tree;
It's all for the honey he'll cherish the bee
My laddie's so much in love with the silver (money)
He has no love to spare for me.

Your offer of love is an arles penny (this was money paid to seal a deal, usually between servant and master!)
My dowry's the bargain you would buy
But if you're crafty, I'll be cunning,
So you with another your fortune may try.
You're like to the timber of yon rotten wood,
You're like to the bark of yon rotten tree,
You'll slip from me like a knotless thread
And you'll  spend all your credit with more than me.

Not the best translation in the world, mostly because some of these words and phrases are virtually untranslatable - and still current, here in Ayrshire. Only a little while ago, I heard somebody describing a man sadly but accurately as a knotless threid. But it's this poem, among many other wonderful poems and songs, with its powerful and angry evocation of the voice of the young woman, that pays for all. For me, anyway.

I'll finish with another image from the play, courtesy of Leslie Black who took a series of stunning production photos.



Happy Birthday, Rab, when it comes.