Brought to book: Burns missing from list of best Scottish writing

Published on Sunday 27 February 2005 00:13

FROM Whisky Galore to The Wind in the Willows, it is the ultimate literary search: a quest to find the best Scottish book of all time that organisers say will take six months and will include every library and bookshop in the country.

This Thursday, to coincide with World Book Day, culture minister Patricia Ferguson will begin the hunt. At a glittering ceremony, the minister will unveil a guide compiled with the Scottish Book Trust and the List magazine to the 100 Best Scottish Books of All Time and invite the public to start voting for their favourite work from the list.

But the campaign has run into controversy just days before it has begun after a draft list obtained by Scotland On Sunday shows a number of peculiar omissions and inclusions.

Classic Scottish novels such as Treasure Island, Peter Pan, Kidnapped, Waverley and Ivanhoe have all been left out.

But books with only a tenuous link to Scotland such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Ian Fleming’s From Russia with Love and George Orwell’s 1984 have all been included.

Although it is to still to be finalised, consternation has been caused with the omission of internationally acclaimed Scottish authors Robbie Burns, Liz Lochhead and James Clerk Maxwell.

One critic said that if Orwell’s 1984 is included because it was written on the isle of Jura then by that reckoning Robert Louis Stevenson was Samoan.

In defence, the judges say that Heart of Darkness was published in Scotland while Ian Fleming made references to Bond’s Scottish lineage.

But last night unrest was growing in Scotland’s literary community as writers questioned the merits of such a project. One writer described the project as "invalid" while another said there was a "suspiciously high number" of contemporary writers on the list.

The author, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "How can you look for the greatest Scottish book of all time and exclude Burns?"

Organisers say that, when finished, the guide to the 100 books will be available in every bookshop and library in the country. Next to every book a famous author has written why he or she believes that book should be nominated. Readers are being invited to vote on what is their favourite novel from the shortlist. Votes will be counted and the winner will be announced at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August.

But any reader looking for a Harry Potter novel other than The Philosophers Stone or a Rebus book other than Black and Blue will be disappointed as there is a strict rule of only one book per author.

One source said: "A third of the list are books published since 1990. Is that an accurate reflection of Scottish literary history or a sign of short memories?

"Lists like these are always silly - but this one’s sillier than most. To be at all meaningful, there should be no restriction on number of books by a single author; there should be no bar on poetry or any other genre; there should be a large number of people doing the selecting."

The campaign is the brainchild of Willy Maley, of the department of English Literature at Glasgow University, and is supported by The Scottish Book Trust with sponsorship from Orange.

According to the judges the books that were eligible to come into the list were continuous pieces of prose. That meant there is no room for plays, short stories and poetry. But within that the genres covered are as wide as romantic fiction, crime fiction, adventure, philosophy, novels and children’s writing. The criteria for what constitutes "Scottish" appears to be broad, to say the least.

Marc Lambert, chief executive of the Scottish Book Trust, said: "This is not an exercise to try and create a canon. Whenever you produce a list it is a basis for discussion. That is what we want to stimulate, there is nothing worse if people say, ‘well that is exactly what we expected’.

"Scottish literature is so rich and there is so much depth and breadth that we found it too hard to draw up just a top 100 list so we decided to include a second list of 100 of books that might have made it into the top 100.

"We have weighted it particularly in the top 100 to appeal to the modern reader. There are many, many Scottish writers - for example Naomi Mitchison, Nancy Brysson Morrison and James Kennaway - who are world class writers but who is reading them today? No one, they have practically dropped off the radar so part of this exercise is to remind people and re-focus attention on the glory of Scottish literature."

But yesterday some of the country’s leading writers said that even the second shortlist is bizarre.

One said: "The idea that they don’t have room for poetry but do have room for non-Scottish books and books by writers who have published only a limited amount means I for one would consider the list to have very limited validity."

Scotland on Sunday’s literary editor Andrew Crumey, whose Music, in a Foreign Language won the Saltire First Book Award and makes it on to the secondary, list said it was very difficult to define a Scottish book.

Crumey said: "Lists like these are always contentious. How, for example, do you define a ‘Scottish’ book? Writers like George Orwell or Herman Melville have an honorary claim to Scottishness - so do you include 1984 and Moby Dick? For non-fiction my vote goes to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, first printed in Edinburgh in 1768. Top novel surely has to come from Scott or Stevenson, but I’d make a plea for Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus.

"For drama it really has to be the ‘Scottish play’, Macbeth - or is that not Scottish?"

Janice Galloway, whose novel The Trick is To Keep Breathing was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, said the list made her despair.

Galloway said: "Lists like this are so ineffably stupid, competitive and whimsical they make me despair. They have nothing whatever to do with literature."