Duncan McLean (born October 3, 1964) is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright, and editor.
Duncan McLean (born October 3, 1964) is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright, and editor.
Duncan McLean was born on October 3, 1964 in Fraserburgh [1] [2] and has lived in Orkney since 1992. While based in Edinburgh in the 1980s, he started writing songs, stand-up routines, and plays for the Merry Mac Fun Co, [1] a street theatre and comedy act with agitprop tendencies. The Merry Macs won various awards, and were twice nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. [3]
In the 1990s, McLean was part of a loose grouping of writers centred on Edinburgh whose characters were mainly poor, working class and young, whose themes were drugs, drink, dance music, violence, and alienation, and who took their inspiration variously from the Glaswegian writers of the previous generation, notably James Kelman, and from overseas writers like Richard Brautigan [4] and Knut Hamsun. [5] Among the so-called "Beats of Edinburgh", besides McLean, were Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, Laura Hird and Gordon Legge, along with the publisher Kevin Williamson. [6]
In December 1990, with the writer James Meek, McLean set up and ran the Clocktower Press, a small but influential publishing house, which helped bring a new generation of Scottish writers to wider attention. McLean, Meek and the artist Eddie Farrell invested £50 each to print the first booklet, Safe/Lurch, with both writers contributing a story and Farrell illustrating the cover. [7] After the first three booklets, Meek moved to Kiev and McLean went on to publish seven more, including the first separately-published extracts of what would later become Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting . [8] The fifth of the Clocktower series, it was printed in April 1992 in an edition of 300 under the title Past Tense: four stories from a novel. [7] [9]
In 1992, McLean published his first book, a collection of short stories called Bucket of Tongues , [1] and since then has published several more books, including the acclaimed coming-of-age novel Blackden and a collection of plays, entitled Plays:One. In 1995, he published the novel Bunker Man and in 1998 his travelogue Lone Star Swing was published, which saw McLean tracing the roots of country music precursor Bob Wills.
In recent years, he has divided his time between writing, music, and running an off-license. In 2006, he won the prestigious trade award, UK Restaurant Wine Supplier of the Year, and ten years later, a major New Zealand Wine merchant award. In 2007, he founded the annual Orkney Wine Festival, the only event of its kind in Scotland. [10] He writes a monthly column, 'Northabout', for The Wine Merchant magazine.
A new series of theatre pieces began with a translation of Aalst , a Belgian play by Pol Heyvaert, which toured the UK and Australia for the National Theatre of Scotland in 2007. [11] McLean leads a western swing band called the Lone Star Swing band, which in 2009 and 2010 toured Scotland and Ireland in a new McLean play, 'Long Gone Lonesome.' With a slightly different cast, the play toured five US states in 2012. Telling the story of the reclusive Shetland musician Thomas Fraser, the play was produced by the National Theatre of Scotland, and directed by Vicky Featherstone. 'Long Gone Lonesome' was featured in the BBC TV documentary, 'National Theatre of Scotland: A Dramatic Decade' broadcast in September 2016. [12]
The 2015 St Magnus Festival staged a new play, 'Telling the Truth Beautifully: The Trial of James Kirkness' - a story of gin smuggling and political change in 19th century Kirkwall. [13]
In November 2015, McLean launched a new lo-fi imprint, the Abersee Press, with a booklet of contemporary Orkney-language writing by eight poets and story writers, including Harry Giles and Alison Miller. Abersee's professed goal is to kick-start a new wave of north-isles writing, as the Clocktower Press did for Edinburgh in the 1990s. A second anthology was published in May 2017; titled Speak For Yourself, it featured three New Zealand writers - CK Stead, Hera Lindsay Bird and Craig Marriner - as well as three Orkney writers. An introduction by McLean speaks of the legacy of pioneering New Zealand writer Frank Sargeson and his role as an inspiration for writers from outlying communities. He has also written about Sargeson for the London Review of Books.
In 2017 and 2018, three further Abersee Press publications appeared, 'Swiet Haar,' an anthology of three Orcadian and three Shetland writers, including Amy Liptrot and Christine de Luca, 'Dark Island,' a booklet of short stories by McLean, and 'Turangawaewae, Beuy' a second collection of writing by Orcadians and New Zealanders including Paula Morris and Steve Braunias. Further booklets have followed.
In 2020 and 2021, McLean co-edited (with Brian Hamill) two books in Glasgow publisher The Common Breath's short-lived Classics series. His introductions shed new light on significant but forgotten writers from literary history.
He writes a weekly column for The Orcadian newspaper.
Orkney, also known as the Orkney Islands or, the often deprecated, Orkneys, is an archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. Part of the Northern Isles along with Shetland, Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north of Caithness and has about 70 islands, of which 20 are inhabited. The largest island, the Mainland, has an area of 523 square kilometres (202 sq mi), making it the sixth-largest Scottish island and the tenth-largest island in the British Isles. Orkney's largest settlement, and also its administrative centre, is Kirkwall.
The Orkneyinga saga is a narrative of the history of the Orkney and Shetland islands and their relationship with other local polities, particularly Norway and Scotland. The saga has "no parallel in the social and literary record of Scotland" and is "the only medieval chronicle to have Orkney as the central place of action". The main focus of the work is the line of jarls who ruled the Earldom of Orkney, which constituted the Norðreyjar or Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland and there are frequent references to both archipelagoes throughout.
Trainspotting is the first novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, first published in 1993. It takes the form of a collection of short stories, written in either Scots, Scottish English or British English, revolving around various residents of Leith, Edinburgh, who either use heroin, are friends of the core group of heroin users, or engage in destructive activities that are effectively addictions. The novel is set in the late 1980s and has been described by The Sunday Times as "the voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent". The title is an ironic reference to the characters’ frequenting of the disused Leith Central railway station.
Scottish literature is literature written in Scotland or by Scottish writers. It includes works in English, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Brythonic, French, Latin, Norn or other languages written within the modern boundaries of Scotland.
Edwin Muir CBE was a Scottish poet, novelist and translator. Born on a farm in Deerness, a parish of Orkney, Scotland, he is remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry written in plain language and with few stylistic preoccupations.
George Mackay Brown was a Scottish poet, author and dramatist with a distinctly Orcadian character. He is widely regarded as one of the great Scottish poets of the 20th century.
Thorfinn Torf-Einarsson also known as Thorfinn Skull-splitter was a 10th-century Earl of Orkney. He appears in the Orkneyinga saga and briefly in St Olaf's Saga, as incorporated into the Heimskringla. These stories were first written down in Iceland in the early 13th century and much of the information they contain is "hard to corroborate".
Eric Robert Russell Linklater CBE was a Welsh-born Scottish poet, fiction writer, military historian, and travel writer. For The Wind on the Moon, a children's fantasy novel, he won the 1944 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association for the year's best children's book by a British subject.
The nuckelavee or nuckalavee is a horse-like demon from Orcadian folklore that combines equine and human elements. British folklorist Katharine Briggs called it "the nastiest" of all the demons of Scotland's Northern Isles. The nuckelavee's breath was thought to wilt crops and sicken livestock, and the creature was held responsible for droughts and epidemics on land despite being predominantly a sea-dweller.
Sigurd Hlodvirsson, popularly known as Sigurd the Stout from the Old Norse Sigurðr digri, was an Earl of Orkney. The main sources for his life are the Norse Sagas, which were first written down some two centuries or more after his death. These engaging stories must therefore be treated with caution rather than as reliable historical documents.
Kevin Williamson is a writer, publisher, and activist originally from Caithness. He is a Scottish socialist and republican and was an activist for the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). He was also the architect of their radical drug policy, which included the legalisation of cannabis and the provision under the National Health Service of free synthetic heroin to addicts under medical supervision to combat the problems of drugs in working class communities. He wrote a regular weekly column, "Rebel Ink", for the Scottish Socialist Voice.
Orcadians, also known as Orkneymen, are an ethnic group native to the Orkney Islands, who speak an Orcadian dialect of the Scots language, a West Germanic language, and share a common history, culture and ancestry. Speaking Norn, a native North Germanic language into the 19th or 20th century, Orcadians descend significantly from North Germanic peoples, with around a third of their ancestry derived from Scandinavia, including a majority of their patrilineal line. According to anthropological study, the Orcadian ethnic composition is similar to that of Icelandic people; a comparable islander ethnicity of North Germanic origin.
James Meek is a British novelist and journalist, author of The People's Act of Love. He was born in London, England, and grew up in Dundee, Scotland.
Craig Marriner is a novelist from Rotorua, New Zealand. He is best known for his award-winning first novel Stonedogs (2001).
Aalst is a play by the Belgian stage director Pol Heyvaert. Based on real-life events that took place in the town of Aalst in 1999, the play recounts the murder of two children by their parents. It was originally performed in 2005 by the Ghent-based theatre company Victoria. Since then, it has toured extensively in Europe and in Canada.
Events from the year 1991 in Scotland.
Sea Mither, or Mither of the Sea, is a mythical being of Orcadian folklore that lives in the sea during summer, when she confines the demonic nuckelavee to the ocean depths. Each spring she battles with her arch-enemy Teran, another spirit of Orcadian legend capable of causing severe winter storms, to gain control of the seas and the weather. Eventually Sea Mither overcomes Teran and sends him to the depths of the ocean, but the effort of keeping him confined there along with her other benevolent labours during the summer exhaust her, until in the autumn Teran takes advantage of her weakness to wrest control from her once again.
Bessie Skea or Bessie Grieve (1923–1996) was a Scottish writer of prose and poetry. Inspired by her native Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland, her reputation grew from her regular contributions to The Orcadian newspaper under the name Countrywoman, and she went on to publish a number of books. She wrote mainly about the natural world and island life.
Ruaraidh Murray is a Scottish actor, writer, and comedian.
The Orcadian Women's Suffrage Association was an organisation involved in campaigning for women’s suffrage, based in Orkney, Scotland.
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