James Robertson (born 1958) is a Scottish writer who is the author of several novels, short stories and poetry collections. [1] [2] Robertson was born in Sevenoaks, England but grew up in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire. He has published seven novels: The Fanatic , Joseph Knight , The Testament of Gideon Mack , And the Land Lay Still , The Professor of Truth, and To Be Continued… and News of the Dead. The Testament of Gideon Mack was long-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.
Robertson also runs an independent publishing company called Kettillonia, and is a co-founder (with Matthew Fitt and Susan Rennie) and general editor of the Scots language imprint Itchy Coo (produced by Black & White Publishing), which produces books in Scots for children and young people.
Robertson was born in Sevenoaks in Kent in 1958. [1] [2] At 6 years old, he moved with his family to Bridge of Allan in Scotland after his father took a job at a brickmaking company. [1]
Educated at Glenalmond College and Edinburgh University, Robertson attained a PhD in history at Edinburgh on the novels of Walter Scott. [2] He also spent an exchange year at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Robertson worked in a variety of jobs after leaving university, mainly in the book trade. He was a publisher's sales rep and later worked for Waterstone's Booksellers, first as a bookseller in Edinburgh and later as assistant manager of the Glasgow branch.
Robertson became a full-time author in the early 1990s. From 1993 to 1995 he was the first writer in residence at Hugh MacDiarmid's house outside Biggar, Lanarkshire. Robertson had already been heavily influenced by MacDiarmid and MacDiarmid's Scots language poetry prior to this appointment. His early short stories and first novel used contemporary and historical life in Edinburgh as a key theme, drawing on his experience of living there intermittently during his PhD and during the later 1990s before moving to Fife, and subsequently Angus. Each of his three novels has been influenced to a degree by where he was living when he wrote them. Joseph Knight is based on the true story of a slave brought from the Caribbean to Scotland, and the novel revolves primarily around the cities of Dundee, near where Robertson was then living, and Edinburgh. The Testament of Gideon Mack, meanwhile, is set in a fictitious rural village that resembles the villages of eastern Scotland bordering the Highlands between Dundee and Aberdeen where Robertson currently lives. His novels, therefore, feature the Scottish urban and rural landscape as prevalently as Scottish history between the 17th and 20th centuries.[ citation needed ]
While Robertson's first two novels featured the Scottish past (The Fanatic merged a story of contemporary Scotland in the months surrounding the 1997 election with a story of Scotland in the 17th century, while Joseph Knight was purely historical) he is not a historical novelist, and Gideon Mack was set in Scotland between the 1950s and the present day.[ citation needed ]
In November 2004 Robertson was the first, and to date, only writer-in-residence at the newly opened Scottish Parliament building. The appointment was for three days only and was negotiated by Scottish Book Trust with the Parliament. On each day Robertson delivered a 'masterclass' on different aspects of the relationship between Scottish literature and politics. [3] These later became three essays which were published, along with eleven sonnets reflecting his experience of the new building, in Voyage of Intent: Sonnets and Essays from the Scottish Parliament (Luath/Scottish Book Trust, 2005).[ citation needed ]
The other side of Robertson's career since circa 2000 has been Itchy Coo, a publisher of children's books in the Scots language. [4] Initially funded by the Scottish Arts Council, Itchy Coo has proved to be a popular enterprise. [5] [6] Robertson's interest in and use of Scots also features heavily in his poetry and prose, and notably in his first two novels, which blend modern English with Scots. Katie’s Moose won the early years category in the Royal Mail Awards for Scottish Children's Books 2007. [7]
In 2010 he became the first writer-in-residence at Edinburgh Napier University. [8]
In 2011 Robertson contributed a short story "The Quaking of the Aspen" to an anthology supporting The Woodland Trust. The anthology, Why Willows Weep, has so far helped The Woodland Trust plant approximately 50,000 trees, and is to be re-released in paperback format in 2016.
Robertson's 365 Stories was published in 2014- a collection of stories that are each 365 words in length, written over the course of a year. [9]
Robertson has a wife, Marianne. [1]
In 2010, Robertson was reported as living in Newtyle, a village that is approximately 10 miles north of Dundee. [1] Together, with his wife, they were living in a converted villa that was once a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland. [1]
He has stated that the Complete Poems of Hugh MacDiarmid changed his life. [2] He has also cited Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Don DeLillo, Raymond Carver, Flann O’Brien and Flannery O’Connor as important literary influences. [2]
His novel The Testament of Gideon Mack was longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize . [2]
Robertson was awarded an honorary degree by The Open University at the degree ceremony in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh on 21 June 2014. [10]
In October 2020, he won the Janet Paisley Services to Scots Award in the Scots Language Awards. [11] [12]
In 2022 he won the Walter Scott Prize for News of the Dead. [13] [14]
In Scots unless indicated.
Scots is an Anglic language variety in the West Germanic language family, spoken in Scotland and parts of Ulster in the north of Ireland. Most commonly spoken in the Scottish Lowlands, Northern Isles, and northern Ulster, it is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Goidelic Celtic language that was historically restricted to most of the Scottish Highlands, the Hebrides, and Galloway after the sixteenth century; or Broad Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Standard English. Modern Scots is a sister language of Modern English, as the two diverged independently from the same source: Early Middle English (1150–1350).
The Scottish Renaissance was a mainly literary movement of the early to mid-20th century that can be seen as the Scottish version of modernism. It is sometimes referred to as the Scottish literary renaissance, although its influence went beyond literature into music, visual arts, and politics. The writers and artists of the Scottish Renaissance displayed a profound interest in both modern philosophy and technology, as well as incorporating folk influences, and a strong concern for the fate of Scotland's declining languages.
Sydney Goodsir Smith was a New Zealand-born Scottish poet, artist, dramatist and novelist. He wrote poetry in literary Scots, sometimes referred to as Lallans, and was a major figure of the Scottish Renaissance.
Matthew Fitt is a Scots poet and novelist. He was writer-in-residence at Greater Pollok in Glasgow, then National Scots Language Development Officer. He has translated several literary works into Scots.
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Professor Christopher Harvie is a Scottish historian and a Scottish National Party (SNP) politician. He was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Mid Scotland and Fife from 2007 to 2011. Before his election, he was Professor of British and Irish Studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany.
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The Testament of Gideon Mack is a novel written by the Scottish author James Robertson, first published in 2006. It pays conscious homage to ideas and themes originally explored with powerful effect in the novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) by the Scottish novelist, essayist and poet James Hogg. Set in present day Scotland, Robertson's story of a contemporary minister of the Church of Scotland, Gideon Mack, who essentially doubts the existence of God, and thus his entire vocation, involves a wide variety of themes including questions of philosophy, tragedy, and the nature of father and son relationships. It was long-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.
Sheena Blackhall is a Scottish poet, novelist, short story writer, illustrator, traditional story teller and singer. Author of over 180 poetry pamphlets, 15 short story collections, 4 novels and 2 televised plays for children, The Nicht Bus and The Broken Hert. Along with Les Wheeler, she co-edits the Doric resource Elphinstone Kist, and has worked on the Aberdeen Reading Bus, as a storyteller and writer, also sitting on the editorial board for their children's publications in Doric, promoting Scots culture and language in the North East. In 2018 Aberdeen University awarded her the degree of Master of the University. In 2021 she was appointed SPL’s poetry ambassador for the Scots language.
Modern Scots comprises the varieties of Scots traditionally spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster, from 1700.
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The Fanatic is a novel written by the Scottish author James Robertson, first published in 2000.
Scots-language literature is literature, including poetry, prose and drama, written in the Scots language in its many forms and derivatives. Middle Scots became the dominant language of Scotland in the late Middle Ages. The first surviving major text in Scots literature is John Barbour's Brus (1375). Some ballads may date back to the thirteenth century, but were not recorded until the eighteenth century. In the early fifteenth century Scots historical works included Andrew of Wyntoun's verse Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland and Blind Harry's The Wallace. Much Middle Scots literature was produced by makars, poets with links to the royal court, which included James I, who wrote the extended poem The Kingis Quair. Writers such as William Dunbar, Robert Henryson, Walter Kennedy and Gavin Douglas have been seen as creating a golden age in Scottish poetry. In the late fifteenth century, Scots prose also began to develop as a genre. The first complete surviving work is John Ireland's The Meroure of Wyssdome (1490). There were also prose translations of French books of chivalry that survive from the 1450s. The landmark work in the reign of James IV was Gavin Douglas's version of Virgil's Aeneid.
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