Plot
Hugh Bawn was a Modernist hero. A dreamer, a Socialist, a man of the people, he led Scotland's building programme after the war. Now he lies on a bed on the eighteenth floor. The times have changed. His flats are coming down. The idealism he learned from his mother is gone. And even as his breath goes out he clings to the old ways. His final months are plagued by memory and loss, by a bitter sense of his family and his country, who could not live up to the houses he built for them.
Hugh's grandson, Jamie, comes home to watch over his dying mentor. The old man's final months bring Jamie to see what is best and worst in the past the haunts them all, and he sees the fears of his own life unravel in the land that bred him. He tells the story of his own family - a tale of pride and delusion, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of the old Left. It is a tale of dark hearts and modern houses, of three men in search for Utopia.
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses.
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (; Russian: Ива́н Серге́евич Турге́нев, IPA: [ɪˈvan sʲɪrˈɡʲe ɪvʲɪtɕ tʊrˈɡʲenʲɪf]; 9 November 1818 – 3 September 1883 was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West.
John Graham, 7th of Claverhouse, 1st Viscount Dundee was a Scottish soldier and nobleman, a Tory and an Episcopalian. He was responsible for policing southwest Scotland during and after the religious unrest and rebellion of the late 17th century, and went on to lead the Jacobite rising of 1689.
Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty is a historical novel by British novelist Charles Dickens. Barnaby Rudge was one of two novels that Dickens published in his short-lived (1840–1841) weekly serial Master Humphrey's Clock. Barnaby Rudge is largely set during the Gordon Riots of 1780.
The Secret of Roan Inish is a 1994 independent fantasy-adventure film written and directed by John Sayles. It is based on the 1957 novel Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry, by Rosalie K. Fry.
Oisín, Osian, Ossian, or anglicized as Osheen was regarded in legend as the greatest poet of Ireland, a warrior of the Fianna in the Ossianic or Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology. He is the demigod son of Fionn mac Cumhaill and of Sadhbh, and is the narrator of much of the cycle and composition of the poems are attributed to him.
Gerald Griffin was an Irish novelist, poet and playwright. His novel The Collegians was the basis of Dion Boucicault's play The Colleen Bawn. Feeling he was "wasting his time" writing fiction, he joined the Christian Brothers, a Catholic religious congregation founded by Edmund Ignatius Rice to teach the children of the poor.
Michel Faber is a Dutch-born writer of English-language fiction, including his 2002 novel The Crimson Petal and the White. His latest book is a novel for young adults, D: A Tale of Two Worlds, published in 2020. His next book, Listen, a non-fiction work about music, is due in 2023.
The Violent Bear It Away is a 1960 novel by American author Flannery O'Connor. It is the second and final novel that she published. The first chapter was originally published as the story "You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead" in the journal New World Writing. The novel tells the story of Francis Marion Tarwater, a fourteen-year-old boy who is trying to escape the destiny his uncle has prescribed for him: the life of a prophet. Like most of O'Connor's stories, the novel is filled with Catholic themes and dark images, making it a classic example of Southern Gothic literature.
Redgauntlet (1824) is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, one of the Waverley novels, set primarily in Dumfriesshire, southwest Scotland, in 1765, and described by Magnus Magnusson as "in a sense, the most autobiographical of Scott's novels." It describes a plot to start a fictional third Jacobite Rebellion, and includes "Wandering Willie's Tale", a famous short story which frequently appears in anthologies.
Outlander is a historical fantasy novel by Diana Gabaldon first published in 1991. Initially set around the time of the Second World War, it focuses on nurse Claire Beauchamp, who travels through time to 18th-century Scotland, where she finds adventure and romance with the dashing Jamie Fraser. It is the first novel in the Outlander series, with ten books planned. The television adaptation of the series premiered on Starz in the US on August 9, 2014.
Maurice Walsh was an Irish novelist, now best known for his short story "The Quiet Man", later made into the Oscar-winning film The Quiet Man, directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. He was one of Ireland's best-selling authors in the 1930s.
Come Rack! Come Rope! is a historical novel by the English priest and writer Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914), a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism. Set in Derbyshire at the time of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics, when being or harbouring a priest was considered treason and was punishable with death, it tells the story of two young lovers who give up their chance of happiness together, choosing instead to face imprisonment and martyrdom, so that God's will may be done.
"Polly Vaughn" is an Irish folk-song.
A Thread of Scarlet is a 1959 novel by Scottish writer Bruce Marshall.
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole is a fantasy novel by American writer Stephen King. As part of The Dark Tower series, it is the eighth novel, but it is set chronologically between volumes four and five. First mentioned by King in 2009, after the controversial ending of the seventh novel in 2004, the book was officially announced on King's official website on March 10, 2011.
William, Earl of Glenallan, otherwise Lord Glenallan, is a character in Sir Walter Scott's 1816 novel The Antiquary, a Scottish aristocrat whose life has been ruined by the suicide of his wife and the belief that he has unwittingly committed incest. His story forms the melodramatic Gothic strand in an otherwise largely realistic comic novel.
Revival is a novel by American writer Stephen King, published on November 11, 2014 by Scribner.
The Poor Clare is a short story by English Victorian writer Elizabeth Gaskell. First serialised in three installments in 1856 Charles Dickens' popular magazine Household Words, The Poor Clare is a gothic ghost story about a young woman unwittingly cursed by her own grandmother.
Rockets Galore is a 1957 comedy novel by the British writer Compton Mackenzie. It is the sequel to his 1947 novel Whisky Galore, and sees the inhabitants of a remote Scottish island resist a government plan to build a missile base on their home. The author refers to it, in a Author's Note, as a 'bitter farce', as opposed to a 'genial farce' that Whisky Galore was.
