Recommended Books & Films

Books

Biography -- The Life of Robert Burns, by Catherine Carswell (Canongate Classics, 1998), is the groundbreaking look at the life of Scotland's national poet first published in the 1930s. So frank was Carswell's assessment -- particularly regarding the poet's romantic and sexual liaisons -- that Burns Clubs took offense. But it is such honesty that makes her version indispensable. Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography, by Claire Harman (Harper Collins, 2005), is the latest and eminently readable tome on the frail Edinburgh-born author and adventurer, who was arguably Scotland's greatest writer.

Fiction -- Set in 18th-century Edinburgh, Sir Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian (Penguin Classics) was declared a masterpiece in 1818, and it remains his seminal piece of fiction, influencing the later works of authors such as Balzac, Hawthorne, and Dickens. Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson (Penguin Classics), follows the adventures of young David Balfour after he is spirited out of Edinburgh and ends up on the wrong side of the law in the Western Highlands. It is as entertaining today as it was upon publication in 1886.

First published in 1981, Lanark: A Life in Four Books by Alasdair Gray (Canongate, 2002) is perhaps the most important novel to be published in Scotland in the last century. Despite some fantastical detours, it gets to the core of urban Scotland.

Black & Blue by Ian Rankin (St. Martin's Press, 1999) is one of several crime novels that turn on the life of Rankin's troubled antihero Inspector Rebus. In this volume, Rebus moves back and forth between his home in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Another master of the modern crime genre is Glasgow's Denise Mina, who has published Garnethill and Exile.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark and Trainspotting by Irving Welsh are both better known for their cinematic adaptations, but in their own very different ways, they manage to capture elements of Edinburgh life.

History -- Although histories of Britain generally neglect Scotland, good recently published historical overviews of Scotland include The Scottish Nation: 1700-2000 by academic Tom Devine (Penguin, 2001). Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland, by Neal Ascherson (Hill & Wang, 2003), is a quest for the national character of Scotland, although the Edinburgh-born author and veteran foreign correspondent finds it a tad hard to pin down. American historian Arthur Herman's The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scot's Invention of the Modern World (Crown, 2001) offers a clear and extremely readable explanation of the impact that Scottish thinkers -- predominantly based in Edinburgh and Glasgow -- have had on the world and the United States in particular.

Films

My Name is Joe (1998) paints a grim if accurate picture of contemporary Glaswegians struggling with their addictions and inner demons, although the film's not lacking humor or romance.

Better known is Trainspotting (1996), which stars Ewan McGregor in a gritty and often hilarious account of a group of unrepentant drug-addled characters in Edinburgh. Finally, Gregory's Girl (1981) offers a simple story of an awkward high school student (John Gordon-Sinclair) in a modern (and hideous) 1960s "New Town" development near Glasgow. Quirky but loveable.