I'm now looking forward to the feature on BBC Radio 4's Excess Baggage this Saturday at 10am when John McCarthy will be in conversation with contributors Andrew Greig and Sara Maitland. Local media are also making something of it here and there's a lovely review from Cameron McNeish here which also appears in TGO magazine.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
'A Wilder Vein' is launched
I'm now looking forward to the feature on BBC Radio 4's Excess Baggage this Saturday at 10am when John McCarthy will be in conversation with contributors Andrew Greig and Sara Maitland. Local media are also making something of it here and there's a lovely review from Cameron McNeish here which also appears in TGO magazine.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Making a new radio play
'The Three Knots' is the realisation of an idea seeded at least three years ago when, while looking through back copies of the Scots magazine in the National Library of Scotland for something else, I stumbled upon an engraving of a remarkable vessel arriving on Loch Sunart in the West Highlands in 1846. It remained anchored there for ten years, and played a highly significant role in the spiritual and political life of the local community. I was intrigued. I have written about how it captivated me before, here. I walked the hills there, and started to inhabit the place with my imagined characters, until they grew, gathered to themselves relationships, conflicts, mythical associations, and so shaped a story.
Hear it as an afternoon play on Radio Four at 2.15 on December 22nd.
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Searching Glance comes out in paperback

Delighted that my short story collection, The Searching Glance is issued in a new paperback edition from Salt Publishing on 15th November, and available immediately direct from their website, at the great price of £7.99.
Labels:
Salt Publishing,
short story,
The Searching Glance
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Reading by local authors at the Drovers' Tryst Walking Festival, Crieff, October 10th

I'm also running a 'walking and writing' workshop earlier that day in the beautiful setting of Innerpeffray Library.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Fellow of Winnie-the-Pooh
Labels:
A A Milne,
Royal Literary Fund,
Stirling University
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Friday, August 07, 2009
Francis Drake's 'Pirate'
Here's my very simple contribution to Joanne Kaar's fleet of paper boats, but I had a lot of fun doing it and dug into some family history that I find quite inspiring (see below). My boat is made from paper that has on one side a chart of the north coast of Scotland of 1846 and on the other side a 19th century map of the Braunton area - each end of the journey the Pirate must have taken from Stromness to Braunton.





‘Pirate’ believed to be by J H Harrison, quayside painter, from the book: Braunton – Home of the Last Sailing Coasters by Robert D’Arcy Andrew
‘Pirate’ was a ketch built in Stromness, Orkney in 1888 by G & P Copeland. In the same year she transferred ownership to Robert and Francis Drake who ran the last sailing coasters, delivering coal, slate, etc around the British coasts from Braunton, North Devon. Sadly she foundered off Lavernock Point after a collision with SS Druidstone in 1913 on passage between Cardiff and Bideford, carrying coal.
My mother’s mother was a Drake from Braunton. Every Drake generation had its ‘Francis’, although my great Uncle Frank in Sidmouth, merchant seaman, was last of the line. We like to say that we are descendants from that original ‘Pirate’ of Elizabeth I (although I find it best to keep quiet about this ancestry in some parts of the world).
‘Pirate’ was a ketch built in Stromness, Orkney in 1888 by G & P Copeland. In the same year she transferred ownership to Robert and Francis Drake who ran the last sailing coasters, delivering coal, slate, etc around the British coasts from Braunton, North Devon. Sadly she foundered off Lavernock Point after a collision with SS Druidstone in 1913 on passage between Cardiff and Bideford, carrying coal.My mother’s mother was a Drake from Braunton. Every Drake generation had its ‘Francis’, although my great Uncle Frank in Sidmouth, merchant seaman, was last of the line. We like to say that we are descendants from that original ‘Pirate’ of Elizabeth I (although I find it best to keep quiet about this ancestry in some parts of the world).
Labels:
Caithness,
Devon,
Francis Drake,
Joanne Kaar,
Orkney,
Pirate
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