It was recorded on location at Perthshire’s charming Library of Innerpeffray at the beginning of November, and I’m only now shuffling the paperwork around, deciding what to keep, what to discard, where to file it. But it’s interesting to look over the lengthy process of proposal and development in the scraps of paper, the notebooks, the handwritten and successive typed manuscripts, with Director Eilidh McCreadie’s helpful notes, which finally led to the official script sent out to all involved by the BBC.
I’ve been enchanted with Innerpeffray for a long time, Scotland’s first public lending library set on a bend of the river Earn. Founded in 1680, it epitomises Scotland’s Enlightenment, and a belief in the power of books to civilise and democratise, to illuminate the spirit, after a period of terrible violence. It proved ‘the urge for education amongst the lowliest of country folk’ and is more recently a magnet for literary tourists rather than a lending library. I’d wanted to write something set there for a long time, though I hadn’t thought of it being a radio play.
The play has happened to coincide with a time of great concern for access to libraries here, and so another contemporary chime was set up. Meanwhile in Kenya, efforts are being made to broaden access to books through the mobile libraries (including bicycle and camel-driven) of the Kenya National Libraries Service. Especially in the conflict-ridden Rift Valley, some libraries are being cultivated as places which can provide a civilised and tolerant meeting place for people on opposing sides in the 2008 troubles.
Three wonderful books in their turn helped me with this project – Arthur Herman’s ‘The Scottish Enlightenment’; ‘First Light’, a gorgeous limited edition history of Innerpeffray by George Chamier; and Alberto Manguel’s ‘The Library of Night’. I’ll leave the last word with him:
‘As repositories of history or sources for the future, as guides or manuals for difficult times, as symbols of authority past and present, the books in a library stand for more than their collective contents…’


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