And the Land Lay Still

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Written by Scottish author Martin MacInnes, In Ascension is a literary sci-fi epic that has the potential to change the way you think and feel about the world around you, about what we are, where we came from, and where we might go. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. JAMES Robertson's fascinating and multi stranded novel is proving a huge hit with Scottish book groups - and Strathblane is no exception. The definition of a cult classic, Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, is one of the most well-known and revered Scottish novels. Following the turbulent lives of a group of lads who both do terrible things and experience terrible things, Trainspotting is a masterpiece of authentic writing and paints a tragic portrait of its characters’ lives. Managing such worries took up a good deal of the Commission’s time. The minutes of a November 1972 meeting show the degree to which devising a coherent plan to recognise (and neuter) ‘national feeling’ involved extensive debate over how to accommodate cultural difference within the British national story:

Writing in The Guardian, the writer Irvine Welsh said of the "highly ambitious" book that it “represents nothing less than a landmark for the novel in Scotland, and underlines the author's position as one of Britain's best contemporary novelists”. [7] Scotland First Minister Alex Salmond selected the novel as his book of the year for 2010, telling the Scotland on Sunday that it was “outstanding”, “important”, and the author’s finest work. [8]

Trust the story . … the storyteller may dissemble and deceive, the story can’t; the story can only ever be itself.’ We begin at a Christmas market in Edinburgh, where protagonist Eric is suddenly and inexplicably drawn away from his fiancee by the allure of a woman named Delia. Showing no regret for his actions, however uncharacteristic, Eric is taken in a taxi to a remote hotel in the Scottish highlands; a place that never sees any guests and the snow never stops falling. Robertson’s And the Land Lay Still is the most fully realised attempt to make a cohesive national story of the period and forces of devolution. Having been politically active in the 1980s, notably through the pro-devolution magazine Radical Scotland (1983–91) – thinly disguised in the novel as Root & Branch – Robertson naturally began with events and debates he had experienced first-hand. But on beginning to revisit this period he encountered a historical problem: Home> Fiction from Scotland> And the Land Lay Still And the Land Lay Still By (author) James Robertson

This being said, too fixed attention to the national story can obscure key aspects of devolution, which – as Robertson notes – has as much to do with Britishness as Scottishness. At our first workshop, Catriona Macdonald noted that: In a sense, Robertson says, "this novel is a riposte to that. What I'm trying to say is: 'Immerse yourself. A lot has gone on. The place has changed beyond recognition. We haven't had civil war or bloodbaths, thank God, but we have had change.'" I didn't set out deliberately to follow the Gothic tradition, but there's no question that some of that Hogg and Stevenson stuff does speak to me in a weird way. I am interested in how the past continues to influence the present and how the present changes the way we think about the past." The Royal Lyceum Theatre Company and the National Theatre of Scotland will present an online discussion inspired by James Robertson’s acclaimed novel And The Land Lay Still streaming online from Wednesday 5 May at 7.30pm until Friday 7 May 2021. The evening will feature extracts from a reading of playwright Peter Arnott’s stage adaptation of the novel, which is currently in development, presented by the National Theatre of Scotland. The novel’s narrative is shaped around the portfolio of the late photographer Angus Pendreich. His son Michael is involved in the establishment of a new exhibition of his renowned father’s work.

Literary Nationalism and its Discontents

What Leigh discovers in the vent takes her to the Mojave Desert, to a job working with a NASA-like space agency that is using a newly-discovered form of fuel to send people to the furthest reaches of our solar system and beyond.

Pat: This is a powerful story of Scotland and of the growth of Scottish Nationalism from the 1950s to the present day, evoking strong nostalgic memories of life during these times.Whether circular or not, we should notice that the culturalist narrative includes ample room for historical contingency and the unexpected twist. In a 2014 essay Craig observes that ‘in 1990 no political party in Scotland was in favour of the Parliament that actually came into existence in 1999’ ( Craig 2014, 1). 3 The majority report, we believe, has the effect of magnifying the extent of the social and cultural differences between Scotland, Wales and England. This is partly because of the way it handles in the historical section the concept of ‘nationhood’ – with Scotland and Wales thus appearing as separate nations with distinctive values and ways of life ‘struggling to be free’. In contrast there is no matching study of the more homogenous contemporary pattern of social and cultural values and behaviour which characterise all the different parts of the United Kingdom. ( Royal Commission 1973, II, vii) And the Land Lay Still is nothing less than the story of a nation. James Robertson's breathtaking novel is a portrait of modern Scotland as seen through the eyes of natives and immigrants, journalists and politicians, drop-outs and spooks, all trying to make their way through a country in the throes of great and rapid change. It is a moving, sweeping story of family, friendship, struggle and hope - epic in every sense. Craig’s foreword to the Determinations series he edited for Polygon: ‘the 1980s proved to be one of the most productive and creative decades in Scotland this century — as though the energy that had failed to be harnessed by the politicians flowed into other channels’. The first three books of the Determinations series were published in 1989, making the foreword evidence of the cultural phenomenon on which it claims to reflect. ( Thomson 2007) Winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year 2010, And The Land Lay Still is a panoramic exploration of late 20th Century Scotland through the eyes of James Robertson’s characters; natives, immigrants, journalists and politicians, dropouts and spooks making their way in a changing country.

Scottish International promoted itself as a magazine for the development of a radical critique of culture and society, experiment being very much at the heart of it. Just as Bob Tait was giving up the magazine he wrote that ‘basically I’ve seen this magazine as a kind of exploration vehicle, getting as far as possible into the depths, some of them murky, of the society and culture within viewing range.’ [… ] In tracing these magazines and debates, we can discern a fierce reaction to insularity at the start of the 1960s, but as we move through to Scottish International there’s still a very sceptical vision of cultural nationalism and the pitfalls of being too entrenched within certain forms of national identity. There’s a passionate focus on Scotland but also a deep suspicion of complacent ways of thinking about identity. ( Recording, Workshop 1) Robertson, James (5 August 2010), And the Land Lay Still (1sted.), London: Hamish Hamilton, ISBN 978-0-241-14356-8 If for Craig the ‘effective cause’ of devolution’s endorsement in 1997 was cultural revolution, there is little doubt that the proximate cause was electoral. This part of the story is well-trodden ground, and vividly told in Robertson’s novel: Winnie Ewing’s sensational victory for the SNP in the 1967 Hamilton by-election, and growing alarm within the Labour government at the threat posed by the nationalists, rising sharply after the discovery of North Sea Oil in 1970. Both to allay and defer these pressures, Harold Wilson announced his intention to appoint a Royal Commission on the Constitution in late 1968. In the White Paper which followed Kilbrandon in September 1974 the language of patrie, heritage and unity is likewise reserved for the defence of the UK state-nation. As the political space in which Robertson’s ‘modernised sense of Scottishness’ will gain institutional form begins to emerge, the prevailing vision of Britishnesss is jarringly antique. Instead of revising British identity alongside its constitutional framework, there is a strong sense of retrenchment as pro-devolution figures seek to dispel fears of diluting UK identity and power. With devolution only politically saleable in England as a buttressing of British unity, sovereignty and greatness – the soothing mantra ‘power devolved is power retained’ is voiced in an unbroken line from Enoch Powell to Tony Blair – the political dynamic which accompanied devolution has probably delayed the development of a post-imperial British culture. The winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award 2010, And the Land Lay Still is a masterful insight into Scotland's history in the twentieth century and a moving, beautifully written novel of intertwined stories.Don has two sons, the sweet-mannered CND activist and teacher Billy, and Charlie, a wayward gangster-soldier from bad-boy central casting, who is probably the novel's least convincing character. Charlie's relationship with feisty journalist Ellen, her brutal rape, pregnancy, and most of all, her and rebound partner Robin's reaction to all of this, didn't quite ring true for me. Perhaps paradoxically, I completely believed in the drunken spy, called James Bond. An embittered servant of the British state, Bond takes his revenge on his patronising superiors by bringing down a disgraced Tory MP, David Eddlestane, one of the party's last representatives in Scotland. Eddlestane is so well observed as to become an integral part of the book, not just the plot-device he might have been in less capable hands. Rather than revel in the sleaze of his demise, Robertson brilliantly wrongfoots us by letting Eddlestane emerge as one of the novel's most sympathetic characters, with a marvellous, dignified telephone confrontation with the man who ruined him.