With good – but unpredictable – weather showing Scotland off at her best it seems like a good time for the holidaymaker or day-tripper to dip into a fairly new publication from Association for Scottish Literary Studies . Academic and poet Alan Riach has written A Traveller’s guide to literary Scotland.
60 places are listed from Shetland to the Borders, with an index of writers reaching from Marion Angus to Louise Welsh. Among the familiar names are some who deserve to be better known, like Wigtownshire’s own Ian Niall (1916-2002) – also known as John McNeillie – author of a striking, often shocking, novel from 1939 – Wigtown ploughman – and a very different lovely rural memoir with A Galloway childhood.