Snowdrops Bank Hall Lancashire England - Source: Wikipedia

Words rise out of the country. They are around us. In every month in the year we are surrounded by words.

(Shall Gaelic Die? Iain Crichton Smith)

Snowdrops Scotland - Photo Shendry (Flickr)

Winter has its own dictionary, the words are a blizzard building a tower of Babel. Its grammar is like snow.

(Shall Gaelic Die? Iain Crichton Smith)

Time flies…

St Valentine’s red roses are already fading in their crystal vases while snowdrops are blooming fresh and pure in woods and winter gardens, announcing spring…

Snowdrops Scotland - Photo Stephen Random (Flickr)

In Scotland, the calendar is punctuated by a number of very inviting seasonal festivals. I’ve just read about a winter one, the Scottish Snowdrop Festival which takes place between 1 February and 15 March. How I’d like to be there now to add this winter flower to our spring and summer Scottish bunch!

I open Kenneth Cox’s Scotland for Gardeners to see what he says about The Scottish Snowdrop Festival.

Scotland for Gardeners Kenneth Cox Birlinn Limited 2009

Scottish Snowdrop Festival, featuring some of the very best snowdrop gardens, woodlands and estates across Scotland, was started in 2007, coordinated by VisitScotland, and will hopefully be an annual event in February and March with many gardens all over the country opening, with events, tours, sales and just great walks, at a time of year when almost all Scotland’s attractions are closed to visitors. See the leaflets and website for details. Cambo in Fife is the model for snowdrop opening with a whole range of activities, gift shop and plant sales. I have listed some of the best snowdrop displays:

Brechin Castle woods
Cambo House
Dalmeny House (Mons Wood)
Danevale Park
Floors Castle and Springwood
House of the Binns
Mertoun House
Kailzie…

I’m pretty sure there are many more places covered with carpets of snowdrops at this time of the year in Scotland and then it will be time for the bluebells…

Arran Brodick Castle © 2004 Scotiana

While writing these lines my thoughts go to Margaret and Iain for I know how impatiently they’re waiting for the arrival of spring in Scotland! So is Janice too, in her snowy Quebec. Here, in the garden, the almond tree will soon open its delicate pink and white flowers. Spring is almost here…

Blessed John Duns Scotus Church - Photo by Ilike (Flickr)

By the way, many many thanks to our Scottish friends for their kind contribution to Scotiana. We’ve read their Letter from Scotland with great pleasure, as if we were there, in Glasgow, following our guides off the beaten track, in quest for one of the little secrets of the big city. We’ve already planned to visit Blessed John Duns Scotus Church during our next trip to Glasgow, not only to light a small candle in front of St Valentine’s shrine but also to discover, in its neighbourhood,  the famous district of the Gorbals. As many urban districts in the world, it has been completely renovated. So, how hard it must have been once to live in the Gorbals, far from the snowdrops carpets,  we can only try to guess…

No Mean City Alexander McArthur, H Kingsley Long Neville Spearman, London, 1956

Books are a good means to stimulate our imagination. Iain mentioned No Mean City in his post. I don’t possess this book but I remember how happy I was when I fell on Growing up in the Gorbals while I was browsing in one of my favourite secondhand bookshops in Bordeaux. I knew nothing about Ralph Glasser, its author, but I had already heard about the Gorbals and I wanted to know more, so I bought it at once. It’s a big book, with more than 600 pages, and I have not found time to read it yet so, as I can’t say more about it, I’ve included a few comments found on Amazon.

Growing up in the Gorbals -Ralph Glasser- Lomond Books -1999

Growing up in the Gorbals -Ralph Glasser -Lomond Books- 1999

Customer Review

“An extraordinary book from an adult’s understanding, as well as boyhood perspective, of poverty-stricken and problematic family life in the Gorbals of Glasgow. This very honest, well-written book is successful in its honesty and description of friendships, family situations, political philosophies and working environment during the period. It conveys both a profound and generous understanding of helpless personal circumstances. I went to Scotland searching for a second copy of this book as it was out of print at the time and found it in a used bookstore. I will always have this book with me.”

Review

“‘… a classic… he caught both the people and the place… and there are passages which stand comparison with Zola and Gorky. The Observer”

Product Description

“I was driven to write these books because the spirit of the Gorbals would not leave me and insisted that I give expression to its continuing power and its lessons for our society.” -Ralph Glasser

Ralph Glasser’s Gorbals Trilogy is an extraordinary account of a remarkable life. In Growing Up in the Gorbals, Glasser describes his childhood and adolescence in the impoverished slums of the Glasgow tenements in the 1920s and the hardships and heartaches that went with it. At 14, he left school to become a barber’s soap boy but he soon started the night classes that would eventually lead him to a scholarship to Oxford. In Gorbals Boy at Oxford he describes his new life, the incredible characters he met and the arrogance of Oxford academic life, and in Gorbals Voices, Siren Songs, Ralph Glasser’s brilliant trilogy concludes in the wayward world of postwar London.

About the Author

Ralph Glasser spent his childhood and adolescent in the Old Gorbals of Glasgow. After years of night study he won a scholarship to Oxford+inly in the Third World, campaigning against the destruction of traditional communities.

I have a lot of books about Glasgow in my library. I will introduce them very soon on Scotiana. Some are very interesting…

Snowdrops Scotland - Photo Stephen Random (Flickr)

But in the meantime, why not have a walk in the countryside in company of this friendly Scottish dog…

Spring has its own dictionary, its leaves are turning in the sharp wind of March, which opens the shops.

(Shall Gaelic Die? Iain Crichton Smith)

A bientôt.

Mairiuna

A good festival should be an encounter: with ideas, people, cultures and the landscape.
It should look outwards but rejoice at the best of what’s local.

Adrian Turpin . Festival Director

For those who, like us, cannot attend the Wigtown Book Festival this year, we invite you to browse the program, which, in itself, delivers much information on all the different scheduled activities.

Had we been there, it would have been very difficult for us to choose what to see and hear with the only result to leave frustrated at the end of the festival for not having been able to participate to everything.

Neither easy to make a choice in the very well documented programme of the Festival, but since our main interest is literature we’ve focused on that in our selection. Mainly Scottish literature of course, but with a few incursions into the Irish field however. Don’t forget, in Wigtown, we are not far from Ireland: only 30 miles (48 km) to go to Stranraer and with the Stena Line ferry you can get there in about 90 minutes.

Hop aboard our virtual tour ?

Margaret Elphinstone – The Gathering Night

Margaret Elphinstone

Scotland has been inhabited for some 10,000 years, but our knowledge of even half that period is scant. One of Scotland’s best-loved writers digs deep to imagine the stone-age past, creating a tale of love, loss and adventure that finds powerful echoes in the present.

Quintin Jardine

 Fatal Last Words

Claire Kilroy

Louise Welsh & Claire Kilroy

Two outstanding literary novelists from opposite sides of the Irish Channel. The author of The Cutting Room, Louise Welsh is also a former tutor on Glasgow University’s creative-writing programme.
Claire Kilroy’s third novel All Names Have Been Changed tells the story of a group of students on a similar course in Dublin.
Supported by Culture Ireland

Roddy Doyle – Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha(video you tube)

Dublin-born Roddy Doyle is the author of eight novels including The Commitments (filmed by Alan Parker) and the Booker Prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. One of Ireland’s best known writers reads from his latest work and talks to fellow novelist Glenn Patterson.
Supported by Culture Ireland and sponsored by Edinburgh Napier University

　
 
Christopher Brookmyre -  Pandaemonium

Christopher Brookmyre is famed for his satirical crime fiction. But his latest novel, a horror story set on a school trip, ventures into diabolically funny new territory. Always a charismatic performer, the bestselling author talks about why he has chosen to pit science against the supernaturalin Pandaemonium.

Ted Cowan

Ted Cowan  – Southwest Scots and the Northwest Passage

Three of the 19th-century’s greatest Arctic explorers came from Dumfries and Galloway: John Ross, his nephew James Clark Ross of Stranraer, and Dumfries native John Richardson.Ted Cowan, professor of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow,has just returned from Canada’s Northwest Passage where he has been researching a new book on the Arctic Scots. He tells the story of their epic achievements.
Sponsored by W A Barclay

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The Magnusson Lecture

Five hundred years ago, Europe endured one of the most turbulent periods of its history, riven by religious conflict. In the third annual lecture ommemorating the life of the broadcaster and polymath Magnus Magnusson, the former editor of the Herald newspaper, Harry Reid, talks about how an age of martyrdom, political intrigue and intellectual daring forged the world we know today.

Sophia Kingshill  – The Lore of Scotland

Scotland’s history and landscape have inspired an extraordinary array of legends. In The Lore of Scotland, two leading folklorists, Sophia Kingshill and the late Jennnifer Westwood, have brought together the most intriguing, including the remarkable story of the mermaid of Galloway.

Iain Banks  -Transition

When terrorism and financial collapse loom, the world requires a stable guiding hand. But does it need “The Concern”, an all-powerful multinational organisation with an evil leader and tentacles everywhere? One of our finest storytellers talks about his dazzling new novel, an apocalyptic fable for the times.
Sponsored by Edinburgh Napier University

　
Diane Athill & Irma Kurtz – Somewhere Towards the End & About Time: Growing Old Disgracefully

After 50 years editing authors such as VS Naipaul and Jean Rhys, Diana Athill turned her hand to writing. Now in her nineties, she won the 2008 Costa Biography Award for her book, Somewhere Towards the End. The much-loved memoirist talks to Irma Kurtz, author of About Time: Growing Old Disgracefully, about entering old age in a world obsessed with youth.

Irma Kurtz

The tents began to go up. There was a specially large pavillion, so big that the tree that grew in the field was right inside it, and stood proudly near one end, at the head of the chief table. Lanterns were hung on all its branches. More promising still (to the hobbits’ mind) : an enormous open-air kitchen was erected in the north corner of the field. A draught of cooks, from every inn and eating-house for miles around, arrived to supplement the dwarves and other odd folk that were quartered at Bag End. Excitement rose to its height (…) The fireworks were by Gandalf : they were not only brought by him, but designed and made by him ; and the special effects, set pieces, and flights of rockets were let off by him. But there was also a generous distribution of squibs, crackers, backarappers, sparklers, torches, dwarf-candles, elf-fountains, goblin-barkers and thunder-claps. There were all superb. The art of Gandalf improved with age.  (J.R.R. Tolkien – The Fellowship of the Ring 1954 – Book One Chapter 1 A Long-expected Party)

“Above all, a good Festival should be festive “

(Adrian Turpin Wigtown Book Festival Director)

Edinburgh Fringe Festival - 2007

Edinburgh Fringe Festival - 2007

Scottish people seem to be particularly gifted to organize festivities and to live it up with everybody ! In Scotland, you will be invited  to participate in these events in the most cheerful way !  We’ve tasted it, in our last journey, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival !

The growing number and influence of the Scottish festivals testify to the cultural dynamism of the country. Among them the literary festivals seem to have the wind in their sails. In recent years they have been multiplying all over Scotland contributing to a better knowledge of Scottish authors and fostering reading and writing. They have also had a very  important economic impact on the host towns. Here are some of them.

Edinburgh International Book Festival-Charlotte Square-Photo by Tim Duncan–Source Wikipedia

- The Edinburgh International Book Festival, which takes place in the last three weeks of August every year in the midst of the general Edinburgh Festival. It originally took place in a tent in Edinburgh in 1983 and has been followed by a number of fringe events over the years.

- The Edinburgh Book Fringe, which holds its events at the Word Power bookshop.

- The West Port Book Festival

Glasgow 2005 Aye Write Book Festival

- The Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Book Festival in Glasgow

Aberdeen Wordfringe Festival 2009

- The Wordfringe, Festival of New Writing in Aberdeen and North-East Scotland

University of Aberdeen Writers' Festival 2009

- The University of Aberdeen Writers’ Festival

The Islay Book Festival

-The Islay Book Festival

And last but not least the Wigtown Book Festival which is the one which interests us presently.

Wigtown Book Festival

Given the quality and variety of events listed in the beautifully illustrated programme of the new Wigtown Book Festival, no doubt 2009 is going to be a vintage year and they must be very busy there since the Festival opens at the end of the week !

Just have a glimpse at last year cheerful atmosphere…

Stay tuned for Scotiana’s top choices from the 2009 Festival Program.  A virtual itinerary of our own !

A bientôt!

Mairiuna and Janice writing from Bordeaux, France.