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Marshall Walker's lively and readable account of the highs and lows
of Scottish literature from this important date to the present
addresses the important themes of democracy, power and nationhood.
Disposing of stereotypical ideas about Scotland and the Scots, this
fresh approach to Scottish literature provides a critical
interpretation of its distinctive style and presents the reader
with an informative introduction to Scottish culture. Coverage
includes the Scottish enlightenment and the world of Boswell and
David Hulme to the 'Scottish Renaissance', associated with Hugh
MacDiarmaid. Developments in the contemporary literary scene
include John McGrath's theatre Company and the fiction and poetry
of Alaistar Gray and Ian Crichton Smith. Particular attention is
given to the work of Scottish women writers such as Lady Grizel
Baillie and Liz Lochhead, who have been much neglected in previous
literature.
Marshall Walker's lively and readable account of the highs and
lows of Scottish literature from this important date to the present
addresses the important themes of democracy, power and nationhood.
Disposing of stereotypical ideas about Scotland and the Scots, this
fresh approach to Scottish literature provides a critical
interpretation of its distinctive style and presents the reader
with an informative introduction to Scottish culture. Coverage
includes the Scottish enlightenment and the world of Boswell and
David Hulme to the 'Scottish Renaissance', associated with Hugh
MacDiarmaid.
Developments in the contemporary literary scene include John
McGrath's theatre Company and the fiction and poetry of Alaistar
Gray and Ian Crichton Smith. Particular attention is given to the
work of Scottish women writers such as Lady Grizel Baillie and Liz
Lochhead, who have been much neglected in previous
literature.
In 1940, John Archibald McKenzie Rillie - serving in the Royal Army
Medical Corps and newly married to Betty - was posted to the
African city of Freetown in Sierra Leone. This is the first
publication of the writing and the poems, drawn in the main from
his diary and the notebook in which he collated much of his
war-time verse, that mark his experiences in the sixteen months
that followed. In the words of his editor, and grandson, Alasdair
Soussi, it is an 'expressive, outspoken, sometimes raw and
uncomfortable account of a bygone age'. The later reflections of
Jack Rillie, the by then greatly admired and influential university
teacher, on this period - and on his life prior to the war - are
presented in a brief introduction, "A Young Life Recalled". With a
foreword by Andrew Hook and an afterword from Marshall Walker;
reproductions of photographs and letters; and even a list of books
Jack read while in Sierra Leone, the man who inspired so many is
revealed both for his formidable scholarship and his love.
When a schoolboy in Glasgow, Marshall Walker became addicted to the
music of Sibelius. In 1996 he made a pilgrimage to Finland,
visiting places of special significance to the composer, his
birthplace in Hameenlinna, the villa 'Ainola' where he lived for
over 50 years, the forests and lakes near Koli in the Karelia. Back
home in New Zealand Walker began to write Sibelius a thank-you
letter for a lifetime's companionship. Walker tells Sibelius how
his music helped him overcome childhood ordeals in Scotland. He
discovers Sibelian connections in his family, tracing the steps of
his grandfather from a Sunday stroll in a Glasgow park to the
Elliot Junction railway disaster of 1906 and commemorating his
uncle's service on the Salonika front in WWI. The scene shifts to
student days at Glasgow University, problems with God, the kindness
of the Scottish conductor, Ian Whyte, and the music of Arnold Bax,
Sibelius's 'son in music'. In apartheid South Africa Sibelius
becomes Walker's medicine man. There's a glimpse of the composer
feted in the USA and a connection between his music and the
American writer, Robert Penn Warren. A child falls in love with
Sibelius's Third Symphony.From New Zealand Walker sets out on the
compulsive pilgrimage which prompts him to try to show how an
artist can be a continuous, sustaining presence in a life. There's
talk of Sibelius's music throughout the letter - a grateful junky's
talk, not a critic's. 'You have taught me about Sibelius.' Osmo
Vanska 'A true writer. Excellent. I must repeat, excellent.' Lygia
Fagundes Telles 'Compellingly human stories in a masterly fusion of
music and life'. Hugh Macdonald Marshall Walker was born and
educated in Scotland where he is currently Senior Research Fellow
in the Department of Scottish Literature at the University of
Glasgow. He lectured in English at Glasgow University from 1965 to
1980 after a spell at Rhodes University in South Africa. From 1981
until 2006 he was Professor of English at the University of Waikato
in Hamilton, New Zealand with time out for visiting appearances in
the USA, Poland, Germany, Italy and Brazil. His publications
include The Literature of the United States of America and Scottish
Literature since 1707.An occasional broadcaster on literary and
musical topics for Radio New Zealand and the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation, he introduced broadcasts of the 2005
Sydney Sibelius Festival in which Sibelius's symphonies were
performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir
Ashkenazy. He lives in Hamilton, New Zealand, with his Brazilian
wife, the writer, Claudia Pacce.
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