The first half of the Twentieth Century witnessed two catastrophic global conflicts, with suffering on a scale that - thankfully - later generations find hard to comprehend. The full story of what it was like to endure these wars might never be told, because many who survived chose not to speak - or could not speak - of what they saw and suffered. But some could turn to poetry, to try to make sense of what was happening. From the Line brings together the best of Scotland's poetry from the two World Wars: 138 poems, from fifty-six poets, are represented here, from both men and women, from battlefields across the world and from the Home Front, too. There is dread in these lines as poets reflect on the loss of peace, or mourn the death of friends and comrades. Some tell of traumas that can never be shaken off, others of an intensity that would never be found again - but there is hope, too, and moments of humour, compassion and decency that survived the worst.

'Two Men at Once' is one of Norman MacCaig best known poems. He was indeed two men at once: Edinburgh, the city where he was born and lived as a teacher and poet, was his home, but no other place shaped his poetry more than Assynt in Sutherland. It is here that he would spend many a summer on family holidays, walking the hills and fishing the lochs. MacCaig’s fresh eye saw remarkable newness even in the everyday and each poem is a tiny revelation, a new look at an old friend. This collection celebrates, renews, and rediscovers Norman MacCaig’s Assynt.

Edwin Morgan is one of Scotland's most distinguished and popular poets. His celebration of his native city brought him the honour of Glasgow Poet Laureate, and in 2004 the Scottish Executive recognised him officially, as Scotland's first modern national poet, with the title of Scots Makar. Each poem here is read by Edwin Morgan, followed by informed and accessible commentary by Professor Roderick Watson of the University of Stirling. This CD is an excellent tool for classroom study, as well as giving listeners a chance to hear some of Scotland's best-loved poems read by the author himself.

First published in 2010 to mark the centenary of Norman MacCaig's birth, The Many Days aims to strike a balance between representing the much-loved poems that any reader would expect to find in a selected MacCaig, and other less familiar verses. The collection is arranged to show the range of the poet's work in all its variety, from his love of nature and the landscape of the North West Highlands to his life in Edinburgh; from his care for animals and human friendship, to his moments of joy and grief, creative delight and occasional creative dread. Time and again MacCaig returns us to that good place we know as the world, but hardly ever seen so clearly as we do in these marvellous poems.

The SCOTNOTES booklets are a series of study guides to major Scottish writers and texts frequently used within literature courses, aimed at senior secondary school pupils and students in further education. The individual authors are not only experts on a particular writer or text but also experienced in teaching in schools or colleges. This SCOTNOTE Study Guide explores the responses of Scottish poets to the First and Second World Wars, from the sometimes jingoistic optimism of the early days of 1914, to the horrors of the trenches, to the massed and mechanised brutalities of total war - not forgetting, too, the experiences on the Home Front and the traumas of memory.

The Quarry Wood, although published well before Sunset Song, inhabits a similar world; the progress of its heroine could almost be the alternative story of a Chris Guthrie who did go to university. Compassionate and humorous, the grace and style of Shepherd's prose is heightened by a superb ear for the vigorous language of the north-east. The Weatherhouse, Shepherd's masterpiece, is an even more substantial achievement which belongs to the great line of Scottish fiction dealing with the complex interactions of small communities, and especially the community of women - a touching and hilarious network of mothers, daughters, spinsters and widows. It is also a striking meditation on the nature of truth, the power of human longing and the mystery of being. The third and final novel, A Pass in the Grampians, describes Jenny Kilgour's coming of age as she has to choose between the kindly harshness of her grandfather's life on a remote hill farm, and the vulgar and glorious energy of Bella Cassie, a local girl who left the community to pursue success as a singer, and has now returned to scandalise them all. The Living Mountain is a lyrical testament in praise of the Cairngorms. It is a work deeply rooted in Shepherd's knowledge of the natural world, and a poetic and philosophical meditation on our longing for high and holy places. This omnibus edition of Shepherd's prose works reveals how her sensitivity and powers of observation raise her work far above the status of regional literature and into the front rank of Scottish writing.

Ever since its first appearance in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has proven itself to be a tale of undiminished power for readers all over the world. But the story of the respectable Dr Jekyll, even in a London setting, has links that stretch back to the narrow wynds of Edinburgh and the bleak moors and shores of the North. This collection reveals the Scottish origins of Stevenson's great masterpiece of psychological fiction and his stories of possession, doubleness and terror, and uncovers his fascination with the uncanny which brought the creator of Mr Hyde screamingly awake one winter's night over one hundred years ago.

MACCAIG * MORGAN * LOCHHEAD This book contains a selection of the finest work from three of Scotland's best-known and best-loved poets: Norman MacCaig, Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead. They have fascinated and charmed thousands of readers and listeners across Europe and America with the energy, humour and compassion of their vision. MacCaig's memorable celebrations of the physical world and the tragic-comic note of many of his short lyrics contrast strikingly with Morgan's poems on the modern world and city life. Liz Lochhead writes with an alert and sensitive eye on personal relationships and women's experience of them. The book provides an invaluable introduction to modern Scottish poetry and to the poets who are arguably its greatest practitioners.

Kidnapped - Catriona - The Master of Ballantrae - Weir of Hermiston These four great novels take us deep into Robert Louis Stevenson's imaginative and bitter-sweet relationship with his native country. Kidnapped, and its sequel Catriona, are renowned the world over as supreme stories of adventure and romance. On another level they also explore the subtle divisions of Scottish history and character in the eighteenth century, and (some would say) the present day. The Master of Ballantrae takes a darker and more disturbing turn, with its tale of rival brothers caught in a webof hatred, obsession, love and betrayal which draws them to their end in the frozen wastes of North America. Stevenson's fascination with the divided nature of the human self (most obviously demonstrated in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) appears again in the Weir of Hermiston with its terrible confrontation between a father and his son. With an unsurpassed combination of physical adventure and psychological insight, The Scottish Novels have moved and thrilled readers and writers from Stevenson's contemporaries to the present day.

Roderick Watson is a poet of introspection and retrospection. In the rich distillation of his language, the images of a remembered picnic, a Tuscan encounter, an out-of-date postcard, a holiday cottage - all these assume an iconic intensity in the quiet deliberation of this verse. Roderick Watson is a poet who ponders rather than postures. Each one of these poems, in his accomplished Scots as well as in English, is a pleasure to read, to re-read and to remember. -- Philip Hobsbaum

Norman MacCaig's poetry is clear and lucid and filled with the shifting light of Edinburgh and Assynt. MacCaig stands in the first rank of twentieth-century poets: Seamus Heaney said of him, "He means poetry to me". Roderick Watson's SCOTNOTE study guide will enhance any student's enjoyment of MacCaig's poetry, as well as providing a deeper understanding of the poet's craft.