George MacDonald Fraser on Desert Island Discs in 2001 – available on BBC Sounds 6/6 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

“At one moment when President Richard Nixon was taking part in his inauguration ceremony, he appeared flanked by Lyndon Johnson & Billy Graham… it was one of those historical coincidences which send a little shudder through the mind” George MacDonald Fraser, THE STEEL BONNETS (1971) #history 💙📚 4/6

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) – author, historian, journalist, screenwriter – was born #OTD, 2 April, 1925. @michaeljecksauthor.bsky.social discusses GMF’s “dedication to strongly researched stories, built firmly on a bedrock of historical fact” 🎂🧵 💙📚 1/6 www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/not...

Alastair Reid translated many Latin American writers, in particular the #poetry of Borges & Neruda. In this talk from 2009, he explores the hazards & occasional felicities of #translation, focusing on the influence of Borges, & of the nature of a bilingual reality 3/4 www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpU2...

"Skeleton of the future" shurely? Red granite and black diorite, with the blue Of the labradorite crystals gleaming like precious stones In the light reflected from the snow; and behind them The eternal lightning of Lenin's bones.

Wonderful - unique - conversation between a French scholar-poet who writes in Scots and a Czech scholar-poet who writes in Gaelic. Paul and Petra provide a fresh European perspective on c20th Scotland, with beautiful recordings of Derick Thomson reading his poetry, and Petra hers

This is the first thing that has really made me laugh on this site

My review of Modern Irish and Scottish Literature by @richardalanbarlow.bsky.social is now published by @mfsjournal.bsky.social. Richard's book is definitely worth a read if you are interested in modern Scottish and/or Irish literature, revivalism, and modernism. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

R.S. Thomas was a 20th c Welsh poet & Anglican priest whose most famous poem, The White Tiger, uses the analogy of a tiger trapped in a cage for human perception of the divine-- "agonizing over immensities that will not return."

Richard Leonard (17.27.30) produces the most impressive MacDiarmidian rhetoric in this Holyrood motion. He repeats the myth that MacD was expelled from the National Party for being a communist but gets the splendidly mad tenor of the politics just right www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/memb...

Time for @mrewanmorrison.bsky.social to be recognised as the most prescient writer working in Scotland today www.thetimes.com/article/4048...

God's own county

Is theft of stolen property still theft? AI copyright issues blown open. Students of TS Eliot's borrowing-stealing audit of major writers take note. For @asls.org.uk and other Scotlit folk, Hugh MacDiarmid is surely the pre-eminant (con-?) artist of the "perfect" (and other kinds of) poem

This is compelling from Sam Harris open.substack.com/pub/samharri...

The dawn of the anti-woke era - www.newstatesman.com/internationa...

Damn Edwin Muir could write a poetic eulogy

Dear Ann, wherever you are Since you lately learnt to die, You are this unsetting star That shines unchanged in my eye… Born in Kirkwall, Ann Scott-Moncrieff was a friend of the Orkney poet & translator Edwin Muir, who wrote this poem for her when she died. 7/7

Orcadian author Ann Scott-Moncrieff (1914–1943) was born #OTD, 11 January. Lesley Findlay, her daughter, talks about Ann’s life in Orkney, her writing, & her children’s stories – recently republished by Scotland Street Press 1/7 www.scotlandstreetpress.com/journal/who-...

The January exhibition of Turner watercolours in Edinburgh is an annual treat. Made even lovelier this year because, for the first time, the national galleries of Ireland and Scotland have swapped their Vaughan bequests. New Turners!

Man, you rational folks on @bsky.app have been missing all the crazy shit on X-formerly-Twitter. Nigel just lost $100m by saying something sensible and Elon is having a globally public mental health episode and everyone is shrieking uncontrollably and nothing is happening in reality!

The author who, more than any other British writer, defined the idea of literary academia: both its great intellectual dreams and its comic absurdities. It's a Smaller World now. Is the death of David Lodge a metaphor or a metonym? RIP

Depressingly on-the-nail account of the state of Scottish education

Reading James VI and I’s Daemonologie. Seeing Macbeth everywhere: ‘And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of Darkness tell us truths; Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s In deepest consequence…

@alexlinklater.bsky.social Hi Alex. Fellow Shuggy Mac D fan here. www.dailyreckless.com/2024/11/01/h...

Just as @mrewanmorrison.bsky.social was ahead of the field with pandemic fiction and novels about ideological capture, so he is the pioneer of AI literature in Scotland. Terrifying, engrossing, masterful. The most inventive and original writer we have.

“Deep down in him there is something that comes from his roots in island Christianity.” (Free Kirk factionalism and the Disruption?) Excellent piece from @mikewadejourno - soon to leave @timesscotland, a loss to Scottish journalism. Ochone. www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/...

Alexander Hamilton wrote nicely about the Senate's power to reject the president's "appointment of unfit characters,” including those “who had no other merit than that … of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of [the president’s] pleasure.”

@leaskyd.bsky.social did what you suggested David - here I am - and note you have 364 followers after posting 0. Not a bad ratio of followers-to-contribution. A proportional infinity, no less!