Reviews of non-fiction

One of the Exceptions
Robert Louis Abrahamson examines the cultural impact of DAVID DAICHES and looks at a new publication: David Daiches: A Celebration of His Life and Work.
full text of feature
Consider the Histories
ROSEMARY ADDISON reads Consider the Animals, the collected essays of Pippa Stuart, delicately wrought cameos imbued with the enchantment of nature and travel.
full text of feature
In My Skin
From middle-class Melbourne to drugs, dives and prostitution, KATE HOLDEN unfolds her story in this glittering memoir.
full text of feature
Spellbound
Reviews of The Celts by Bernhard Maier and The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context, edited by Julian Goodacre.
full text of feature
Two Roberts and a Bruce
Reviews of Burns the Radical:Poetry and Politics in Late Eighteenth Century Scotland by Liam McIlvanney, Heaven-taught Fergusson edited by Robert Crawford, and The Voyage of the Scotia, printed by the Mercat press.
full text of feature
Queens and Hogboons
Reviews of Scottish Queens 1034 - 1714 by Rosalind K. Marshall, Galloglas:Hebridean and West Highland Mercenary Warrior Kindreds in Mediaeval Ireland by John Marsden, Not of this World by Maurice Fleming, Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century by David Johnson and A Flame in the Mearns:Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
full text of feature
Northern Notes
Review of Language, Poetry and Nationhood, Ae Fond Kiss, The Road North and Bannockburn.
full text of feature
Industrial Scotland and Patrick Sellar
Reviews of Industrial Nation by W W Knox and Patrick Sellar and the Highland Clearances by Eric Richards.
full text of feature
The Great Surveyer
Reviewing The Nation Survey'd, a look at the cartographer Timothy Pont.
full text of feature
The Story of Eight Generations
Review of A Scottish Family: The Story of Eight Generations by Betty Willsher.
full text of feature
The Sinners of Cramond
Review of The Sinners of Cramond: The Struggle to Impose Godly Behaviour on a Scottish Community, 1651-1851 by Alison Hanham.
full text of feature
Chess for Zebras
Review of Chess for Zebras by Jonathan Rowson.
full text of feature
What's So New Age About Archaeology Anyway?
Reviews of The Modern Antiquarian by Julian Cope and Stone Age Alpha by Edward Peterson.
full text of feature
The Power of Delight
Review of The Power of Delight: a lifetime in literature - essays: 1962-2002 by John Bayley.
full text of feature
Finding the Words
Review of Finding the Words: A Publishing Life by Jon Wynne-Tyson.
full text of feature
Pleasure and Change
Review of Pleasure and Change, the Aesthetics of Canon by Frank Kermode and edited by Robert Alter, with Geoffrey Hartman, John Guillroy and Carey Perloff.
full text of feature
Modernism and Nationalism
Review of Modernism and Nationalism: Literature and Society in Scotland, 1918-1939 by Margery Palmer McCulloch.
full text of feature
Among the Mandarins
Review of William Empson, Volume I: Among the Mandarins by John Haffenden.
full text of feature
Afterwords
A review of Afterwords: Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf, edited by Sybil Oldfield.
full text of feature
Entente Cordiale
Review of The Philosopher's Garden: Le Jardin du Philosophe by Robin Gillanders and James Lawson, a book of photography and words celebrating the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Ian Hamilton Finlay.
full text of feature
What Good are the Arts?
Review of What Good are the Arts? by John Carey.
full text of feature
Scotland: A history
Review of Scotland: A history, edited by Jenny Wormald.
full text of feature
Faculty Towers
Review of Faculty Towers, the academic novel and its discontents by Elaine Showalter.
full text of feature
Marlowe's World
Two new biographies of Christopher Marlowe struggle through the lack of solid information about his life, to question his reputation as philanderer and criminal, and paint vivid pictures of the world he grew up in.
full text of feature
Untold Bennett
Review of Alan Bennett's collection of autobiographical essays, Untold Stories.
full text of feature
Modern Fiction
Reviews of On Modern British Fiction, edited by Zachary Leader and Contemporary Novelists, British Fiction since 1970 by Peter Childs.
full text of feature
The Real Life of Anthony Burgess
Review of The Real Life of Anthony Burgess by Andrew Biswell.
full text of feature
Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life
Review of Victoria Woolf: An Inner Life by Julia Briggs.
full text of feature
The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women
Review of The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women, edited by Elizabeth Ewan, Sue Innes, Siân Reynolds and Rose Pipes.
full text of feature
The Life of George Mackay Brown
Review of Maggie Fergusson's biography, The Life of George Mackay Brown.
full text of feature
Reading the Brontës
Review of The Oxford Companion to the Brontës by Christine Alexander and Margaret Smith.
full text of feature
Hogg, Collected
Michael Lister reviews The Collected Letters of James Hogg, Volume 2, 1820-1831, edited by Gillian Hughes, and James Hogg's Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books, edited by Janette Currie and Gillian Hughes.
full text of feature
Style and Substance: A Deeper Look at Scottish Literature
Scottish Literature is examined from the inside out as Michael Lister reviews Why Scottish Literature Matters by Carla Sassi and Representing Scotland in Literature, Popular Culture and Iconography: The Masks of a Modern Nation by Alan Riach.
full text of feature
Against the Christians
MICHAEL LISTER offers unambiguous praise for Against the Christians by John Haffenden, the second volume of the authoritative biography of literary critic William Empson.
full text of feature
Strange Tales
Affectionate, slightly irreverent and occasionally scurrilous, JAVIER MARIAS has a new take on Written Lives.
full text of feature
An International Angle
Italian poet and literary critic MARCO FAZZINI edits the first history of Scottish literature planned and produced outside Scotland. The Alba Literaria: A History of Scottish Literature is a substantial and ambitious project.
full text of feature
Beyond Gondalisation
A new critical work seeks to reinstate the vigorous poems of EMILY BRONTE at the heart of Victorian concerns, whilst at the same time underlining their enduring relevance.
full text of feature
Perfectly Unborrowed
In this decidedly theoretical study, ROBERT MACFARLANE investigates the reappraisal of literary originality and plagiarism, which occurred over the course of the nineteenth century.
full text of feature
Auld Campaigner
Restoring faith in the art of Scottish literary biography, DAVID ROBB's Auld Campaigner: A Life of Alexander Scott is a revealing study of the man, his work and his invaluable contribution to the academic study of Scottish Literature.
full text of feature
A Saintly Sorner?
Poet, patriot, soldier, interrogator, scholar, teacher and folklorist - HAMISH HENDERSON had 'many lives'. Michael Lister reviews a new biography by Timothy Neat.
full text of feature
Between Two Worlds
Honour without profit is nothing new for writers, as Gillian Hughes shows in her illuminating biography of JAMES HOGG.
full text of feature
Grounding a World
Jim McCarthy talks geopoetics in his review of Grounding a World: Essays on the Work of Kenneth White.
full text of feature
Naipaul Mapped
Riveting fresh insight into V.S. NAUPAUL emerges from Patrick French's fascinating biography, The World Is What It Is, appraised for textualities.net by Jennie Renton.
full text of feature