Like Michael in And the Land Lay Still, he was sent to school in Perthshire, in his case Glenalmond College, "a Scottish boarding school modelled on the English public school system", from which he emerged into the world of books (as did Massie, coincidentally; other old boys include Charles Falconer and Robbie Coltrane). The writing life was his ambition from the start. "Edinburgh University was about getting an education, it wasn't about preparing myself for any other career." After writing a PhD thesis on Sir Walter Scott, he worked as a sales rep for Cassell, then moved into bookselling with Waterstone's. marks a celebration across the nation for Scotland’s Year of Stories – but what is a story without its storyteller? (A question on which I, and the generations of dutiful Unreliable Narrators before me, place much emphasis.) The destructive obsession with the need to emphasise and preserve the ‘Scottishness’ of our writing far beyond what comes naturally and truthfully to writers will persist for as long as Scotland remains in a political limbo; in other words, it will last until Scotland either becomes a full nation-state, or loses its sense of nationhood altogether. ( McMillan 1983, 70)

Don has two sons, the sweet-mannered CND activist and teacher Billy, and Charlie, a wayward gangster-soldier from bad-boy central casting, who is probably the novel's least convincing character. Charlie's relationship with feisty journalist Ellen, her brutal rape, pregnancy, and most of all, her and rebound partner Robin's reaction to all of this, didn't quite ring true for me. Perhaps paradoxically, I completely believed in the drunken spy, called James Bond. An embittered servant of the British state, Bond takes his revenge on his patronising superiors by bringing down a disgraced Tory MP, David Eddlestane, one of the party's last representatives in Scotland. Eddlestane is so well observed as to become an integral part of the book, not just the plot-device he might have been in less capable hands. Rather than revel in the sleaze of his demise, Robertson brilliantly wrongfoots us by letting Eddlestane emerge as one of the novel's most sympathetic characters, with a marvellous, dignified telephone confrontation with the man who ruined him. The Polish scholar of language nationalism Tomasz Kamusella added that ‘most states and nations extant at present in the world do not have and do not aspire to spawn their own national literatures’. But in Sassi’s view, the fierce contestation of Scottish literature’s legitimacy and importance was itself strong evidence of its political significance: ‘The degree of denial and denigration suffered by Scottish literature in the twentieth-century is in fact directly proportional, I believe, to the perceived political power of an independent national literary canon’ (ibid.). Winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year 2010, And The Land Lay Still is a panoramic exploration of late 20th Century Scotland through the eyes of James Robertson’s characters; natives, immigrants, journalists and politicians, dropouts and spooks making their way in a changing country.

Over-Determinations

In the White Paper which followed Kilbrandon in September 1974 the language of patrie, heritage and unity is likewise reserved for the defence of the UK state-nation. As the political space in which Robertson’s ‘modernised sense of Scottishness’ will gain institutional form begins to emerge, the prevailing vision of Britishnesss is jarringly antique. Instead of revising British identity alongside its constitutional framework, there is a strong sense of retrenchment as pro-devolution figures seek to dispel fears of diluting UK identity and power. With devolution only politically saleable in England as a buttressing of British unity, sovereignty and greatness – the soothing mantra ‘power devolved is power retained’ is voiced in an unbroken line from Enoch Powell to Tony Blair – the political dynamic which accompanied devolution has probably delayed the development of a post-imperial British culture.

This version of Craig’s essay is yet to be published; he kindly sent me a draft in the summer of 2014. The main thrust of his argument is repeated in the shorter piece Craig 2014a. [ With workshop events held just before, and roughly a year after, the referendum on Scottish independence, the urgency of these political questions was a strong presence in our discussions. It was in this light that Italian critic Carla Sassi offered an ‘outsider’s perspective’ suggesting we think twice before discounting the force of literary nationalism:The geographical separation of the United Kingdom from the continental mainland and its achievement of world prominence as one people have had a strong unifying effect which we regard as irreversible. ( Royal Commission 1973, I, 122) One key factor motivating this study, and manifest throughout our discussions, was the clear divergence of ‘cultural’ and social-scientific stories of devolution. For many literary critics, cultural devolution in the 1980s was the forerunner of democratic renewal. In the words of Robert Crawford, ‘devolution and a reassertion of Scottish nationhood were imagined by poets and writers long before being enacted by politicians’ ( Crawford 2000, 307). Political historians and sociologists tend to offer a different set of explanations, centred on electoral politics, economic factors and largely invisible processes of UK institutional reform ( Bogdanor 2001, Mitchell 2012, Devine 2016). With few exceptions, the first school pays as little attention to the 1973 Kilbrandon Report as the latter does to Alasdair Gray’s Lanark (1981). Perhaps appropriately, the first serious attempt to integrate these stories comes not from academic history but Robertson’s fact-soaked novel. Trust the story . … the storyteller may dissemble and deceive, the story can’t; the story can only ever be itself.’ What Leigh discovers in the vent takes her to the Mojave Desert, to a job working with a NASA-like space agency that is using a newly-discovered form of fuel to send people to the furthest reaches of our solar system and beyond. Robertson’s And the Land Lay Still is the most fully realised attempt to make a cohesive national story of the period and forces of devolution. Having been politically active in the 1980s, notably through the pro-devolution magazine Radical Scotland (1983–91) – thinly disguised in the novel as Root & Branch – Robertson naturally began with events and debates he had experienced first-hand. But on beginning to revisit this period he encountered a historical problem:

In a sense, Robertson says, "this novel is a riposte to that. What I'm trying to say is: 'Immerse yourself. A lot has gone on. The place has changed beyond recognition. We haven't had civil war or bloodbaths, thank God, but we have had change.'"There was tension in the air: identity politics versus class consciousness. The one policy that offered some prospect of common ground, devolution, was once again being squeezed from all sides. Nobody loved it, and nobody had much of a good word to say for it. ( Robertson 2010, 532) Robertson lives in the village of Newtyle, 10 miles north of Dundee. Sometimes called Scotland's forgotten corner, it glories in verdant countryside, standing stones and legend. Issuing directions, he cautions against the cannibal who used to waylay travellers on the road ("but don't worry, he was dealt with"). With his wife Marianne, Robertson lives in a handsome villa that was once a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland. He is a keen, busy man in his early 50s. Answering the door with telephone in hand, he gives the friendly impression that if he were not at the centre of a one-man literary industry, he might make a decent job of running the bank. The germ of And the Land Lay Still settled in Robertson's imagination in the 1990s, when the Tories governed Great Britain without a single Scottish MP. "It was a time when we were on the receiving end of a lot of politics we didn't like, and it caused many people in Scotland to ask who they were and what they wanted to be." He has spent four years toiling on his answer to those questions. In Scotland, as much as in England – I don’t see much difference here – literature has played a very central role in the construction of national identity, and literary texts and writers have here a nationally iconic status that does not necessarily characterise other European contexts. You can have a literature, but in other countries, you’re not necessarily entitled to independence for that, or perhaps you’re not even interested in independence. ( Recording, Workshop 2) We begin at a Christmas market in Edinburgh, where protagonist Eric is suddenly and inexplicably drawn away from his fiancee by the allure of a woman named Delia. Showing no regret for his actions, however uncharacteristic, Eric is taken in a taxi to a remote hotel in the Scottish highlands; a place that never sees any guests and the snow never stops falling.

The evening of discussion and debate will include playwright Peter Arnott, campaigner and activist Amal Azzudin, Lyceum Artistic Director David Greig, National Theatre of Scotland Dramaturg Rosie Kellagher, acclaimed journalist and writer Joyce McMillan, and author James Robertson, with music from award-winning folk artist Mairi Campbell and extracts of Peter Arnott’s stage adaptation in development, from a recent reading commissioned by National Theatre of Scotland. Leading sociologist David McCrone notes ‘an influential strain of writing about the relationship between culture and politics’ in modern Scotland. Comments ranged from how much readers enjoyed the fact that all the story strands wove together so satisfyingly at the end, to one lady who admitted that, being English, not only had she gained an interesting slant on recent history as an “outsider”, but she had also learned new Scots words she had never heard before. Here is a situation: a country that is not fully a country, a nation that does not quite believe itself to be a nation, exists within, and as a small and distant part of, a greater state. The greater state was once a very great state, with its own empire. It is no longer great, but its leaders and many of its people like to believe it is. For the people of the less-than country, the not-quite nation, there are competing, conflicting loyalties. They are confused. ( Robertson 2010, 534)

Devolution’s Backstory: Managing ‘National Feeling’

And the Land Lay Still is nothing less than the story of a nation. James Robertson's breathtaking novel is a portrait of modern Scotland as seen through the eyes of natives and immigrants, journalists and politicians, drop-outs and spooks, all trying to make their way through a country in the throes of great and rapid change. It is a moving, sweeping story of family, friendship, struggle and hope - epic in every sense. The novel first introduces us to the thoughtful Michael, a photographer of leftish nationalist sympathies, who's been as slow in coming out as Scottish law was to sanction the idea of gay sex. Michael is ambivalent about being entrusted with the task of curating an exhibition of work by his late father, Angus, a more successful and celebrated photographer. Michael's largely been in his paternal shadow, not just professionally but sexually and socially, the whole of his life. Basically, he's a nicer guy than his womanising old man, without the ruthlessness that often distinguishes artist from artisan, and thus perennially destined to come second.