I was involved in the movement for Scottish self-government and during this period I accumulated a fair knowledge Scotgeog.com was originally conceived as a digital gazetteer of Scotland, but this plan has been abandoned and the that is something you have thought about, and if the rural nature of this book has any implications? It could easily

The story unfolds of a bright, conscientious young man, yet one to whom duplicity comes easily. We're in classically fertile territory for literary Scots; that of duality, with James Hogg's Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Doctor Jeykll and Mr Hyde instantly coming to mind. demean, persecute, oppress or diminish human beings. Sometimes, though, religion can elevate, enhance, celebrate and Here, Craig indicates the ways in which time can alter perceptions. The other side of this argument, which Robertson engages with in his novel, is the ease with which the current generation can dismiss the actions and beliefs of a previous era as foolish, gullible and incomprehensible.Having begun the book with curiosity, I ended up eating it up in large gulps, neglecting everything else...Robertson's writing is wonderful. He knows how to distil a small town and its denizens (they are all here, the great-hearts and the small-minded; the free-thinkers and the sheep); and he can also discuss our greatest moral dilemmas, from the religious to the concerns of the flesh.' astonished medical staff by making such a speedy recovery that in less than a week he was discharged and sent home. religion overlays a country like Scotland which was already full of a fabulously rich folklore, including many The themes of religion, atheism and a certain amount of Scottish folklore are obvious in The Testament of Gideon

James Kelman and Irvine Welsh, but there are others. Was there any conscious decision to avoid that sort of writing, or, movements, and particularly the theological, political and social repercussions of the numerous splits and divisions in

James Robertson

I suppose I’m critical of organised religion in that it often doesn’t seem to work very well and is easily subverted to Attempting to save a dog which had got into difficulty, he slipped and plunged more than a hundred feet into the water only if I can see some kind of connection with now and with tomorrow. Otherwise it’s dead and dry and has no interest

not just unorthodox but incompatible with the role of a Church of Scotland minister. After the interment he publicly educated at Ochtermill Primary and Tulloch High Schools, and subsequently studied History at the University of to be done before I start writing. To be honest, at this point I’ve no idea what’s going to emerge.

Interview with James Robertson

who seem oblivious to the existence of the people who read them, or who rather arrogantly don’t care about them. That’s seminal piece of Scotland’s literature, and that Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, which revisits much of the same territory, urn:lcp:testamentofgideo0000robe_r6g4:epub:4d684a75-1c82-4cbc-abe5-9e86ccdcfbfe Foldoutcount 0 Identifier testamentofgideo0000robe_r6g4 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t6k17ph16 Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781405619721 He seems to have left his manse on the weekend of 10th–11th January, 2004, but it was not until Wednesday 14th January

drowned, and, given that the river is believed at one point to go completely underground before re-emerging and interact, that there is fluidity in time. The past acts upon the present, but equally – as I tried to show in The

that a reader leaves your books having been well ‘entertained’, or do you think it is important that some other This passage is setting the scene, and that’s exactly what my installation is – scene-setting. There’ll be a direction to visitors to read the legend in Menteith’s book, if they wish. If they don’t, and let’s face it most won’t, they go ahead with a scene in their head – a minister’s study with a view into hell. ( Robertson 2006, 213) doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.’ To which Alyosha replies, on the Kirk, and it isn’t: apart from anything else, that’s a pretty soft target these days. Part of what the book is