News of the Dead is certainly far from dull and the author manages to pull off several different styles, including passages in Scots dialect for the stories told by the irrepressible and accommodating Geordie Kemp, who never likes to disappoint a listener. In the present day, young Lachie whispers to Maja of a ghost he thinks he has seen. Reflecting on her long life, Maja believes him, for she is haunted by ghosts of her own. The book is written from three perspectives and over three timescales; Maja in the current day, William Gibb in the early 1800s and the story of Saint Conach from a monk from ancient Pictish times. As we weave in and out of each of these stories, we are sometimes told the same story a few times from each perspective, showing how much a tale changes each time it is relayed.

News of the Dead by James Robertson - Fantastic Fiction News of the Dead by James Robertson - Fantastic Fiction

It’s been a real privilege to make this film with James Robertson,” said Baxter, speaking from his home in Montrose. “He is one of Scotland’s most respected novelists, and it’s been fascinating to explore the five year creative process of this extraordinary and compelling book, which has been partly shaped by the pandemic we’ve all been living through.” Set in the fictional setting of “Glen Conach” in the North East of Scotland, Robertson in his classic style combines three narratives from characters across different centuries, tied together by their connection to the Glen, creating a tale which is steeped in myth, folklore and legend.

News of the Dead is a captivating exploration of refuge, retreat and the reception of strangers. It measures the space between the stories people tell of themselves - what they forget and what they invent - and the stories through which they may, or may not, be remembered. There’s a lot to enjoy in Greig’s novel (Romance! Witchcraft! Golf! Theology! Reivers! High politics! Assassinations!) but for me none of it would work if it hadn’t already passed what I shall call the Hilary Mantel Uncertainty Test. It’s quite simple. Does the book make the past feel as alive and uncertain as the present? Remarkably – and wonderfully – all three of this crop of Scottish novels do just that.

Documentary - News of the Dead - The DreamCage Documentary - News of the Dead - The DreamCage

Robertson’s novel is a much slower burn, but still deeply satisfying. His fiction has often explored the past to great purpose, as in his magnificent The Land Lay Still , about the making of modern Scotland, or the slavery-themed Joseph Knight . Here, though, the focus is on nothing less than on the nature of history itself: its gaps, deliberate myths, accidental lies and time-honoured fictions. While Rizzio is all flashing blades and double crosses, in News of the Dead whole weeks go by in which a mildly dodgy scholar employed by a slightly eccentric laird does little more than go about his business of translating a medieval document about an eight century local holy man. By the end of the novel, though, all these threads through time weave together in a profoundly moving way: think of the end of Middlemarch , transpose it to an Angus glen, and you won’t be too far wrong. Judge for yourself at the end of the month, when it is Radio 4’s Book of the Week. I’ve been thinking about it for about five years, so it’s taken a while for it to come together. I wanted to write a novel that was set in one place, but that took place over a huge amount of time. So I invented this glen, Glen Conach, which is, in my head, not far from where I live. There are three stories going on: the story of Conach himself, an 8th-century Christian missionary to the Picts who becomes a hermit in the glen; then a story set in the early 1800s, where Charles Gibb comes to the big house in the glen to look at this manuscript about the life of Conach; and finally a modern story narrated by a woman called Maya, one of the oldest residents of the glen in the year 2020. I interview James about his bok in the first episode of The Big Scottish Book Club which you can view on BBC iPlayer or follow this link: In the film, Baxter follows Robertson from his home in Newtyle to Glen Esk in search of an ancient cross stone captured in a postcard, once given to the novelist by a neighbour. The stone is said to have been carved by a pupil of the real life seventh-century Glen Esk hermit, Saint Drostan. I liked that about the book: it's place, and it's description. And I like stories which, without being too prescriptive about it, interlink a few different things. I also like historical fiction.To tell the story of a country or a continent is surely a great and complex undertaking; but the story of a quiet, unnoticed place where there are few people, fewer memories and almost no reliable records - a place such as Glen Conach - may actually be harder to piece together. The hazier everything becomes, the more whatever facts there are become entangled with myth and legend. . .' Interestingly the book had me thinking about faith also and how it is important especially when faced with the prospect of death or loss. How someone dies two deaths; one when their soul leaves this earth and one when their name is said for the last time. The only way to preserve someone’s legacy is to write it down. To pass on long after even you have left this earth. To ensure you leave your mark in this world. In ancient Pictland, the Christian hermit Conach contemplates God and nature, performs miracles and prepares himself for sacrifice. Long after his death, legends about him are set down by an unknown hand in the Book of Conach . Details of that stay are filtered to us through Gibb’s warts-and-all journal. Two other main narrative threads are woven around it. One is Gibb’s translation of the Book of Conach. Originally written in Latin about 800 years ago, the book chronicles the life of the “blessed and venerable” Conach, who performed miracles for his fellow Picts in “the north country” before devoting himself completely to God by becoming a hermit. Catholicism hasn’t, however, been completely banished: people like Will’s mother still attend clandestine masses. Mary, Queen of Scots has stayed loyal to the Old Religion and although she has abdicated the Scottish throne, stands a chance of taking over the English one. Meanwhile, Esme Stuart, James VI’s mentor, makes no bones about being a Catholic, and may even be plotting a Counter-Reformation. Scotland looks like being Protestant, but what kind of Protestant: Puritan or humanist? And could it not just as easily be Catholic, English (like the 1574 troops pulling the cannon to lay siege to the Castle) French (like the Queen) or (a bit of a push, this) British?

David Robinson reviews: News of the Dead, Rizzio and Rose David Robinson reviews: News of the Dead, Rizzio and Rose

These stories are gathered by an anonymous monk and written into a book which remains in the glen, first in the abbey and then, following the reformation, in the big house where it is kept in the library by the laird and his family. Of course, the monk wrote in Latin and this is the first translation because the stories would have been told in Gaelic. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Charles Gibb arrives at Glen Conach House to produce a copy of the Latin and to translate the book into English and to provide himself with free board and accommodation for as long as he can stretch it out. It is through Gibb that we meet the inhabitants of the Glen, the Laird and his wife, their daughter Jessamyne, the minister, the teacher, the Laird’s mother and many others. We do not meet Sandy, the laird’s son, because he is a captain in the army, involved in the Napoleonic War. He has just survived the Retreat to Corunna when this part of the story begins. Made by award winning filmmaker Anthony Baxter, the short documentary/drama follows Robertson as he explores the writing of his new novel News of the Dead, which is set in the fictional Glen Conach. Published by Penguin this month, the book features characters set hundreds of years apart, but all linked by the same place: an ancient hermit, a nineteenth-century charlatan and, in the present day, the Glen’s eldest resident whose young schoolboy friend thinks he’s seen a ghost. Generations later, in the early nineteenth century, self-promoting antiquarian Charles Kirkliston Gibb is drawn to the Glen, and into the big house at the heart of its fragile community.Not sure why that matters either but there is a real sense of place to this book. I'd describe it as a set of stories around a fictional, very remote Glen near Forfar, and it's history and legend. And it's also about history, and what that means: what we can read and trust, and what we read and have to decide if we trust or not. The only copy of this book is kept in the library of the laird of Glen Conach, until it is destroyed by fire centuries later. Excerpts from the translated version of the book are included within the novel. This is also a book with a strong sense of place, in this case Glen Conach. Finding your place to belong is a key theme. As Maja says “everyone has a place, a real place or a memory of a place, or a dream of a place.” The use of dialect firmly rooted this book in the Scottish glens. I really enjoyed the use of dialect which appears in some parts of the book though it may pose a challenge to non-Scots. Even I had to look up some words! But don’t let that put you off, as it adds to the richness of the narrative.

Book review: News of the Dead, by James Robertson - The Scotsman

These two quotes sum it up: ‘The story of a quiet unnoticed place where there are few people, fewer memories and almost no reliable records - a place such as Glen Conach…when you return to the present it may seem fact and fiction were never that discrete from one another after all.’ Another is the importance of storytelling itself. It is ow we learn empathy. It is how we learn to distinguish between right and wrong. It is how we learn how to behave. History is essentially storytelling. All the great religions centre around the stories that they tell, whether it is Moses parting the Red Sea, the Good Samaritan, the flight from Mecca or the Mahabharata. It is how we teach the next generation the essentials of our beliefs. It is how we teach them what is safe and wat is not. Speaking to Baxter by Loch Lee in the film, Robertson says, “You come to a place like this and you find that your fiction is echoing things that really did happen.”

I don't see a lot of decent Scottish fiction. I don't know if it's just not there, or I've just not noticed it. You get a few thrillers, and there's been the odd notable one (your Shuggie Bains and My Bloody Projects) but there aren't many. And this is a very Scottish book - in a good way. Deep in the mountains of north-east Scotland lies Glen Conach, a place of secrets and memories, fable and history. In particular, it holds the stories of three different eras, separated by centuries yet linked by location, by an ancient manuscript and by echoes that travel across time. As I was reading, I felt that the stories took a long time to get going, and was waiting to see how they were related. They were, however, separate stories but with the link that they all happened in the same glen, and the remoteness of the glen had an influence on each story. The message I took from the book, is that history is made by everyone, not just through official records, but also spoken stories and folklore, and personal diaries and memories. There is no real way of proving which is the correct version, but everyone is involved, and everyone contributes to the history of where they live.