Ah, nice! Some of my friends were visiting Ennisland last week but I couldn’t get there due to rail engineering work 🤦🏼‍♂️ I’ll make it sometime soon hopefully!

Auchterarder 1969. Maybe before much was going on in terms of Burns stuff at Glasgow? Any hints welcome 👍🏻

A picture of a certificate from the Burns Foundation issued to higher school students in the 1960’s in Scotland

My mum’s been clearing out the cupboards and found this certificate from her school days. Cracking stuff!

I remarked that it was like one of those stories that get bandied about when soldiers were saved from gunshot by a cigarette case.

Genuinely quite frightening to witness 🤦🏼‍♂️

‘Scottish by Formation’: Michel Faber’s Under the Skin and National Ambiguities | Studies in Scottish Literature Across genre, form and multiple national borders, Michel Faber has spent his literary life evading detection, his oeuvre being marked out by a singular determination to keep moving. As he has said abo...

New publications by IASSL members: the essay ‘Scottish by Formation’: Michel Faber’s Under the Skin and National Ambiguities' by @rodgeglass.bsky.social has bee published in the latest issue of Studies in Scottish Literature 51:2 @edinburghup.bsky.social.

*calls (I’m not changing being correct just because you think it’s funny)

Where to start with: Muriel Spark From an extraordinary debut inspired by a real-life breakdown to a creepy masterpiece, here’s a guide to the Scottish novelist’s works

From an extraordinary debut inspired by a real-life breakdown to a creepy masterpiece, @drjamesbailey.bsky.social provides a guide to the “uncanny, astute and witty” fiction of Muriel Spark
💙📚
www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a...

Manchester might be easier for me. I’ll see what I can do! Best of luck with it all.

Looking forward to picking up a copy of this! Congratulations 🥂

Cracking news 👏

Great stuff from Ollie here! Highly recommend signing up to @thebletherscotlit.bsky.social and giving it a read 👍🏻

A pile of various Scottish literature books open at different pages for references. Also a keyboard, mouse, pen and laptop.

That’ll be me writing my Annual Progress Report then. I’m sure there must be more efficient ways of working 😂

Stellar lineup 💪

Sign up below to read the piece I wrote about our #ScotLit trip to Arran 💪

I wrote a thing about caves and our recent #ScotLit trip to the Isle of Arran. Sign up to the link here if you’d like to read it. Also, The Blether is very good, so you’d be doing yourself a favour anyhow… 👍🏻

Absolutely agree. I’ve been waiting 4 months to get approval to record an interview with a fully consenting author about the influence of another author on their work. Very frustrating

Please no 🤦🏼‍♂️ Make it stop.

I wrote my masters thesis with one of the most interesting and helpful people I’ve ever met. Yes, it was on Zoom, but what does that matter? If you want to learn, you learn. If you want to to grift…

This really pisses me off. There was, and still is, a pandemic. Having been a student during this time but also living with someone actually who had to do the work to make sure degrees continued to happen, it’s an ignorant and hurtful attack on people who were trying their hardest. Solidarity ✊

Fantastic 👏👏👏

Episode 4 is out: Scottish Folk and European Music with Kirsteen McCue, Professor of Scottish Literature and Song Culture at @glasgow.ac.uk We discuss the history of Scottish folk music and particularly its influence on the birth of modern music — from Beethoven to Bob Dylan. 🎼🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Link⬇️

Rainy photo of the North Sea from a train on the Scottish East Coast mainline

Photo of 100 year celebratory decorations to the staircase of the National Library of Scotland

Front cover of the book, The International Companion to the Scottish Novel ed. Cairns Craig

Photo of iconic staircase in the National Library of Scotland which leads to the Special Collections Reading Rooms

Bit of a dreich journey getting there, but I’ve had a wonderful couple of days @natlibscot.bsky.social looking through Muriel Spark’s archive and the latest Companion to The Scottish Novel. Great stuff 👌

Limited-edition Gray Day merch! All proceeds support our 2026 programme. 'Lanark' notebook (lined/plain) + 'Words, Wards, Wurds' pen. £5 bundle w/code till 25.02.26. Thanks @canongate.co.uk, The Estate of Alasdair Gray & Abby Carter. Head to online shop to buy!

God’s own consolation prize 🫡

Ettrick and Yarrow is a very special place. The land o’ the faeries. It’s worth a trip to Tibbie Shiel’s inn and the Hogg exhibition in Yarrow if you’re up that way 👍🏻

Ah, I know his work! They did lots of incredible research up in Stirling. Also kind of local to where my mum is from in Auchterarder 👍🏻

Was that Peter Garside?

I have to confess I was born in the Simpsons, mainly due to there being no maternity ward in the Borders, so I can’t possibly comment

Can confirm the Greggs opposite the entrance to Central Station still proudly present the Scotch pie. Less so on the macaroni, unfortunately.