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The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
National Library of Scotland unveils centenary exhibition
To host the organisation, the library's exhibition space at George IV Bridge has been transformed into a reading room filled with recommendations from the public and some of Scotland's best-known faces. Western Hails librarian Jessi Dimmock reading to Jo Stevenson and three-year-old Sonny (Image: Neil Hanna) Amina Shah, national librarian, said: "Developing this exhibition has been a labour of love for us, as we have chosen to use our centenary year to shine a spotlight on the power of libraries. "We kicked off our 'Love Libraries' campaign in February, which shouts about all the great work libraries and librarians do. "This exhibition complements the campaign. "Libraries change lives. "They empower individuals and the communities they belong to." "The library sector has a proud shared history of working together to make sure everyone can benefit from access to information, stories, culture and knowledge – from school libraries to universities, mobile libraries to specialised archives – many of whom have contributed to this exhibition. "We expect library fans and book lovers will visit this exhibition multiple times – there's so much to celebrate and discover.' Read more: National Library of Scotland unveils 'landmark' centenary programme Here's a funny thing about summer in Scotland... 'Paul Buchanan's singing actually reminds me of Miles Davis's trumpet playing' Credit: Neil Hanna Wester Hailes librarians Jessi Dimmock and Susannah Leake on the main staircase of the National Library of Scotland in celebration of the opening of its centenary exhibition Dear Library (Image: Neil Hanna) As part of the exhibition, the Library has ditched the practice of displaying items in glass cases, instead encouraging people to browse the shelves and examine any item that piques their interest. The books featured were suggested through a public call-out for the books that shaped people's lives. They also include recommendations from Damian Barr, Val McDermid, Alan Cumming, Gemma Cairney, Sir Ian Rankin, Lauren Mayberry, and Pat Nevin. The exhibition also showcases the role of libraries and librarians in popular culture, banners, and badges used in protests against library closures, and vintage film footage of libraries from the past. There is plenty for children too, with a Bookbug trail, a Lego model of a library, and a makerspace where people can create their own library card or placard. Kirsten MacQuarrie from CILIPS (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland), next to the protest banner she has loaned to the National Library of Scotland's Centenary exhibition Dear Library (Image: Neil Hanna) Specialist libraries from across the country have loaned items to the exhibition, including: the Glasgow Women's Library, The Nature Library, Making Public's Press (formerly Skye Zine Library), Innerpeffray Library, and the Library of Mistakes. These items show the variety of things libraries collect, including a bird's nest and rare books from Scotland's first free public lending library. Angus Robertson, Culture Secretary, said: "The National Library has been a cornerstone of our nation's cultural life for generations. "This exhibition is a direct reflection of the impact libraries have had, bringing together just some of the books and objects that have helped to shape our country and the people who live here. "Whether you are a regular borrower or first-time visitor, I would encourage everyone to visit this remarkable exhibition and re-discover the profound impact that libraries have had on our lives and communities." Teresa Elsmore with a Lego library model which forms part of the National Library of Scotland's centenary exhibition (Image: Neil Hanna) Dear Library opens on Friday, June 20, and will run until April 2026. Entry is free and the exhibition is open during library hours, Monday to Saturday. Further details of the Library's centenary celebrations are available to view on the National Library of Scotland website.
Scotsman
5 days ago
- Business
- Scotsman
Readers' Letters: Ssshh! Don't make historic library an events venue
The soul of the National Library of Scotland is under threat, reader suggests Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Plans, reported in Scotland on Sunday, for the National Library of Scotland to become an 'events venue' are to be head librarian aka CEO is quoted as planning on opening up the site to host weddings and large events, inspired by the Central Library in New York. The National Library of Scotland in no way resembles a city's central library. It is a copyright library, a national institution providing citizens with a time machine to explore a kaleidoscope of evidence across the wide gamut of Scottish cultural life from the now to the medieval past. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The staff are unfailingly helpful and informed, something I have noted in some 30 years of using the library, they reflect standards of public service others would do well to emulate. Yet I have detected recently they are labouring with cutbacks and the merging of departments. Far from nurturing this human resource they are now to be thrust into the hospitality business. I note the process is already underway and the library is closing early on two days in June for 'events'. Bosses at The National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh want the institution to become a destination of choice for weddings and other events (Picture: Neil Hanna/AFP via Getty Images) It would be helpful if the authors, now successful, who rightly laud the NLS as a place that nurtured their fledgling talents would take up the cudgels and oppose this barbarian plan. They could join the budding writers of the future, the students, book groups, those visitors researching family histories, academics and the simply curious citizens anxious to find something out, all of whom use the library as a matchless venue of cultural value, in resisting the attempt to turn it into yet another Edinburgh events venue. Douglas Macleod, Edinburgh Nightmare goes on It beggars belief that Rachel Reeves suggests that the UK might offer support to our 'ally', Israel, in its ongoing missile bombardment of Iran (your report, 27 June). Even Donald Trump has distanced himself attack. Most Israelis are appalled by this unprovoked aggression, scary in its pinpoint accuracy, with deep uncertainty in its longterm consequences. How many enemies does Israel actually need? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The aggressor-in-chief is Benjamin Netanyahu, whose precarious personal position is contained by keeping Israel in a perpetual state of war. He stands accused of war crimes and corruption. Hypocritically, Netanyahu urges the regime change of Iran's equally loathsome government. Arguably, regime change is required in Israel itself, by democratic means. The USA alone has the ultimate leverage to provide that outcome, though Europe has a part to play. Meanwhile, for the people of Palestine, the nightmare continues. Ian Petrie, Edinburgh Iran dilemma The current Israel/Iran situation raises an interesting point for the SNP and Scottish Greens. The SNP leader in Westminster, Stephen Flynn, has recently intimated that an independent Scotland would have suspended diplomatic relations with Israel. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Scottish Greens are well known for not being supportive of Israel either. This produces a difficult dilemma for both parties. Assuming they are not in the Israeli camp in the current war ( and how likely is that?) this puts them on the side of Iran. There is really no viable middle ground given such antipathy towards anything Israeli. This implies that both these Scottish parties, despite their well-versed opposition to absolutely anything nuclear, would therefore be happy to see a nuclear-armed Iran. If this is not the case then they must support Israel in its actions to prevent this. This ably demonstrates how neither Scottish party really considers where their policies can lead, a position most Scots understand very well given the last 18 years of SNP rule with much help from the Greens included. Gerald Edwards, Glasgow Nuclear nod I can assure Frances McKie (Letters, 16 June) that an enormous amount of research on the safe long-term disposal of nuclear waste has been done since the Flowers Report of 1976. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Much has been done on corrosion, not by the waste, because it isn't, but by nature – if old iron is left outside it will rust. The results of the research have shown that by using the right kinds of containers it will be possible to store the waste until well after it has gone cold. As for mining uranium in Orkney, it never happened, despite preparatory work for it getting strong support from the EU. Orkney has instead benefited enormously from the oil industry, and no doubt has played a significant role in helping it to generate massive amounts of greenhouse gas, a far more dangerous pollutant than nuclear waste ever has been or is likely to be for the foreseeable future. Hugh Pennington, Aberdeen Great Acorns On 11 June the BBC News website reported that to date the UK Government has pledged £17.8 billion towards the construction of the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk. The project is being funded by UK Treasury borrowing. As a consequential of this borrowing a total of £1.513bn will be included within future Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) figures as this country's 'share' of the total amount being borrowed. This is despite the fact that no nuclear power stations are being built in Scotland. Indeed, Scotland already produces a surplus of electricity and people living in the north east will soon be treated to the sight of massive pylons being constructed throughout their area to carry this surplus power to our southern neighbours. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad On 12June the UK Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, stated that a total of £200 million would be allocated to fund the proposed Acorn carbon capture project at St Fergus. While this very long overdue announcement is to be welcomed, it pales into absolute insignificance when compared to the £21.7bn over 25 years to support carbon capture projects in the North East and North West of England. As these projects are being funded through UK Treasury borrowing, Scotland will also be given an allocated 'share' of the consequential debt for them when its future GERS figures are published. The combined funding bill for these projects in England totals (so far) £39.5bn. Scottish taxpayers – present and future – will be required to pay their share of the money borrowed to build them. It has to be asked if people living in Scotland consider £200m for the Acorn Project at St Fergus has been a fair deal when placed against the many billions already set aside for carbon capture in North East and North West England? On last week's BBC Scotland Debate Night show the subject of the UK Government's Spending Review was discussed. Scottish actor Brian Cox said, 'For Starmer, everything is about England'. Given the situation related to the Acorn Project it is difficult not to concur with that particular opinion. Jim Finlayson, Banchory, Aberdeenshire Planet in pain Dictatorships and authoritarian governments are becoming increasingly repressive and democracy is failing, with incompetent politicians increasingly relying on evasion and lies. Excessive greed and poverty are running rampant and hatred and aggression plague the planet, with wars being waged everywhere. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Earth is in distress, with extreme weather conditions becoming more prevalent, much of which is due to human activity. Has mankind outlived its welcome on this or any other planet? John Marsh, Firthmuir of Boysack, Arbroath Brexit tale SNP MSP Stephen Gethins continues with his regular condemnation of Brexit and fulsome praise for the EU (Perspective, 14 June). Taking full advantage of Brexit was thrown off course by Covid, Boris Johnson's self-destruction and Putin's War, so it is too soon to opine that it 'has left us poorer', and nonsense that we are 'less secure and outside the European mainstream'; he ignores the EU's own economic problems. Then prime minister Theresa May wanted to include 'the defence sector', our 'security links' and our better intelligence services in her Brexit talks in early 2017, but the EU reacted like a spoilt child at the notion that the UK would even consider putting them on the table to the potential disadvantage of the EU; so she caved in. Professor Gethins implies he foresaw Putin's threat back in 2004 – but what did he or any other politician, academic, diplomat or military attache say or do then? Precious little in public that I recall; and his former leader Alex Salmond was happy to broadcast his show on Russia Today from 2017. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Of course the Europeans should 'share the burden of continental security' but it is they who have fallen well short of meeting even Nato's 2 per cent of GDP target, and it is primarily the EU which continues to finance Putin's War by even now paying greater sums to buy his oil and gas than it gives to Ukraine in aid! No doubt we can learn from our neighbours (including England?) on free education, a national health service and valuing human rights and the rule of law – but in all of these such learning is a two-way process. And is the no-weapons non-nuclear SNP really a 'reliable part' of European defence? If we are 'hobbled' outside the EU, Prof Gethins should at least acknowledge that it was François Hollande's and Angela Merkel's policies and thin-gruel offers to David Cameron which caused Brexit (and incidentally strengthened Russia) rather than the more substantive EU-wide reforms advocated by the then Dutch prime minister and now Nato leader, Mark Rutte. Finally, to state 'the UK stepped back as the rest of Europe stepped up' is a gross insult to the UK and to our then prime minister Boris Johnson, who was the first, foremost and consistent advocate of supporting Ukraine immediately after Putin's invasion. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It is certain EU members who are at best equivocal about or, astoundingly, even firm supporters of Putin's Russia. John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife Write to The Scotsman
Scotsman
6 days ago
- General
- Scotsman
Inside plans to transform the century-old National Library in Edinburgh founded by McVitie's biscuit money
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... It was founded by a generous grant from the entrepreneur behind one of Britain's much-loved biscuits and a donation of books from the Faculty of Advocates, which could no longer manage its extensive collection. Now the National Library of Scotland (NLS) is marking its 100th year as it unveils plans for a major overhaul of its landmark Edinburgh building to create a weddings and events space and 'let in light' to the 1950s construction. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The National Library of Scotland is based on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh. | NLS The library is planning a major appeal to revamp its George IV Bridge building to "open it up" to the public. Due to be unveiled in its next five-year strategic review in September, Amina Shah, national librarian and chief executive of NLS, said the project would involve creating a new, flexible, 'open' space in the library where large scale events could be held. Plans are also likely to include ways of making the building, which she described as 'austere', more welcoming to passing visitors, including the creation of more natural light and increased accessibility. The National Library's history The existing building was finished and officially opened in 1956, more than three decades after the concept of the National Library was established in an Act of Parliament - and following years of delays in the wake of the Second World War. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The collection was boosted by a £100,000 donation from Sir Alexander Grant, managing director of digestive biscuit maker McVitie and Price, followed by a second grant of the same size to help fund the new building. It is believed that by the time the plans eventually came to fruition, architectural tastes had changed, making the new construction, on the site of the former Sheriff Court in Edinburgh, less well received. Ms Shah said: 'When you walk past it, it's austere. It's a listed building, so it's difficult, but we need to let light in.' She referenced a motto used by Fife-born industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who donated millions to establish free public libraries around the world. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad She said: '[Andrew] Carnegie said 'let there be light'. There is this whole idea about libraries and light, but actually our building looks closed from the outside. We want to open it up. 'We feel really passionately and strongly that Scotland deserves a beautiful national library space.' However, Ms Shah would not be drawn on the potential cost of the project, saying it was still in its early stages. She recently consulted colleagues at Cambridge University library, which held a capital appeal for a staged project, which she said could be used as a blueprint for the plan. 'A lot,' she answered in response to a question about the cost. 'I think the key is for us to think about stages. We could do bits and pieces in a planned and organised way, rather than asking for an infinite amount of money, which it might be difficult to achieve. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'We will definitely start looking at that seriously in our next financial strategy. Just as our ancestors decided it would be a good idea to have a National Library without a building at all, just £100,000 to start, they built that on a conversation and an ambition and certainly, we'll be thinking about what the library could do in the future.' Amina Shah is national librarian and chief executive of the National Library of Scotland. | NLS Ms Shah hopes the library can shake off an historic image of it as a closed, formal building for specialist researchers. Visitor numbers to the library have increased by 30 per cent since the previous five-year strategy was launched in 2020. However, Ms Shah feels there is more to be done. She said: 'We're keen to have a more welcoming space on George IV Bridge. The main building of the National Library was built at a time where it was about keeping books in and people out. But now, we want to be really much more welcoming, so that it's not intimidating for people. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'The library and its collections belong to everybody in Scotland, and we want to make sure that everybody knows that, and that they feel welcome and we reach out to them.' Work has already begun to change the public impression of the library, including the creation of a new 'treasures gallery', established in 2022, which allows the library to rotate some of its collection on display to visitors and tourists. NLS has also recently begun to tour rare and interesting books around Scotland, including Mary, Queen of Scots' last letter, which will next year be loaned to Perth Museum. How a donation from a biscuit entrepreneur allowed the creation of the National Library of Scotland The history of the National Library of Scotland dates back to the late 1600s, when the Advocates Library was founded in Edinburgh. Under the 1710 Copyright Act, the library was given the legal right to claim a copy of every book published in Britain. It subsequently added books and manuscripts to the collections by purchase as well as legal deposit, creating a national library in all, but name. However, by the 1920s, the upkeep of such a major collection was too much for a private body. With an endowment of £100,000 provided by Sir Alexander Grant, managing director of digestive biscuit maker McVitie and Price, the library's contents were presented to the nation. The National Library of Scotland was formally constituted by an Act of Parliament in 1925. Sir Alexander gave a further £100,000 — making his combined donations the equivalent of around £6 million today — for a new library building to be built on George IV Bridge. Government funding was secured that matched Sir Alexander's donation. Construction started on the building in 1938. However, work was halted due to the Second World War. The library was finally officially opened in 1956. 'It's just a connection with history,' Ms Shah said. 'When people actually see the live document, they get really excited and thrilled by it. So we're really excited to dip our toe in the water of this new way of working with local libraries and museums.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Money has been made available through external funders for this specific project, However, the library is looking at other ways of making money out of its assets to expend the initiative. Ms Shah said the library needed to look to alternative funding sources, including potentially charging certain users. A pilot programme with VisitScotland has seen US tourists given special tours of Gaelic archives, which are the largest of their kind in the world. 'We're working on a small-scale project at the moment with VisitScotland, where we're taking visitors from the States and giving them tours of our Gaelic collections,' said Ms Shah. 'They pay for that in advance. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad A 1939 letter delaying the construction of the National Library of Scotland building due to the Second World War. | NLS 'These are the sorts of things that we're really keen on looking at. We want to attract more tourists. We want people to be able to drop in and be wowed by the amazing collections that we've got, and feel curious to find out more about their Scottish heritage. We're trying our best with limited resource or within the resource that we have. 'If we want to survive, we need to innovate and thrive, and we need to think of different ways of doing things. And what we have found is that many people from overseas do want to support us. 'We want to make it easier for people to join the library, whether that's for people in Canada or America who could use our resources online. We're working on ways to make that more accessible. We don't want to monetise it for people from Scotland, but in our new strategy we are thinking about entrepreneurial ways forward.' Ms Shah hopes a new events space could emulate the New York Public Library, which features in the Sex and the City film as a possible wedding location for Carrie and Mr Big. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'There, they do weddings and they do events,' she said. 'They have a brilliant event space. Currently, our event space isn't really of that size. It's great, we've got a brilliant event program, but we just feel that with a much more flexible, opened-up space, we could offer so much more for the people of Scotland.' She is also aware of the public interest in 'the stack' - the 11-storey book and paper archive beneath the George IV Bridge library's ground floor. 'People love the stack,' she said, referencing a recent renovation to the V&A's East Storehouse in London, which has opened up the workings of its own archive collection to visitors. 'People can see the conservators at work and you can see the behind the scenes. It used to be that we would try to hide away all that, but there's some really interesting ways, I think, that museums and libraries and others are working to let people see that stuff.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ms Shah describes the work of the library as being like an iceberg, 'It's not just all floating above the water,' she said. 'What you see is one thing, but actually there's a lot of work that goes underneath, and it's very important work. It's really important that we continue to collect, protect and share the nation's printed and recorded memory. That's what we're here for. 'It's important because [the behind-the-scenes work] is part of that iceberg. We want to stimulate people's curiosity about it.' Despite the 11 storeys, the library is running out of space in its archive, storing a copy of everything printed, from knitting patterns and football programs to government information, children's books, adult books and maps. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad A second storage building was taken on in the 1980s on Edinburgh's Causewayside. However, Ms Shah estimates that has just a decade of capacity now still remaining. This is despite work to maximise storage, including the creation of a dedicated factory in Edinburgh's Sighthill area that makes special preservation boxes designed to be space effective. She said the library was in discussion with other organisations, including National Museums Scotland, National Galleries Scotland and Historic Environment Scotland, over possible collaboration on storage and archiving. The renovation plans come as the library marks its centenary year with a new exhibition launching next week dedicated to the importance of libraries. Dear Library will feature the favourite books of celebrities ,including Ian Rankin, Pat Nevin and Val McDermid, as well as Alan Cumming, and is billed as a 'love letter to libraries'. A man who needs no introduction to fans of crime fictions, Rebus-creator Ian Rankin is taking part in numerous events at this year's festival. We're particularly looking forward to 'The Whisky Knight' at 10pm on Friday, September 12. A mixture of chat and song, it will see Sir Ian joined by singers-turned-crime writers James Yorkston and Colin MacIntyre, along with debut novelist Natalie Jayne Clark. Thie audience will also be able to enjoy a wee dram. | AFP via Getty Images Titled Dear Library after a poem by Jackie Kay, whose archive the library acquired last year, the exhibition also features librarians and libraries in popular culture, protest banners and badges reflecting libraries under threat, and vintage film footage bringing past libraries to life. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ms Shah said: 'While there's a huge amount to celebrate and think about for us - as in what is it to be a national library and in this day, and what will it be in 100 years' time - we have a leadership role for the sector. 'We need to think about the network of really strong school libraries, public libraries, university libraries, mobile libraries, college libraries, prison libraries. I like to think of it more as a connecting role, so that we bring all these others together and consider what we can do for them. 'Libraries as a concept is something that if it wasn't invented already, you'd make it up. Communities coming together to share knowledge, share information. 'It's one of the last really accessible spaces that belong to people and I personally feel that we need it more than ever in an increasingly divided world. Libraries and literacy are the foundation blocks in communities that allow some of that to happen. You know, they support well-being. They support equalities. They empower individuals.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad However, the number of libraries is declining, both in terms of public facilities and in Scottish schools. A recent report from the Scottish Book Trust found the number of libraries in Scotland had dropped from 604 in 208 to 507 last year. A separate study from the National Literacy Trust found reading enjoyment among children and young people in the UK had fallen to its lowest level in two decades. 'Sometimes, libraries are absolutely recognised for the brilliant community, engaging and empowering resources that they are, and they can be right in the centre of the hub of the community,' said Ms Shah, who worked in the public library sector in Dundee for 14 years. 'But other times they can be neglected. And funding is challenging for local authorities and they have to make difficult decisions. 'But it's actually the most vulnerable people in society who use libraries often, and often the people who are the policy makers don't realise that.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
Edinburgh Reporter
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Reporter
Reading recommendations for National Library's 100th birthday
Well known Scots have shared the books that shaped them as part of a project to celebrate the National Library of Scotland's 100th birthday. Writers Sir Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, actor Alan Cumming, musician Lauren Mayberry and former footballer, Pat Nevin, are among those whose recommendations will be included in a special centenary exhibition opening on 20 June at the library on George IV Bridge. The 'Dear Library' event will be a 'love letter to libraries', curated in partnership with people across Scotland. The building's exhibition spaces will be transformed into an open reading room, featuring bookshelves filled with recommendations from over 200 members of the public as well as famous figures. Rankin, 65, named The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, the gothic novel written by James Hogg and published in 1824, among his recommendations. Crime queen Val McDermid said The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame had played a part in her childhood love of books. 2021 Edinburgh International Book Festival at Edinburgh University's Edinburgh College of Art, Lauriston Place. Val McDermid author and PHOTO ©2021 Mayberry, singer with synth-pop act Chvrches, nominated The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood, and Cumming recommended The Foghorn Echoes by Syrian-Canadian novelist Danny Ramadan. Ian Rankin, explaining his choice, said: 'This is another complex Scottish novel about good and evil. It's also one of the earliest novels to feature what would become known as a serial killer… 'Its central themes of good and evil and morality can still be found in contemporary Scottish Literature — and are always at the back of my mind when I start work on a new book.' Val McDermid revealed how she was enthralled by The Wind in the Willows when it was read to her as a child. She said: 'When I was five, I had the measles and was forced to lie in a darkened room to prevent damage to my eyesight. 'My mother sat in the hallway outside my bedroom and read me The Wind in the Willows. I was completely captivated by the all too human characteristics given to the animals, and charmed by the excitement and the unexpected turns the story takes.' Val also highlighted The whole story and Other Stories by Ali Smith, adding: 'Ali Smith never fails to dazzle me. Her novels are miracles of invention and the way she uses language is revelatory and imaginative… 'She moves me to tears and to laughter, she provokes rage and pity and she makes me think.' 'The Mother We Share' singer Mayberry, 37, said she had discovered The Edible Woman in a charity book shop when she was a student. She said: 'I found a copy in Oxfam Books on Byres Road in Glasgow when I was at university and read it cover to cover in a couple of days. 'It's a book I have thought about a lot since, in terms of the way women are commodified or consumed. It feels as relevant now as it did when Atwood wrote it in the 1960s.' Alan Cumming, 60, said Ramadan's award-winning The Foghorn Echoes was a 'sweeping, mesmerising story that spans time and mortal space so expertly and elegantly'. He added: 'There's a quote that I just love in it. A ghost says this, 'Treat your thoughts like hurt children, they haven't yet learned how to handle pain'. I think that's beautiful, and I think it's very wise.' Other famous faces who have recommended a book for the exhibition include novelist and broadcaster Damian Barr and former Chelsea and Scotland footballer turned pundit and writer, Pat Nevin. Damian Barr said the Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin had 'helped liberate teenage gay me'. And Pat Nevin said Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin 'could be the perfect novel'. Amina Shah, the National Librarian and Chief Executive of the National Library of Scotland, said the 'book that shaped her' was Midnight's Children, the second novel by Salman Rushdie, published in 1981. She said: 'I read this as a teenager. It was the first book I read that used magical realism and also the first to cover Partition which impacted my family but I knew little about. 'I also read it right before the fatwa on Rushdie and it brought home to me the power of literature and the value of freedom of expression.' Opened in 1925, the National Library of Scotland is the legal deposit library of Scotland. It holds over 24 million items including books, annotated manuscripts and first-drafts, postcards, photographs and newspapers. The library is also home to Scotland's Moving Image Archive, including over 46,000 videos and films. The National Library of Scotland announced plans to mark its 100th birthday. Pic caption: National Librarian Amina Shah (centre) was joined by authors and Centenary Champions Damian Barr and Val McDermid at the unveiling of the National Library Centenary Programme. PHOTO Neil Hanna Like this: Like Related
New Statesman
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
The ghost of Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark's memoir, Curriculum Vitae, published in the spring of 1992, concludes in 1957 with the appearance of her first novel, The Comforters. The memoir looked back to her beginnings; by the time of its publication Spark was, aged 74, thinking about endings and how best to control her own. She therefore invited Martin Stannard to write her biography. Spark made an art of beginnings and endings. We see it in The Girls of Slender Means, which begins and ends with the line 'long ago in 1945', and in her use of flash-forwards, so that the manner of a character's death is revealed at the start. The schoolgirl Mary McGregor, for example, in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 'who was later famous for being stupid and always to blame… at the age of 23, lost her life in a hotel fire'. Lise in The Driver's Seat, who selects a stranger to murder her, will be 'found tomorrow morning dead from multiple stab wounds, her wrists bound with a silk scarf and her ankles bound with a man's necktie, in the grounds of an empty villa, in a park of the foreign city to which she is travelling on the flight now boarding at Gate 14.' The Driver's Seat might be seen as the blueprint for the game Spark set in motion with Stannard, whom she handpicked after reviewing the second volume of his biography of Evelyn Waugh. Stannard, Spark wrote, was 'a literary critic and a scrupulous scholar', who understood the relationship between a writer's life and his work. When she first invited to him to her home, Stannard assumed it was to interview him for the job, but Spark had decided already that this stranger was the man she wanted. Because she was a hoarder who had thrown away nothing on paper for 40 years, there was little research for Stannard to do: the facts of Spark's life were organised into box files equivalent in height to an airport control tower, in length to an Olympic-sized swimming pool and in width to the wingspan of a Boeing 777. Her vast archive, now divided between the National Library of Scotland and the McFarlin Library in the University of Tulsa, was her legal defence. 'The silent, objective evidence of truth' would 'stand by me', she wrote in Curriculum Vitae, 'should I ever need it'. Before she became a novelist, Spark had been a biographer herself and the omniscient narrators of her novels were born from writing biography, because the biographer sees both the beginning and the end. Her first full-length book, published in 1951, was a life of Mary Shelley called Child of Light. 'Mary Shelley was born in 1797 and died in 1851,' Spark wrote. 'However variously the whole story is interpreted, no one can take these facts away.' Muriel Spark, who shared the initials of both Mary Shelley and Martin Stannard, was born in Edinburgh on 2 February 1918, the day and month on which Mary Shelley died. Aged 19, after a first-class education at the school on which she modelled Marcia Blaine in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Spark sailed to Southern Rhodesia to marry a schoolteacher who suffered, she soon discovered, from a severe mental illness. By the time her son, Robin, was born, the marriage was over. Leaving Robin in a convent in Gwelo, Spark returned to England in 1944 and worked, for the duration of the war, in black propaganda. She then, for 18 months, ran the Poetry Society, after which she set herself up as a biographer and critic. Until the end of the Fifties she lived from hand to mouth in bedsits, pitching ideas to publishers who then went bust. She wrote The Comforters soon after she converted to Catholicism in 1954, an event which coincided with a mental breakdown brought on by an excess of diet pills. Spark's fame was instant: by the 1960s her years of hardship were over. Twenty-one further novels, each flawless, appeared on a regular basis. The biographer's task, Spark believed, was to summarise the facts. Biography is, after all, the art of summary and summary was the art in which Spark excelled: her novels, short stories and poetry, biographies of Mary Shelley and Emily Brontë, critical study of John Masefield, editions of the letters of Cardinal Newman, Mary Shelley and Charlotte Brontë, selection of Emily Brontë's poems and Wordsworth criticism measure two feet on the shelf. Each of Spark's brief books grew out of a mountain of paperwork, firming up the plot, pinning down the characters, lacing it all together with the elegance of a sonnet. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe 'Treat me as though I were dead,' Spark told Stannard. This did not mean don't let me get in the way of your research, but assume I'll be ghost writing my own biography. Ghosts are everywhere in Spark's fiction, where they terrorise the living. Needle, the narrator of 'The Portobello Road', is smothered to death in a haystack and then haunts her murderer. In 'The Executor', which Spark considered, alongside 'The Portobello Road', her most satisfactory story, a famous Scottish novelist, living in an isolated house in the Pentland Hills, asks his niece and executor to sort his lifetime of papers into box files, which she does with impressive efficiency. 'There's little for me to do now, Susan, but die,' he says with a sly smile. Shortly afterwards he does die and Susan sells the archive to a foundation, withholding the 12 notebooks which contain his unfinished final novel 'The Witch of the Pentlands', about the trapping and trial of a witch. Why not write the ending herself, Susan wonders? But when she opens the 12th notebook, whose pages had previously been blank, there is a message in her uncle's handwriting: 'Well, Susan, how do you feel about finishing my novel? Aren't you a greedy little snoot, holding back my unfinished work, when you know the Foundation paid for the lot?' His concluding chapter, Susan discovers – where the witch out-foxes her persecutors – had been secretly written before his death and deposited earlier with the Foundation. Stannard went about his task as he understood it: interpreting the documents, conducting interviews and putting together a portrait of his subject. Nine years later, in 2002, he delivered his first draft to Spark. It was what she called 'a hatchet job; full of insults', 1,200 pages of 'slander' and 'defamation' which she was sending to a libel lawyer. She did not recognise the humourless woman described; she had been turned into a fictional figure. Determined to prevent publication, she did what she could to spoil the book and hold up its progress. The biographer and his subject were yoked in a danse macabre of pursuer and pursued, the plight of each resided in the other. Her distress, Spark's friends say, effectively killed her, and when she died aged 88 in 2006, Stannard, now into the 14th year of his impossible task, was at work on the third draft. Muriel Spark: The Biography, which received stellar reviews when it finally appeared in 2009, is indeed the work of a literary critic and scrupulous scholar. 'What Spark wanted,' Stannard reflected, was 'to write the book herself.' So why didn't she write the book herself? Even he didn't know the answer. 'Why this intensely private person should have invited someone to write her biography remains mysterious,' Stannard says in his preface. But Spark had written the book herself several times: not as the story of her life, but as the story of her relationship with her biographer. In The Ballad of Peckham Rye, published in 1960, Dougal Douglas, the horned stranger who creates havoc in south London, is ghosting the autobiography of the retired actress Maria Cheeseman, but she doesn't recognise herself: 'That last bit you wrote,' Miss Cheeseman complains, 'it isn't ME.' The book is meant to be factual, but Dougal keeps adding fictional details: she was born in Streatham, for example, and not Peckham. 'There's the law of libel to be considered,' Dougal explains. 'A lot of your early associates in Streatham are still alive. If you want to write the true story of your life you can't place it in Streatham.' Despairing of his subject's interference, Dougal throws down the gauntlet. 'I thought it was a work of art you wanted me to write… If you only want to write a straight autobiography you should have got a straight ghost. I'm crooked.' Spark was crooked too, and biography and autobiography are crooked arts. Curriculum Vitae, like all CVs, is built on evasions, and biographies, as Spark well knew, are more than Wikipedia entries. She was a richly imaginative biographer herself, with trenchant views on the genre. In an article about Charlotte Brontë, Spark argued that 'biographical writing which adheres relentlessly to fact' distorts the subject, 'because facts strung together present the truth only where simple people and events are involved, and the only people and events worth reading about are complex'. Mary Shelley was both a complex and a conflicted character, and 'if we are to see the whole woman', Spark insisted, 'we must witness the conflict'. This is similarly the case with Spark, who left instructions throughout her work for her biographer to follow. In Child of Light, which contained the first full-length study of Frankenstein, Spark saw in the scientist and his creature the model for the biographer and his subject. Like Boswell and Johnson, they are linked for eternity. 'There are two central figures – or rather two in one,' she explained in a brilliant analysis of Mary Shelley's first novel, because the Monster and his creator are bound together: 'Frankenstein's plight resides in the Monster, and the Monster's in Frankenstein.' So 'engrossed' are the couple, 'one with the other', that they are no longer individuals but 'facets of the same personality'. When the book became a film, it was unclear, for example, which of them was called Frankenstein. A further reflection on biography can be seen in The Comforters, where Caroline Rose, a writer and Catholic convert recovering, as Spark was, from a breakdown, believes that her thoughts are being recorded by a ghost at an invisible typewriter. 'I have the feeling that someone is writing the story of our lives,' she tells her boyfriend. 'Whoever he is, he haunts me. The author records everything that's important about us.' Increasingly terrified, Caroline insists that, 'I won't be involved in this fictional plot if I can help it. In fact, I'd like to spoil it. If I had my way I'd hold up the action of the novel. It's a duty.' While Spark's first book described the writing of her own biography, her first novel described the horror of being trapped in a book. From the very beginning, she foresaw the end. Frances Wilson's 'Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark' is published by Bloomsbury Circus [See also: English literature's last stand] Related
