100 Best Scottish Books
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Tobias Smollett - The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Tobias Smollett's last and best novel is misleadingly named. Clinker - a comically over-enthusiastic Scottish manservant - does not appear until a third of the way through the book, and is often conspicuous by his absence. Instead, the central figure is…
Violet Jacob - Flemington (1911)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Flemington is a finely wrought historical adventure written by a poet. It belongs to a Scottish tradition reaching from Scott through Stevenson and John Buchan, who described Flemington as 'the best Scots romantic novel since The Master of Ballantrae'.
Agnes Owens - For the Love of Willie (1998)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
It is often remarked that Scottish scribes have a particular proclivity for mining the dark and devilish in their fiction. Agnes Owens' For the Love of Willie displays all the pitch-black humour and acute observation that have characterised her work…
Ian Fleming - From Russia, With Love (1957)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
'My name is Bond, James Bond.' There are few characters of the 20th century that can boast the kind of global renown of Ian Fleming's British secret agent. Widely regarded as the best of Fleming's novels (JFK rated it among his top ten favourite books…
Dorothy Dunnett - The Game of Kings (1961)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Dorothy Dunnett started writing books having complained to her husband that she had run out of things to read. Her debut, The Game of Kings, appeared at the end of 18 months fuelled by the extensive research that would characterise all of her historical…
Denise Mina - Garnethill (1998)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
There was a time when the Glasgow-set detective story meant little more than the adventures of one craggy-faced chief inspector, handy with his fists, the originator of that oft-recited catchphrase: 'There's been a murrrder … ' From the late 90s…
James Frazer - The Golden Bough (1890)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Though largely debunked as anthropology, the legacy of James Frazer's The Golden Bough remains incalculable. Tracing humanity's belief in magic through religion to scientific rationality, across a staggering array of ancient and developing cultures…
Nancy Brysson Morrison - The Gowk Storm (1933)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
The Gowk Storm is the story of three close-knit sisters, the daughters of a minister, living in a remote parish on the fringes of the Highlands. Narrated by Lisbet, the youngest sister, the novel is written mainly in English, but given a strong sense of…
Bernard MacLaverty - Grace Notes (1997)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Writing outside the gender barrier is a tough business. There's always the risk that the relationship between author and subject strays too close to that of puppeteer and marionette. To attempt this creative leap demonstrates a writer's confidence in…
George Mackay Brown - Greenvoe (1972)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Transposing the Orcadian rhythms of his critically-acclaimed poetry to a prose work which focuses on the dissipation of an island community proved a masterstroke for George Mackay Brown. In the absence of any real plot, we find ourselves embroiled in…
Alistair MacLean - The Guns of Navarone (1957)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
It will doubtless surprise many to find this most pulp of World War II action-adventures included in a compendium of Scotland's most accomplished fiction. But cast out Gregory Peck and J Lee Thompson's plodding, waterlogged film adaptation from your…
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Before the Empire - the midnight queues round the block, the merchandise, the films and 800-page sequels - there was The Philosopher's Stone. It's easy to forget just what a phenomenon it is, and why. The story begins with Hagrid taking an 11-year-old…
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness (1902)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
In the heyday of British Imperialism, Blackwood's Magazine in Edinburgh published a great number of stories of life and adventures in various colonial outposts. Much of this dated very quickly and is of only minor historical interest today. A novel…
John Prebble - The Highland Clearances (1963)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Although born in Middlesex, John Prebble grew up in Sutherland, a town in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It was amongst the descendants of Scottish emigrants - offspring of the crofters who had been forced to leave the Highlands by landlords…
Ali Smith - Hotel World (2001)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
‘Woooooooohooooooo what a fall what a soar what a plummet what a dash into dark into light …’ So opens Hotel World, as Sara Wilby’s ghost remembers her body plunging to its death down a lift shaft in a branch of the Global Hotel chain. Right away we…
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
‘Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!’ I have read my copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles so many times that the pages have gone soft with much turning, but Dr Mortimer’s words to Holmes never fail to thrill me. This is where…
George Douglas Brown - The House with the Green Shutters (1901)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Oh God, what was I thinking? Why did I sign up to review a book that has a boring title, is more than 100 years old, was a one-hit wonder, and is beloved of crusty old academics who boff on about its model of classical Greek tragedy? It’s got to be…
Willa Muir - Imagined Corners (1931)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Willa Muir may be one of the lesser known names on this list, but that's due more to her date of birth (and perhaps her husband's name) than her undoubted talent. One of Scotland's foremost feminists, a brilliant, experimental psychology student and…
Luke Sutherland - Jelly Roll (1998)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
The manner of his prose has been compared to Keith Richards' way with a riff. However, one suspects Luke Sutherland would probably prefer a nod to Charlie Watts, the author's penchant being for the style and swing of jazz over the swagger and savagery…
Chaim Bermant - Jericho Sleep Alone (1964)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Part Bildungsroman, part hymn to the city of Glasgow, Jericho Sleep Alone is without a doubt the finest book written about the Scots-Jewish experience. From Bar Mitzvah to an unfulfilling teaching career, Jericho Eli Broock finds himself a perennial…
James Robertson - Joseph Knight (2003)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Scots writers often mine the country's tumultuous history to make sense of contemporary concerns. With his bestselling debut novel The Fanatic, James Robertson became immediately established as a creator of gripping and innovative historical fiction…
Various - King James Bible: Authorised Version (1611)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
It was the only memorable and enduring thing that came out of the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, which was called to consider the demands of the Puritans for the reform of the Church of England. King James I or VI, depending on which side of the…
Alasdair Gray - Lanark (1981)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Alasdair Gray’s Lanark is one of the finest novels written in English. Its unique blend of realism and wild surrealism was greeted with great acclaim when it was first published, especially abroad. In France, for example, it sold out within four weeks…
Ronald Frame - The Lantern Bearers (1999)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
Until five years ago, had you scanned the Scottish Fiction section of any popular bookseller, chances are your eyes wouldn't have alighted on any work by Ronald Frame. Despite having published 13 books as well as groundbreaking plays and screenplays…
James Boswell - The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
1 Jan 2005
100 Best Scottish Books of all Time
It may seem a strange thing to rate an author who begins his masterpiece with a famous demurral of his own country (‘I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it’) as one of Scotland’s greatest writers. But still, there it is; James Boswell’s…
