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100 Best Scottish Books

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William Laughton Lorimer (trans.) - The New Testament in Scots (1983)

William Laughton Lorimer (trans.) - The New Testament in Scots (1983)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

When the Scots Reformers adopted an English translation of the Bible, a serious blow was dealt to the status of the Scots language which was increasingly banished from the realms of learning and official culture it had occupied since the Middle Ages.

George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

George Orwell wrote 1984 on the Isle of Jura, having moved there to escape the sudden, blistering fame that followed the publication of Animal Farm. This, somehow, makes it a Scottish book. No more tenuous a claim, I suppose, than lines scribbled on…

Alexander McArthur and H. Kingsley Long - No Mean City: A Story of the Glasgow Slums (1935)

Alexander McArthur and H. Kingsley Long - No Mean City: A Story of the Glasgow Slums (1935)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

This cutting edge portrait of working-class life in the worst laid scheme in Scotland sticks out like a sore face. Rarely referred to by its subtitle or complimented for its subtlety, when it was first published Glasgow libraries refused to stock it…

Alexander McCall Smith - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (1998)

Alexander McCall Smith - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (1998)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Some years ago Mma 'Precious' Ramotswe decided to use her inheritance from her beloved father to open a detective agency in Botswana. Having been met with scepticism by her bank manager ('Can women be detectives?'), she put together her assets (a tiny…

Christopher Brookmyre - One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night (1999)

Christopher Brookmyre - One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night (1999)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Not just another news-hound turned novelist, Christopher Brookmyre, like the very best who have made the shift from fact to fiction, draws on what's best in journalism: pace, pitch and pressure. His descriptions are concise and his dialogue snappy as he…

Catherine Carswell - Open the Door! (1920)

Catherine Carswell - Open the Door! (1920)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

In Alasdair Gray's Lanark, Duncan Thaw claims that 'imaginatively, Glasgow exists as a music hall song and a few bad novels. That's all we've given to the world outside. It's all we've given to ourselves.' Open the Door!, whose author is probably best…

Andrew O'Hagan - Our Fathers (1999)

Andrew O'Hagan - Our Fathers (1999)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Our Fathers is a book about politics, religion, urban regeneration and decay, and identity, both personal and national. More than anything else, however, to me it is a novel about men. Andrew O'Hagan has got inside the psyche of the west of Scotland…

AL Kennedy - Paradise (2004)

A.L. Kennedy - Paradise (2004)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Alison Kennedy is the kind of writer who gets her contemporaries frothing at the mouth, struggling for ways to describe their admiration. Paradise is an excellent example of why, and a bruising, emotional experience. Kennedy is a master of internal…

Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Jean Brodie is one of the most complex characters in modern literature. As a teacher, she is passionate about her pupils, even if her methods are frowned upon by the authorities. This makes her a rebel, and we should love her for that. But her influence…

James Hogg - The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)

James Hogg - The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is one of cinema’s Holy Grails. Plans, scripts, outlines and pitches lie in archives, collections and bottom drawers from Holyrood to Hollywood. Hardly a writer who knows the book – myself…

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