News of the Dead

Product Information

In 2013, James Robertson wrote a story a day: 365 tales, each one 365 words long. They were published in one volume the following year. Some stories were nothing more than light sketches, pithy squibs and fleeting impressions. However, many made a little go a long way and showcased experiments in form and a diverse array of subject matter, whether ballads, monologues, fake obituaries, replayed dreams or restyled fairy tales. In one entry, a writer describes his more inventive fables: “They’re the stories I let out in the open, the ones I slip off the leash.” The stories are of a modern day old lady, and how she got there; a three hundred year old diary of a traveller to the glen, and a historical tract about a saint from the Pictish times which said traveller is translating.

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

The News of the Dead is a cleverly almost classicesque written piece which is thought provoking and moving. Delving into the people of our past and the stories that are passed down through generations. These stories are the way in which people are remembered for years after they leave this earth. But how much of these stories are true? And as they are passed down throughout the generations and rewritten, how much is added to it by the new narrator of its time. 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.” These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community.Isobel McDonald is Curator of Social History at Glasgow Museums. Having originally studied archaeology at Edinburgh University, she had expected to go into fieldwork, however a chance conversation with a friend about job opportunities at the British Mu … 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: 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. 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. The first of these stories is of the Christian hermit Conach. In ancient Pictland, Conach contemplates God and nature. For a while he is accompanied by Talorg who serves him. Conach performs miracles and prepares himself for sacrifice. And after his death, legends about him are written by an anonymous person in the Book of Conach.

News of the Dead by James Robertson - Penguin Books Australia

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. 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. . .' What a marvellous novel this is. Three different time periods mostly presented to us though the Book of Conach, the journal of Gibb, and Maja’s letter. Each have found refuge in Glen Conach, each is known to us through stories presented. And each story is incomplete. What do we really know about Conach? How much can we rely on Gibb’s incomplete journal? And, while Maja is still alive, her own early childhood is lost to her. 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.”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. 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. To each and every one and to all creatures of all kinds, a place of refuge and tranquility is assigned; and if that place be found in this life then blessed is the finder, and if not be found then hope itself is the name of it, and the only door that closes upon hope is called death.’

News of the Dead by James Robertson - Episode guide - BBC

Reading Scotland is an innovative Edinburgh International Book Festival project to find new ways to understand Scotland in a post-Covid era. Six Scottish authors were each invited to work closely with a filmmaker to create a short film inspired by their book. The films will be presented at the Book Festival this month alongside a conversation with each of the authors. This project is intended as a collaborative, internationally-minded exploration of how new Scottish writing and film-making can help citizens understand this country, its writing and its identity. Reading Scotland is supported by the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund. Robertson is telling us many things as he weaves his tale round the various inhabitants of the glen over the last thousand or so years. He is telling us that the oral tradition is important. Of course, some details have been forgotten, some details embellished and some invented. The mythology of our past forms us as much as the actual events. We were not witnesses of the actual events. We have to rely on documents which may or may not be accurate. Oral accounts can be lost, unless they are recorded at which point, they become a document.James Robertson will be talking about News of the Dead live onstage at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Monday, August 16 at 5.30pm 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. In the early nineteenth century, self-promoting antiquarian Charles Kirkliston Gibb has himself invited to Glen Conach, to the big house where the laird, his lady and daughter live. Gibb undertakes to translate the Book of Conach. It is in Gibb’s interest to prolong the translation for as long as possible: he has nowhere else to stay. And in time he becomes involved with Jessamine, the laird’s daughter. Jessamine convinces Gibb to include some stories from the local oral tradition. 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 . 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.