Assoc for Scottish LiteratureJun 13, 2025

Help! Murder! Polis!

“Whether buried in the blackhouses of Lewis or the shuttered shipyards of Glasgow, Scotland’s mysteries speak to specific legacies which have shaped the land- & cityscapes that house its crimes”

THE BOTTLE IMP goes on the trail of Scottish crime writing…

1/8

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/06/help-murder-polis/

#Scottish #literature #crimewriting #crimefiction

Help! Murder! Polis! - The Bottle Imp

Detective works were once seen as London’s domain – imperial in tone and centrally composed, unfolding in gentleman’s clubs and smoky drawing rooms. Yet long before fictional fact-finders patrolled Baker Street or puzzled over locked-room mysteries in Mayfair, the real work of modern urban policing was being pioneered further north – not in Scotland Yard […]

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Show threadAssoc for Scottish LiteratureJun 13, 2025

“Since the early twentieth century, Gaelic writers have been experimenting with crime elements and trying to write in the genre…”

Petra Johana Poncarová investigates crime fiction in Gaelic in the 20th & 21st centuries

2/8

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/06/s-aobhar-a-bhais-soilleir-an-clar-aodainn-crime-writing-in-gaelic/

#Scottish #literature #crime #crimefiction #crimewriting #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

‘’S aobhar a bhàis soilleir an clàr-aodainn’: Crime Writing in Gaelic - The Bottle Imp

Interest in crime in Gaelic literature can be traced far back into songs and tales, both anonymous and attributed, that deal with violence and felony, from well-known historical events, such as the Keppoch murder, to local incidents, but the history of focused crime fiction writing is much shorter. Since the early twentieth century, Gaelic writers […]

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“I began to sense the intimate connection between architecture and crime fiction. If the house is, in Le Corbusier’s famous phrase, a machine for living in, then the room, in crime fiction, is a box for murder”

Liam McIlvanney cases the Architecture of Scottish Crime Fiction, from Robert Louis Stevenson to Abir Mukherjee

3/8

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/06/more-books-about-buildings-and-crime-the-architecture-of-scottish-crime-fiction/

#Scottish #literature #crime #crimefiction #crimewriting #architecture #buildings

‘More Books About Buildings and Crime’: The Architecture of Scottish Crime Fiction - The Bottle Imp

Shortly after moving into our current house in Dunedin – a house named ‘Dunnottar’ by a possibly homesick previous occupant – I found the architectural blueprints in a drawer. As I studied the floorplans, with their doorways and windows and hallways and stairs, what popped into my mind was Agatha Christie, closely followed by the […]

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Jun 13, 2025 at 1:20pmWeb
Show threadAssoc for Scottish LiteratureJun 13, 2025

“To study Josephine Tey’s literary connections is to draw out a different picture of the inter-war & post-war Scottish literary scene: one that foregrounds women, & draws out forgotten areas of popularity”

Jennifer Morag Henderson uncovers the mysteries of Goldan Age crime queen Josephine Tey

4/8

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/06/josephine-tey-mystery-writer/

#Scottish #literature #crime #crimefiction #crimewriting #20thcentury #womenwriters

Josephine Tey: Mystery Writer - The Bottle Imp

Josephine Tey is best-remembered today as a crime novelist. Born in Inverness in 1896, Tey was the author of eight crime novels, of which six feature her detective Inspector Alan Grant. Her book The Daughter of Time, a unique exploration of the historical mystery of whether Richard III killed the Princes in the Tower, was […]

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Show threadAssoc for Scottish LiteratureJun 13, 2025

“You don’t just start trying to heelflip. Tricks build on other tricks. There’s a natural order, it’s like a branching tree. . To learn to heelflip you first need to be able to ollie.”

Callum McSorley – author & proud adult skateboarder – on “two to make it true”: facing your fears for one more try…

5/8

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/06/two-to-make-it-true-what-i-talk-about-when-i-talk-about-skateboarding/

#Scottish #literature #crime #crimefiction #crimewriting #writing #WritingCommunity #skateboarding

Two to make it true: what I talk about when I talk about skateboarding - The Bottle Imp

This isn’t a confession: I’m a proud adult skateboarder.  A 35-year-old grown man, married with children, with a job (sort of) and a house, and I love cruising about on a wee plank of wood with wheels on it. I love learning new tricks and I love the lingo – as an author, patter is, […]

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Show threadAssoc for Scottish LiteratureJun 13, 2025

“[Robert Louis Stevenson’s EDINBURGH: PICTURESQUE NOTES] suggests alternative means of mapping the city through the visceral, physical intensity of Stevenson’s descriptions. We can hear the sound of his city echoing through the centuries”

We also have Kirsti Wishart on Robert Louis Stevenson & the psychogeography of 19th-century Edinburgh

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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/06/like-a-great-disordered-heart-robert-louis-stevenson-in-the-city/

#Scottish #literature #RobertLouisStevenson #Edinburgh #19thcentury #Victorian #psychogeography #cities

‘Like a Great Disordered Heart’: Robert Louis Stevenson in the City - The Bottle Imp

In a review of two new histories of Edinburgh, Stuart Kelly bemoaned the strange absence of literary explorers charting the city’s streets. ‘Narrating any city is an endless task, and it does surprise me that there is no psychogeography, no Iain Sinclair, for Edinburgh. We have no books that encompass Gilmerton Cove, the Craigentinny Marbles, […]

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Show threadAssoc for Scottish LiteratureJun 13, 2025

“Graham’s ‘Untidy Dreadful Table’, a poem that pictures itself doubled & mutated on the other side of the page… could likewise be said to traffic in a form of translation”

Samuel Martin confronts layouts, facing pages, literary translations, & WS Graham

7/8

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2025/06/facing-tables-with-w-s-graham/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #translation #literarytranslation #WSGraham

Facing Tables with W. S. Graham - The Bottle Imp

Across the many fragmented chapters of This Little Art, Kate Briggs compiles a playful and affectionate portrait of the literary translator as ‘would-be writer’ – in other words, a reader so powerfully swayed by a given text that they feel impelled to write it all over again, only this time in a different language. Briggs embraces […]

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Show threadAssoc for Scottish LiteratureJun 13, 2025

All this & a tall pile of new book reviews too!

8/8

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/issues/issue-36/?cat=25

#Scottish #literature #books #bookreview

Book Reviews Archives - The Bottle Imp

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Show threadPeter BrownJun 13, 2025
@scotlit the plaque opposite the university is a wonderful window on the workings of Stevenson’s mind