iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Alex Linklater

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 02/04/2026

George MacDonald Fraser on Desert Island Discs in 2001 – available on BBC Sounds 6/6 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

bbc.co.uk

BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, George MacDonald Fraser

Sue Lawley's castaway is writer George MacDonald Fraser

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Reposted by Alex Linklater

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 02/04/2026

“At one moment when President Richard Nixon was taking part in his inauguration ceremony, he appeared flanked by Lyndon Johnson & Billy Graham… it was one of those historical coincidences which send a little shudder through the mind” George MacDonald Fraser, THE STEEL BONNETS (1971) #history 💙📚 4/6

At one moment when President Richard Nixon was taking part in his inauguration ceremony, he appeared flanked by Lyndon Johnson and Billy Graham. To anyone familiar with Border history it was one of those historical coincidences which send a little shudder through the mind: in that moment, thousands of miles and centuries in time away from the Debateable Land, the threads came together again; the descendants of three notable Anglo-Scottish Border tribes-families who lived and fought within a few miles of each other on the West Marches in Queen Elizabeth's time were standing side by side, and it took very little effort of the imagination to replace the custom-made suits with leather jacks or backs-and-breasts. Only a political commentator would be tactless enough to pursue the resemblance to Border reivers beyond the physical, but there the similarity is strong.

Lyndon Johnson's is a face and figure that everyone in Dumfriesshire knows; the lined, leathery Northern head and rangy, rather loose-jointed frame belong to one of the commonest Border types. The only mystery is when the "" which distinguishes Border Johnstones from the others of the name was dropped from his surname. Billy Graham has frequently advertised his Scottishness, perhaps a little thoughtlessly, since there are more Grahams on the southern side of the line than on the northern, but again, the face is familiar.

Richard Nixon, however, is the perfect example. The blunt, heavy features, the dark complexion, the burly body, and the whole air of dour hardness are as typical of the Anglo-Scottish frontier as the Roman Wall. Take thirty years off his age and you could put him straight into the front row of the Hawick scrum and hope to keep out of his way. It is difficult to think of any face that would fit better under a steel bonnet.

Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, & Billy Graham at Nixon’s inauguration, 20 January 1969.

Photo: William C. Beall, Washington Daily News. Courtesy of the DC Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

Billy Graham stands at a podium, reading a text. His left hand grips the podium and his right is raised slightly in front of him, his hand clenched into a fist. Richard Nixon looks over Graham's right shoulder. Lyndon Johnson stands to Nixon's right. Other figures in formal dress stand, some with bowed heads.

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Reposted by Alex Linklater

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 02/04/2026

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) – author, historian, journalist, screenwriter – was born #OTD, 2 April, 1925. @michaeljecksauthor.bsky.social discusses GMF’s “dedication to strongly researched stories, built firmly on a bedrock of historical fact” 🎂🧵 💙📚 1/6 www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/not...

rlf.org.uk

Not A Serious Writer

Novelist Michael Jecks investigates the historical realism of George MacDonald Fraser. Harry Flashman is a fictional character borrowed from a novel who purports to be telling the truth about real, hi...

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Reposted by Alex Linklater

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 22/03/2026

Alastair Reid translated many Latin American writers, in particular the #poetry of Borges & Neruda. In this talk from 2009, he explores the hazards & occasional felicities of #translation, focusing on the influence of Borges, & of the nature of a bilingual reality 3/4 www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpU2...

youtube.com

Alastair Reid • Mysteries of Translation

YouTube video by Wolf Humanities Center

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Reposted by Alex Linklater

Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

"Skeleton of the future" shurely? Red granite and black diorite, with the blue Of the labradorite crystals gleaming like precious stones In the light reflected from the snow; and behind them The eternal lightning of Lenin's bones.

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Wonderful - unique - conversation between a French scholar-poet who writes in Scots and a Czech scholar-poet who writes in Gaelic. Paul and Petra provide a fresh European perspective on c20th Scotland, with beautiful recordings of Derick Thomson reading his poetry, and Petra hers

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

This is the first thing that has really made me laugh on this site

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Reposted by Alex Linklater

Scott Lyall @scottlyall.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

My review of Modern Irish and Scottish Literature by @richardalanbarlow.bsky.social is now published by @mfsjournal.bsky.social. Richard's book is definitely worth a read if you are interested in modern Scottish and/or Irish literature, revivalism, and modernism. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

muse.jhu.edu

Project MUSE - Modern Irish and Scottish Literature: Connections, Contrasts, Celticisms by Richard Alan Barlow (review)

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Reposted by Alex Linklater

Kirsti @kst.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

R.S. Thomas was a 20th c Welsh poet & Anglican priest whose most famous poem, The White Tiger, uses the analogy of a tiger trapped in a cage for human perception of the divine-- "agonizing over immensities that will not return."

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Richard Leonard (17.27.30) produces the most impressive MacDiarmidian rhetoric in this Holyrood motion. He repeats the myth that MacD was expelled from the National Party for being a communist but gets the splendidly mad tenor of the politics just right www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/memb...

scottishparliament.tv

Members' Business — S6M-16290 Clare Adamson: MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank Cottage, a Scottish Cultural Treasure | Scottish Parliament TV

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Is theft of stolen property still theft? AI copyright issues blown open. Students of TS Eliot's borrowing-stealing audit of major writers take note. For @asls.org.uk and other Scotlit folk, Hugh MacDiarmid is surely the pre-eminant (con-?) artist of the "perfect" (and other kinds of) poem

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Damn Edwin Muir could write a poetic eulogy

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Reposted by Alex Linklater

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 11/01/2025

Dear Ann, wherever you are Since you lately learnt to die, You are this unsetting star That shines unchanged in my eye… Born in Kirkwall, Ann Scott-Moncrieff was a friend of the Orkney poet & translator Edwin Muir, who wrote this poem for her when she died. 7/7

Edwin Muir
FOR ANN SCOTT-MONCRIEFF (1914–1943)

Dear Ann, wherever you are
Since you lately learnt to die,
You are this unsetting star
That shines unchanged in my eye;
So near, inaccessible,
Absent and present so much
Since out of the world you fell,
Fell from hearing and touch—
So near. But your mortal tongue
Used for immortal use,
The grace of a woman young,
The air of an early muse,
The wealth of the chambered brow
And soaring flight of your eyes:
These are no longer now.
Death has a princely prize.

You who were Ann much more
Than others are that or this,
Extravagant over the score
To be what only is,
Would you not still say now
What you once used to say
Of the great Why and How,
On that or the other day?
For though of your heritage
The minority here began,
Now you have come of age
And are entirely Ann.

Under the years’ assaults,
In the storm of good and bad,
You too had the faults
That Emily Brontë had,
Ills of body and soul,
Of sinner and saint and all
Who strive to make themselves whole,
Smashed to bits by the Fall.
Yet ‘the world is a pleasant place’
I can hear your voice repeat,
While the sun shone in your face
Last summer in Princes Street.

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Reposted by Alex Linklater

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 11/01/2025

Orcadian author Ann Scott-Moncrieff (1914–1943) was born #OTD, 11 January. Lesley Findlay, her daughter, talks about Ann’s life in Orkney, her writing, & her children’s stories – recently republished by Scotland Street Press 1/7 www.scotlandstreetpress.com/journal/who-...

scotlandstreetpress.com

Scotland Street Press | Who was Ann Scott-Moncrieff?

Lesley Findlay, daughter of Orcadian author Ann Scott-Moncrieff talks to Scotland Street Press about Ann’s life in Orkney, her writing and her Children's stories which have been republished as a colle...

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Reposted by Alex Linklater

Alex Massie @alexmassie.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

The January exhibition of Turner watercolours in Edinburgh is an annual treat. Made even lovelier this year because, for the first time, the national galleries of Ireland and Scotland have swapped their Vaughan bequests. New Turners!

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

Man, you rational folks on @bsky.app have been missing all the crazy shit on X-formerly-Twitter. Nigel just lost $100m by saying something sensible and Elon is having a globally public mental health episode and everyone is shrieking uncontrollably and nothing is happening in reality!

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

The author who, more than any other British writer, defined the idea of literary academia: both its great intellectual dreams and its comic absurdities. It's a Smaller World now. Is the death of David Lodge a metaphor or a metonym? RIP

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

Depressingly on-the-nail account of the state of Scottish education

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Reposted by Alex Linklater

Liam McIlvanney @liammcilvanney.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Reading James VI and I’s Daemonologie. Seeing Macbeth everywhere: ‘And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of Darkness tell us truths; Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s In deepest consequence…

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Just as @mrewanmorrison.bsky.social was ahead of the field with pandemic fiction and novels about ideological capture, so he is the pioneer of AI literature in Scotland. Terrifying, engrossing, masterful. The most inventive and original writer we have.

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

“Deep down in him there is something that comes from his roots in island Christianity.” (Free Kirk factionalism and the Disruption?) Excellent piece from @mikewadejourno - soon to leave @timesscotland, a loss to Scottish journalism. Ochone. www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/...

thetimes.com

Donald Trump’s Hebridean cousin: ‘I’m sure he’s lovely, deep down’

As the president-elect divides opinion globally, his relatives on the Isle of Lewis reflect on his Scottish heritage

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Alexander Hamilton wrote nicely about the Senate's power to reject the president's "appointment of unfit characters,” including those “who had no other merit than that … of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of [the president’s] pleasure.”

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Alex Linklater @alexlinklater.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

@leaskyd.bsky.social did what you suggested David - here I am - and note you have 364 followers after posting 0. Not a bad ratio of followers-to-contribution. A proportional infinity, no less!

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