Literary Scotland

Stephen Mulrine(b.1937), poet, teacher, playwright andtranslator, an encourager of other writersand artists, author of the classic children’spoem ‘The Coming of the Wee Malkies’. 47Bud Neill(1911–70), cartoonist and author of theLobey Dosser strips for the Glasgow EveningTimes. 47Ian Niall/ John McNeillie (1916–2002): Niall orMcNeillie was a novelist of great distinctionand a writer about the animal, elemental,non-human world of immense, sustainedaccuracy. His novels, Wigtown Ploughman(1939) and No Resting Place (1948) andautobiographies, A Galloway Childhood(1967), are treasures. Andrew McNeillie’sbiography of his father: Ian Niall: Part of HisLife (2007), is published by Clutag Press. 56S Neil Munro(1863–1930), novelist and story-writer,significant for a series of visually impressiveand morally pessimistic novels and manyperennially-popular comic stories, especiallythe Para Handy tales (first published in bookform 1906). 31Mungo Park(1771–1806), explorer of Africa, memoirist,friend of Walter Scott, and subject of abiography by Lewis Grassic Gibbon ( JamesLeslie Mitchell). 57Don Paterson(b.1963), poet. His collections include NilNil (1993), God’s Gift to Women (1997),Landing Light (2003) and Rain (2009). 37The WritersRosamunde Pilcher(b. 1924), a mainstream romantic novelistwith a wide international readership. Bornin Cornwall she has lived for many yearsin Perthshire. Several of her later novelsare set in Scotland. September (1990)deals affectionately with country life stylesocial and sexual complications in a lightlyfictionalised rural Perthshire. 25Beatrix Potter(1866–1943), popular children’s writer whoholidayed in Perthshire, creator of numerousanimal-characters whose adventures, habitsof conduct and appearance, are among themost memorable in all children’s fiction. 23Allan Ramsay(1685–1758), poet and playwright, editor ofcrucial anthologies such as The Ever Green(1724), bringing back into circulation workby poets of earlier centuries; author of theseminal play The Gentle Shepherd (1796). 40S Ian Rankin(b.1960), popular crime genre novelist,his books address contemporary historicalevents through the last decades of thetwentieth century, mainly in Edinburgh butalso in Glasgow and further afield, bluntlyexposing the crime-strata of the economy.1 39 41Thomas the Rhymer(c.1220–98), poet, and the main character inNigel Tranter’s clever and entertaining novel,True Thomas (1981). 56James Robertson(b.1958), novelist and poet, publisher ofScots-language books, his novel Joseph53