By: Rachel Brook,
on 8/12/2016
The Edinburgh Fringe is in full swing with over 3,000 arts events coming to the vibrant Scottish capital over the next few weeks. With the International Book Festival kicking off on the 13th, we’ve compiled our favourite bookish spots around the city for you to squeeze into your schedule.
The post 5 Edinburgh attractions for booklovers [slideshow] appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Kim Behrens,
on 7/21/2016
As the beginnings of large-scale travel and tourism through Scotland began within fifteen or twenty years of the battle of Culloden, it might have been expected that the conflict would become an early site of memory.
The post Culloden, tourism, and British memory appeared first on OUPblog.
By: KatherineS,
on 1/25/2016
"�I may say, of myself and Copperfield, in words we have sung together before now, that
'We twa hae run about the braes
And pu’d the gowans fine'
'—in a figurative point of view—on several occasions. I am not exactly aware,' said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll in his voice, and the old indescribable air of saying something genteel, ‘what gowans may be, but I have no doubt that Copperfield and myself would have frequently taken a pull at them, if it had been feasible.'"
Over the years since it was written, many millions must have sung ‘Auld Lang Syne’ (roughly translated as ‘days long past’) while sharing Mr Micawber’s ignorance of what of its words actually mean.
The post The truth about “Auld Lang Syne” appeared first on OUPblog.
By: KatherineS,
on 6/8/2015
Historical fiction, the form Walter Scott is credited with inventing, is currently experiencing something of a renaissance. It has always been popular, of course, but it rarely enjoys high critical esteem. Now, however, thanks to Hilary Mantel’s controversial portraits of Thomas Cromwell (in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies), James Robertson’s multi-faceted studies of Scotland’s past (in The Fanatic and And the Land Lay Still), and Richard Flanagan’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize, the genre has recovered serious ground, shrugging off the dubious associations of bag-wig, bodice, and the dressing-up box.
The post Before Wolf Hall: How Sir Walter Scott invented historical fiction appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Melissa Wiley,
on 2/26/2014
These posts are going to get very short all of a sudden because Rose and Beanie have departed for a week with my parents. I’ll miss our daily Poetry 180 readings. To make up for it, I made sure to catch today’s Writer’s Almanac entry. “Yard Sale” by George Bilgere. And it seems it’s Christopher Marlowe’s birthday! He was only 29 when he died, can you believe it?
Early morning: Howards End.
After lunch: Howards End Is on the Landing. Standout bits: This quote from Sir Walter Scott:
Also read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen’s very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.
Oh how I love to hear writers talking about what other writers can pull off that they themselves can’t.
And just a note to myself to look up Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower. Hill’s description certainly sells it. Also loved this line Hill quotes from a letter Fitzgerald wrote her, on the delights of being a grandmother:
It is such a joy to have someone who wishes to sit with you on a sofa and listen to a watch tick.
By: RachelM,
on 11/30/2012
30 November is St Andrew’s Day, but who was St Andrew? The apostle and patron saint of Scotland, Andrew was a fisherman from Capernaum in Galilee. He is rather a mysterious figure, and you can read more about him in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. St Andrew’s Day is well-established and widely celebrated by Scots around the world. To mark the occasion, we have selected quotations from some of Scotland’s most treasured wordsmiths, using the bestselling Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and the Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.
J. M. Barrie 1860-1937 Scottish writer
From the lone shielding of the misty island
Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas –
Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides!
John Galt 1779-1839 Scottish writer
O Caledonia! Stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Sir Walter Scott 1771-1832 Scottish novelist
O flower of Scotland, when will we see your like again,
that fought and died for your wee bit hill and glen
and stood against him, proud Edward’s army,
and sent him homeward tae think again.
Roy Williamson 1936-90 Scottish folksinger and musician
I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
She’s as pure as the lily in the dell.
She’s as sweet as the heather, the bonnie bloomin’ heather –
Mary, ma Scotch Bluebell.
Harry Lauder 1870-1950 Scottish music-hall entertainer
My poems should be Clyde-built, crude and sure,
With images of those dole-deployed
To honour the indomitable Reds,
Clydesiders of slant steel and angled cranes;
A poetry of nuts and bolts, born, bred,
Embattled by the Clyde, tight and impure.
Douglas Dunn 1942– Scottish poet
Who owns this landscape?
The millionaire who bought it or
the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning
with a deer on his back?
Norman McCaig 1910–96 Scottish poet
The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations fifth edition was published in October this year and is edited by Susan Ratcliffe. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations seventh edition was published in 2009 to celebrate its 70th year. The ODQ is edited by Elizabeth Knowles.
The Oxford DNB online has made the above-linked lives free to access for a limited time. The ODNB is freely available via public libraries across the UK. Libraries offer ‘remote access’ allowing members to log-on to the complete dictionary, for free, from home (or any other computer) twenty-four hours a day. In addition to 58,000 life stories, the ODNB offers a free, twice monthly biography podcast with over 130 life stories now available. You can also sign up for Life of the Day, a topical biography delivered to your inbox, or follow @ODNB on Twitter for people in the news.
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By: John Mark Boling,
on 11/28/2007
Gerard Donovan, author of Julius Winsome and Schopenhauer's Telescope, offers a bold and chilling statement on drugs, dealers, doctors, and the American condition in his new novel Sunless.
"The next morning, when I was getting my mother her morning dose, I slipped another pill into my mouth to layer the first, to keep the momentum going. I did that for a few days as each day crossed namelessly into the next. Could have been days, could have been weeks. The pills kept me pressed down and out of any place. Sometimes my mind seemed attached to my brain at the end of a string. I was on one side of the room, what I felt was the other side of the room, this is what I mean. Under a heap of blankets I waited for the shadows and lights that filled my dreams. One night I opened the windows wide to stay awake and the room filled with a white pale light from the salt and lit my lungs. I burned a candle and put it on the window sill to warm my face while I watched the dark. To anyone driving past I'd look like a spirit, a face in a long night with no body.
If they knew me they might say, That's Jimmy, he has no body. He puts himself at the window to be seen, even in a dream."
By: John Mark Boling,
on 11/7/2007
Two new offerings from Gerard Donovan this month: the critically acclaimed and deeply beloved Julius Winsome in paperback, and Sunless, a new novel (from which we will hear much more on The Winged Elephant) that Mr. Donovan has revised and rewritten from an earlier incarnation published in the UK as Doctor Salt. Looking ahead to 2008, Overlook will publish a stunning collection of Gerard Donovan's short stories, Young Irelanders, about his native and not-always-green Emerald Isle.
