‘The best-kept secret in modern British literature.’ Andrew Marr A haunting story of violence and love. Calum and Neil are the cone-gatherers – two brothers at work in the forest of a large Scottish estate. But the harmony of their life together is shadowed by the obsessive hatred of Duror, the gamekeeper. Set during the Second World War, Robin Jenkins’ greatest novel is an immensely powerful examination of good and evil, and mankind’s propensity for both. Removed from the destruction...
Introduced by Margery Palmer McCulloch. In writing Just Duffy, a novel set amidst the urban decay of Lanarkshire, Robin Jenkins has created a modern-day Confession of a Justified Sinner. Convinced of his own rectitude, appalled at the moral squalor around him, Duffy declares war on society. Ridiculous, yet horrifying at the same time, his campaign builds to a terrifying conclusion. Beset with ambiguity, Duffy is a ferocious indictment of Calvinistic moral certainty, of a struggle for good...
'Half Scotland sniggered and the other half scowled, when in letters to the Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald, I put forward my suggestion that prisoners in Scottish jails be allowed to wear their kilts as their national birthright if such be their wish.' From his origins as an illegitimate child in the slums of Glasgow, Fergus Lamont sets out to reclaim his inheritance and to remake his identity as soldier, poet and would-be aristocrat. Covering the years from the turn of the...
Thirteen-year-old Tom Curdie, the product of a Glasgow slum, is on probation for theft. His teachers admit that he is clever, but only one, Charlie Forbes, sees something in Tom and his seemingly insolent smile. So, Forbes decides to take Tom on holiday with his own family, with tragic consequences. From one of Scotland's greatest writers, The Changeling explores how goodness and innocence is compromised when faced with the pressures of growing up and becoming part of society.
