Latest news with #Birlinn
Edinburgh Reporter
10-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Reporter
McDermid on Queen Macbeth mixup
Author Val McDermid said she had to rewrite part of her novel about Lady Macbeth – after discovering there was no paper in Scotland 1,000 years ago. McDermid, 70, has been widely acclaimed for Queen Macbeth, in which she reimagines one of Shakespeare's best known characters. She said she submitted her first draft to her publisher Birlinn, in which the title character and her female companions exchange paper notes, only to be informed of her historical inaccuracy. The former Celebrity Mastermind champion told the latest A Kick Up the Arts podcast how she had to come up with an alternative means of communication for her plot. Macbeth reigned from 1040 until his death in 1057 — five centuries before Scotland's first paper mill was established in Edinburgh in 1590. McDermid said: 'I'd done a fair bit of research and I'd talked to lots of people. My general view when I'm writing about anything set in the past, whether it's 1979 or the 10th century, is focus on what you know, and then string the rest of the story around the facts. 'And so I thought I'd done this really well with Queen Macbeth, handed in my first draft and Hugh Andrew, the publisher at Birlinn, said 'there's a slight problem here, you've got these two characters communicating by sending notes to each other'. ''There was no paper in Scotland'. 'Ahh. So I had to find another way for these characters to communicate with each other.' McDermid, who has now sold more than 19 million books across the world, is renowned for her intellect as well as her bestselling novels. Just turned 17 when she went to Oxford University in 1972, she was one of the youngest ever accepted to read English at St Hilda's College and the first from a Scottish state education. A Celebrity Mastermind champion, she also captained the winning alumnae team for Oxford on the 2016 University Challenge Christmas special and is the recipient of eight honorary degrees. The 'Queen of Crime' told podcast host Nicola Meighan how Shakespeare wrote his 'Scottish Play' to ingratiate himself with James VI & I who was king of Scotland and England when the play was written around 1606. But she insisted the English playwright had got Macbeth all wrong and the maligned 11th century monarch should actually be celebrated for his remarkable achievements. She said: 'Shakespeare was just doing what you had to do to make a living. I don't blame him for it, but he was wrong in almost every respect. 'I mean, the Macbeths ran their country for 17 years. In the medieval period, you didn't keep your kingdom for very long before the next person came along and fought you for it. 'Macbeth did kill Duncan, but he didn't kill him up the back stairs, he killed him on the field of battle. It was quite legitimate. 'So secure was the Macbeth kingdom that they went off to Rome on a pilgrimage, left it in the hands of a regent, came back months later and it was still there. And the alliances they formed within Scotland, the joining together of kingdoms, formed the basis of what's now modern Scotland. 'So we should be celebrating the Macbeths, not writing them off as a guy who is manipulated by a psychopathic woman.' McDermid agreed her novel was 'pretty sexy', adding: 'Well, there's not nothing else to do on those long dark nights. There's no box sets (in the 11th century).' Like this: Like Related
Scotsman
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Adventurer Mollie Hughes on how to build resilience: 'deal with the adversity, move on and grow'
Having climbed Everest twice and skied solo to the South Pole Mollie Hughes knows a thing or two about bouncing back from difficult situations, and in her new book Breathe she shares some of what she's learned. Interview by Roger Cox Sign up to our Scotsman Rural News - A weekly of the Hay's Way tour of Scotland emailed direct to you. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... There is a scene in Breathe, the new book by adventurer Mollie Hughes, which manages to be both achingly poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. It's December 2019, and Hughes is in the early stages of a record-breaking attempt to ski solo to the South Pole. After days on end of being hammered by ferocious gales, she isn't covering anywhere near as much ground as she'd hoped, and she can feel her physical and mental strength starting to ebb. Following a long, dark night of the soul in her tent, hundreds of miles from the nearest human habitation, she decides that what she needs are some affirmations. So the next day, when she hits her first hill and the going gets tough, she starts shouting her new mantra into the wind: 'I am strong! I am inspiring people! I am a f***ing badass!' She may have 'felt stupid' doing it, and in purely physical terms all the shouting did nothing to move her closer to her objective, yet it caused her to crack a smile, raised her spirits, and proved to be a turning point in her expedition. Mollie Hughes crossing the Khumbu Icefall during her first ascent of Mount Everest in 2012 | Contributed Inevitably perhaps, in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic, resilience has become a hot topic. As a society – as a species, even – we had to show a remarkable degree of it in order to bounce back from a period of enormous suffering. At the same time, however, the pandemic left in its wake a severe and worsening mental health crisis, and there have been heated discussions ever since about to what extent resilience (or the lack of it) might be at the heart of the matter. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Resilience is also a key topic in Hughes's book, published this month by Birlinn, and having summited Mount Everest from both sides and skied solo to the South Pole, it's something she's eminently qualified to discuss. Titled Breathe: Life Lessons from the Edge of the World, the book is structured in such a way as to operate both as a memoir and as a series of essays on different areas of psychology. So, for example, in Chapter One, 'Control Fear', Hughes uses the terrifying act of crossing gaping crevasses on the Khumbu Icefall on her first Everest expedition in 2012 to provide context for understanding and mastering the fight-or-flight response; in Chapter Two, 'Find Self-Belief', the story of her ascent to the summit (and the very nearly fatal return) provides a jumping-off point for an exploration of where self-belief comes from and how, aged just 20 and standing five foot four in her socks, she had enough of it to feel she could take on the world's highest mountain. Mollie Hughes on her way to the South Pole | Contributed Hughes focuses on resilience in Chapter Five, alongside an account of the gruelling, gale-lashed start to her 700-mile solo ski from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole. The resilience that got her through that ordeal, she writes, was something she had been building up 'all her life.' She also writes that 'resilience can be learned, moulded and used to create success' and – on a video call from her home in East Lothian – she characterises this as a gradual, continuous process. 'When I was on the south side of Everest aged 21,' she says, 'there's no way I would've had the amount of resilience I needed to go to Antarctica and spend 58 days alone – there's just no way I could have done that at that point in my life. But throughout my twenties, doing more expeditions, challenging myself on the north side of Everest and on other trips, I think I just slowly built up that resilience. Maybe I didn't realise it, actually, until I got to Antarctica – but that's where I really needed it.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Early on in the book, someone asks Hughes's mum if she's scared about her daughter climbing Everest, and she replies 'if anyone can do it, Moll can.' Are some people just naturally more resilient than others? 'Everything in psychology is a mixture of genetics and the experiences we have in life,' she replies, 'but something like resilience is such a learned quality. I think genetically there will be something there – I can't imagine anyone can pinpoint what it is – but it's more about how you're brought up, how you're treated, what's happened to you, the challenges you had throughout your early life.' Mollie Hughes after becoming the youngest woman to ski solo to the South Pole, January 2020 | Contributed According to Hughes, however, simply having lots of difficult or challenging experiences isn't enough to build resilience – it's how you process them that's important. 'It's about experiencing emotions as they come up,' she says, 'be it fear, anxiety, self-doubt or anger, then viewing them as a challenge. How am I going to rebound from this? Deal with the adversity, move on and grow.' Also vital, Hughes believes, is 'recognising the control you have over your own outcomes'. Is this something you can teach? Is there a trick? 'I don't think so,' she says, 'I think it's something we all have to understand and discover. You can tell somebody 'you're in charge of your destiny', and you can tell them that if they can turn their negative thoughts into positive thoughts then everything is going to be so much better, but they have to realise that for themselves.' And so we circle back to positivity. Does Hughes still do her affirmations? She laughs. 'Not as much – I've never needed them as much as I did when I was in Antarctica, but I will if I need to, and I try to teach other people to use them too.'
BBC News
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Scottish crime writer Denzil Meyrick dies aged 59
Bestselling Scottish crime writer Denzil Meyrick has died at the age of former police officer is best known for his series of 11 books about DCI Jim Daley, set in the fictional Scottish town of agent Bell Lomax Moreton said he died at his home near Loch Lomond on Friday. He had suffered from crippling arthritis for years. A spokesperson said: "It was a real honour to work with you, Denzil. Our thoughts are with Fiona and the family at this time." A statement from his publisher Birlinn described him as "one of the finest crime writers of his generation".It added: "Denzil was known for the skill with which he pinned to the page the reality of life on the streets of Glasgow along with the issues of the small rural communities of Scotland, a talent which caught the attention of a wide reading public across the UK and well beyond."With his characteristic humour, unwavering determination and his dry personality Denzil was west of Scotland through and through, and he created unforgettable detective and criminal characters." Crime writing festival Bloody Scotland said it was "sad" to hear the news of his death.A spokesperson wrote on social media: "He graced us with his wry humour and quick wit at the festival in 2017, 2018, 2022 and 2024. "Our thoughts go to his family and friends, especially his wife, Fiona."Meyrick was born in Glasgow on 28 November 1965 and brought up in Campbeltown, Argyll and studying politics, he worked as a police officer in Glasgow for nearly five years in the previously told BBC Scotland News that he owed much of his writing success to his early years with Strathclyde Police."It was a very interesting part of my life and, although I didn't know it at the time, it certainly helped me in terms of the books," he said."You had the full gamut of experience as a Glasgow cop and you did see the rather nastier side of human nature in all its forms."He left the force following a back injury and went on to develop a business career, working as a distillery manager and running a 2012, his first novel Whisky from Small Glasses was published, launching the career of DCI Daley - a cop forced to move from his Glasgow patch to a rural detective goes on to solve a series of gruesome murders with his deputy Brian Scott in the fictitious rural community of Kinloch, inspired by Denzil's home town of Campbeltown.A TV series based on the Daley books is currently in production.
