Monday, 14 January 2008

How Scottish literature was saved


Well, it was saved here, in a manner of speaking. Following my page 3 report in the Times on 22 December, which revealed how the Library of Congress had effectively abolished Scottish literature, this Saturday the Times published the follow-up: in the face of fierce opposition from Scotland, the Library of Congress had backed down on its proposal to abolish around 40 category headings and sub-headings.

This story ran as the page one splash in the Scottish edition of Times, with a page five lead. This is the link to the Times splash in Scotland which ran on an inside page of the national edition.

Times splash

I also wrote up a piece for the Washington Post, which appears in today's edition. You can read it here:

Washington Post

The story in the entry below is the long Page 5 piece from the Times Scottish edition.

The original Times story, which revealed the Library of Congress decision to abandon its Scottish literature headings is here:

Scottish authors are 'English'

The excellent illustration above is by Jonathan Williams, and is used as the cover for Scotland's Books, Robert Crawford's history of Scottish literature, published by Penguin. I will issue a beer token to the first person to name all the pictured writers. For more of Jonathan's work, go here:

Blazing fruit

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