Rosalind Porter
Nation In Waiting
And the Land Lay Still is enormous in both length (it’s just under 700 pages) and scale. It’s clear that James Robertson has set out to write something in between the definitive Scottish novel and the definitive novel of Scotland – and to achieve this, he unapologetically renders the recent history of his country as his plot.
The book’s clever organising principle is an exhibition of photographs documenting fifty years of Scottish life curated by Michael Pendreich, the son of one of the most celebrated photographers of his time. His father,
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'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
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'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw