A Lesson the Value of Perseverance: NASA and the Stirling Engine
23 Feb '21
In the week NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars, Birlinn MD Hugh Andrew looks at another case of long-range perseverance with a NASA...
Tea Time Treat
How to Be the Perfect Romantic Poet by Liz Lochhead
23 Feb '21
It’s 200 years since the death of John Keats in Rome on February 23rd, 1821. While Liz Lochhead’s poem about the Romantic poets playfully...
Extract from Hedy’s War by Jenny Lecoat
22 Feb '21
Hedy’s War by Jenny Lecoat is a gripping WWII novel based on the true story of Hedwig Bercu, a Jewish girl who finds herself on Jersey when...
Poem of the Week: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Jim Carruth
01 Feb '21
Jim Carruth is Glasgow’s Poet Laureate, but don’t let images of that city dominate your sense of his work. He’s also the poet of...
Poem of the Week: Jenni Fagan, Spell for Hope and Renewal
26 Jan '21
Jenni Fagan has brightened the start of 2021 with the January publication of her novel Luckenbooth, which she describes as a “love letter to...
Poem of the Week: Norman MacCaig, Praise of a thorn bush
18 Jan '21
An Edinburgh school teacher by profession, poet Norman MacCaig spent his summers in Assynt in the far north west of Scotland. From their first visit...
Birlinn Books – Notes from the Basement, December 21st, 2020
21 Dec '20
It’s the winter solstice, called by a poet ‘the year’s midnight’, and our final newsletter of the year comes just a few hours before the hour...
A January Bargain
21 Dec '20
Remember when there used to be the ‘January Sales’? Or did you ever queue up early on a freezing Boxing Day? We seem now to be in an...
Getting Over Christmas (in Japan)
15 Dec '20
Iain Maloney moved to Japan in 2005. This year, we published his memoir The Only Gaijin in the Village, the story of moving out of the city to the...
Poem of the Week: Winter by Alexander McCall Smith
15 Dec '20
We are now just a week away from the shortest day of the year, so it seems particularly appropriate to share the poem ‘Winter’ from...
A is for Applecross: A Gaelic Alphabet
08 Dec '20
Alistair Moffat’s In Search of Angels: Travels to the Edge of the World is his own journey in the footsteps of the Irish saints who brought...
A Sonnet of Ice and Fire: ‘The Salamander’ by Hamish Henderson
07 Dec '20
Soldier, academic, folklorist, political activist, songwriter, translator but above all a poet, Hamish Henderson’s collected work is an...
