Steve Savage Publishers

NEWS AND COMMENT 2007

20 DEC 07	Edinburgh Evening News	Crème de la Crème
		Under the title Benchmark of Learning for Girls, Joanna Vallely and Sandra Dick wrote an article in today's Edinburgh Evening News about Edinburgh's girls' schools, that featured Alasdair Roberts' book Crème de la Crème.

DEC 07	Life and Work	Laughter Lines
		James A. Simpson mentions the new edition of his Laughter Lines in this month's Life and Work.

23 NOV 07	Perthshire Advertiser	Laughter Lines
		The new edition of James A. Simpson's Laughter Lines is featured in the Perthshire Advertiser.

20 NOV 07	A Good Read BBC Radio 4	The Nebuly Coat
		John Meade Falkner's novel The Nebuly Coat was picked by Eamon Duffy on Radio 4's A Good Read. Eamon Duffy is Professor of the History of Christianity at Cambridge University. 'It reminded me of The Spire by William Golding and there's the same sense of doomed-- the building itself waiting to produce catastrophe.'

15 NOV 07	Stornoway Gazette	Silver Sea
		Robin Hull's novel Silver Sea was reviewed by Dr John A. J. Macleod in the Stornoway Gazette. 'Another delightful book from Dr Robin Hull who, this time, uses long experience of General Practice under the NHS to add to a cunning mystery that has involved the small Scottish island of Laigersay'

14 NOV 07	The GoodBookStall	Laughter Lines
		Mary Bartholomew reviewed the new edition of James A. Simpson's Laughter Lines on The GoodBookStall. 'A revised and expanded edition of the book first published in 1987, which I had not seen so I came to it fresh and expectant. I was not disappointed, my smiling and chuckling aloud attracted my husband and he has had a read of it too! Good clean fun, suitable for all ages. I would love to quote some, but how do you choose from such a wonderful collection? I plan to leave my copy by the spare room bed so that it can be picked up and read at random by guests who want to go to sleep with a smile on their face.'

OCT 07	The Scots Magazine	Silver Sea
		Robin Hull's novel Silver Sea was reviewed by Silvie Taylor in The Scots Magazine. 'There is nothing stereotyped about this novel. Life on the island of Laigersay, as seen through the eyes of Dr Robert Chalmers, is authentic all through and his patients, be they eccentric, tragic or heroic, never fail to entertain. ... 'The author draws his characters frae aa airts. There's Luigi, ex-POW, who once worked on the famed Italian chapel on Orkney, Tetrabal Singh, who has moved from housekeeping for Dr Hamish to running his own restaurant, Thorfinn from Iceland and gutsy Glaswegian Betsy Smith ... 'Robin Hull's experience as a doctor has given him case histories in plenty for his novels, but there is much more to Silver Sea ... 'Not all characters are pleasant, but tragedy and cruelty are interwoven with humour ... a book which draws all threads together in a satisfying finale.'

JUL 07	The Scots Magazine	Orkney from Old Photographs
		Orkney from Old Photographs, by Gordon Wright, is reviewed by Chris Nicolson in The Scots Magazine. 'Gordon Wright has carefully selected 195 photographs for this collection, now available for the first time in paperback, to give a faithful and comprehensive representation of Orcadian life from the 1860s through to the 1930s. ... 'If it's true that every picture tells a story, then it's also true that Orkney from Old Photographs is a great "read".'

1 JUN 07	The Watermill Aberfeldy	Silver Sea
		Perthshire author Robin Hull's new novel, Silver Sea, was launched at the Watermill, Aberfeldy.

JUN 07	Fortean Times	The Weem Witch
		Leonard Low's book on the eighteenth-century Fife witch craze, The Weem Witch, was reviewed by Gordon Rutter in the Fortean Times. 'This is a horrific record of how easily people can be led and the human consequences this sad fact can have ... an admirable work putting a human face on those who were persecuted on the basis of gossip and hearsay. It makes a good read for anyone interested in injustice.'

31 MAY 07	Oxford University Exploration Club	Island of the Dragon's Blood
		Douglas Botting, author of Island of the Dragon's Blood, the recently republished account of explorations in Socotra, gave a talk to the Oxford University Exploration Club, under whose auspices he went to Socotra in the 1950s.

APR 07	The Scots Magazine	The First Wash of Spring
		The First Wash of Spring, by George Mackay Brown, was reviewed by Maurice Fleming in The Scots Magazine. 'It takes a poet's eye to see dandelions as "like little ragged lions" and midges as "tiny Vikings out on a wrecking foray". The month of February seemed to him, "like a young girl at the door of spring, with a crocus and a snowdrop in her fingers". 'It's writing like this that makes the collection such a pleasure to read ... I suppose it is what I have heard called a "dippy-in" book - the items are all brief - but I think readers who start off treating it as such will quickly find themselves gripped under the spell of a master of words.'

17 MAR 07	What?!?MusicFest07 The Spitz	Crazy Love
		Victoria Mosley, author of Crazy Love, took part in What?!?MusicFest07, A Night of Randomly Connected Music, at The Spitz in London's Spitalfields Market.

26 JAN 07	Times Literary Supplement	The First Wash of Spring
		The First Wash of Spring, by George Mackay Brown, was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement. 'What is most striking about these pieces, apart from their superficial simplicity, is their compactness and sharpness, their sheer economy. Model examples of the miniature, they are "small miracles of compression".'

JAN 07	The Orcadian	Orkney from Old Photographs
		The reissue of Gordon Wright's Orkney from Old Photographs was reviewed in The Orcadian. 'Back in print, after more than 20 years, is this collection of historic Orkney photographs taken by leading photographers of their day ... The 195 illustrations are a remarkable record, bringing to life almost every aspect of daily work and toil in the islands, including transport within and to the islands, from the first buses to the first motorcycle and two-seater sidecar, and a mid-1930s Aberdeen Airways Dragon which used the grass airstrip at Cumminess near the Brig o'Waithe. The herring boom, which brought prosperity to the islands, and the gradual mechanisation of farming, are illustrated too, with the old photographs able to convey better than words, what it was like to live here "in the good old days." Anyone who missed this fascinating book the first time round should get a copy now while it is still available.'

JAN 07	The Daily Telegraph	The First Wash of Spring
		The First Wash of Spring, by George Mackay Brown, was reviewed in The Daily Telegraph. 'Little by little, the details grow. "I happened to look through the kitchen window yesterday, and there was another reminder of autumn -- a big bluebottle on the thither side of the pane waiting to get in. He was so patient, he must have sat there for half an hour." And so must the poet, we realise ... The detail seems almost naive. But it is the work of a poet, of a novelist, too ... "He transforms everything," remarked Seamus Heaney, "by passing it through the eye of the needle of Orkney." ... This simplicity is not unknowing naivety, or even faux-naivety. This man knows what he is talking about and how he is talking ... "My country is between Ness Road and the Pier Head," he wrote, but his themes are bigger than the world ... Among the daffodils and "midgies" of Stromness we find the man.'