BBC's James Naughtie is English. Surely some mistake!

BBC Radio 4's James Naughtie

Respected political correspondent James Naughtie had his ancestry unveiled on the BBC's Today programme this morning, which revealed to the award-winning presenter's horror and intrigue, that he may actually have descended from the English.

Alistair Moffat, author of The Scots: A Genetic Journey, persuaded the BBC Radio 4 presenter to have his DNA tested a few weeks ago. And although James was brought up in Milltown of Rothiemay, near Huntly, Aberdeenshire has always been proud of his Scottish heritage.

The well-known author and historian, Alistair Moffat has worked with geneticist Dr. Jim Wilson to map Scotland's DNA using thousands of samples from around the country. Every one of us carries our history in our DNA and technology has now advanced to such a stage that a simple spit-and-go test allows scientists to analyse and interpret our DNA and give us a very clear indication of where our ancestors may have come from.

Naughtie's marker (known to scientists as S142) points very clearly to an Anglo Saxon origin in this country and before that to Denmark and Norway. 13% of Danish men share this strand of DNA. His ancestors would have arrived in the south of Britain in the early 5th century AD and moved north to Northumbria and to the Scottish borders arriving around 600 AD. And there they would have stayed until around 1130s. King David I of Scotland was involved at that time in what could be compared to Bosnian style ethnic cleansing of the Moray region to rid him of troublesome local aristocracy. He gave large Scottish estates to his Anglo-Norman friends and transplanted Border farmers to the Moray area to repopulate with those who were more sympathetic to his cause. And Naughtie's ancestors would be amongst those transplanted.
So is he English? As Alistair Moffat points out in The Scots: A Genetic Journey, every Scot is an immigrant. Until 9000 BC, Scotland was empty of people and animals. For 15,000 years, ice had covered the land and nothing survived. Naughtie's family has been firmly rooted in the North East of Scotland since the 12th century - he is very much a Scot. But way back, his ancestors crossed the seas and made their way north through England to the borders and from there, to Moray. His DNA is part of the rich tapestry that now enriches Scotland.
On hearing about his genetic background James joked, “I confess a wee bit of nervousness, but now discover that the (Today) programme has been kind enough to offer me counselling!”

The new study of DNA for genealogy purposes is growing at an incredible pace and can take personal histories back much further than family trees and desk research. Alistair Moffat is now working on a new book with Jim Wilson, Britain: A DNA history, which will be published next year.

The Scots: A Genetic Journey by Alistair Moffat and Jim Wilson is published by Birlinn and is available as a hardback book and eBook. Testing kits are available from EthnoAncestry (http://www.ethnoancestry.com/). Britain: A DNA History will be published by Birlinn in 2012.

Sorry is the Hardest Word

Jess Smith

Jess Smith - celebrated author of Bruar's Rest, three volumes of autobiography and a collection of stories, storyteller, activist and Traveller - last night read from Richard O’Neill’s  'Sorry is the Hardest Word' at a Kirk fringe event for the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. She first performed this challenging monologue about the treatment of the Travelling Community in Scotland at the Storytelling Festival in Edinburgh in 2008. The monologue is inspired by the oral traditions of the Traveling Community and highlights past wrongs done to the Scottish Travellers by individuals and authorities in Scotland.

Two years ago, after hearing the monologue and talking to Jess, Rev Russell McLarty put the following request to the General Assembly: 'Request that the Church and Society Council considers the question of how the Travelling People have been treated in the past and how they might be properly recognised by the Church and the state in the future'. The request was accepted and since then a study has been carried out on the Church’s attitude to the Travelling community in Scotland, by an ecumenical working group on behalf of the Scottish Church’s Racial Justice Group.

The report of the group considers many aspects of life for the Traveller and how society, state and Church had treated individuals from this community. Areas covered by the group include: housing and access to land; employment; education and welfare; discrimination prejudice and harassment; government initiatives; identity; and the Travelling Community and the Churches.

Recommendations from the group will be heard by the General Assembly today, 24 May 2011, when it is widely anticipated that the Church of Scotland will acknowledge its role in past wrong-doings and look for ways to work with the Scottish Government and local authorities to protect Travellers from discrimination in the future and to celebrate their culture.

Talking about her performance at the Storytelling Centre last night, Jess said. “I am putting on this event to honour all the Travellers whose spirits were broken when authority clipped their wings, halted their seasonal paths and institutionalised their children.”

“For far too long historians have omitted their existence from this proud land as a true society. This report is groundbreaking and will hopefully lead to the Scottish Government legally recognising Scotland's Travelling people as a single thread within a grand quilt of many cultures.”

Fiction Uncovered Uncovers The English German Girl and Jake Wallis Simons

‘Fascinating and moving’
– Monica Ali

Yesterday we announced the fantastic news that The English German Girl by Jake Wallis Simons has been chosen for the inaugural Fiction Uncovered promotion. We thought you might like to see ‘behind the scenes’ Wallis Simons and to hear Jake reading a short extract from the book.  



Jake Wallis Simons

Jake will also be appearing at the inaugural Ayton Literary Festival on Sunday 26th June, in conversation with a survivor of the Kindertransport to talk about this incredibly important and moving moment in history.

Fiction Uncovered Uncovers The English German Girl!



by Jake Wallis Simons

Polygon is delighted to announce that the novel The English German Girl by Jake Wallis Simons has been chosen for the inaugural Fiction Uncovered promotion! It is one of only eight books chosen for the promotion which aims to support the UK’s best fiction writers whose work deserves wider recognition through the media and stronger promotion in bookshops, libraries, readers’ groups and websites, and through the new electronic media tools – eBooks and apps. Polygon is the only Scottish publisher represented on the list.
The eight titles selected for Fiction Uncovered 2011 were announced today at 5th View, Waterstone’s Piccadilly:

• The English German Girl by Jake Wallis Simons (Birlinn, Polygon)
• The Water Theatre by Lindsay Clarke (Alma Books)

• The London Satyr by Robert Edric (Doubleday, Transworld)

• Proof of Love by Catherine Hall (Portobello)
• Night Waking by Sarah Moss (Granta)

• Nimrod’s Shadow by Chris Paling (Portobello)

• Disputed Land by Tim Pears (William Heinemann, Random House)
• Forgetting Zoë by Ray Robinson (William Heinemann, Random House)

The judging panel consisted of writer Giles Foden (Professor of Creative Writing at University of East Anglia), Damian Barr (writer and salonnière), Simon Burke (Campaign Buying Manager for Waterstone’s) and Sarah Crown (Literary Editor, Guardian Online). All of the books will be available through Waterstone’s, iBookstore, Amazon, Foyles, WH Smith, the Book Depository and the Book Partnership (reaching independent bookstores). There will also be a series of Fiction Uncovered events throughout summer 2011 starting with the Shoreditch House Literary Salon (19 May), The Book Stops Here (13 June) and, in association with Literary Death Match, at Latitude Festival (14 July). Fiction Uncovered is supported by Arts Council England and funded by the National Lottery.

Polygon Authors Open and Close Inaugral Festival

There hardly seems to be a town or city without a literary festival these days, but there is always room for one more! The latest is the Ayot Literary Festival, which will take place for the first time from Friday 24th to Sunday 26th June 2011 in the marquee on Ayot Green, near Welwyn Garden City. It’s a picturesque spot for a literary festival, complete with 18th century cottages clustered around a tranquil tree lined village green, and a charming acorn from which we hope a lovely huge oak will grow.   

Alexander McCall Smith

 

Jake Wallis Simons

 Two Polygon authors will be appearing at the festival, with Alexander McCall Smith being the first author to appear on the first day – a debut and a half! – to talk about the latest goings on at Corduroy Mansions in London’s slightly less picturesque Pimlico. And to neatly bookend what promises to be a wonderful weekend, Jake Wallis Simons will be the final author on the final day to read from and talk about his immensely moving novel, The English German Girl.

Tickets are now on sale, and more information on the festival can be found at http://www.greenfestivals.co.uk/.  

Birlinn and Polygon eBooks Go Live Today!

The book world has been taken by storm by the new way of reading, and no matter what you like to read – fiction, biography, history, crime – or how you like to read it – as a book, on a Kindle, on an iPad or any of the new e-Readers - Birlinn and Polygon eBooks have something for you!

This is absolutely not the end of traditional paper books for Birlinn and Polygon - fear not - but with eBook sales jumping from 1% to 6% of the whole UK book market in just one year it shows the popularity of the format. Our new eBooks are available on the most popular eBook retailers websites (http://www.amazon.co.uk/, http://www.waterstones.co.uk/, iBook store shortly) and more titles will be introduced every month. We're aiming to digitise as much of our backlist as possible and produce most of our new titles as eBooks from now on, so keep an eye on http://www.birlinn.co.uk/ for the latest titles available as eBooks!

Come on over to www.birlinn.co.uk/ebooks for the list of the first titles to be eBookified!

Robert Garioch Remembered

Robin Fulton, editor of the Collected Poems, remembers Robert Garioch on what would have been his 102nd birthday.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s I met Garioch quite often and it was very clear to me that behind his courteous, quiet-voiced and sometimes hesitant manner there was a sharp mind very well stocked with knowledge of all sorts. He knew his Latin and his history, but he was also street-wise and knew the value of humble things like pieces of string. He was well-versed in tolerating awkward circumstances, like the irksomeness of trying to combine school-teaching with writing and the more serious tribulations of getting through his years as a P.O.W. He seemed to have learned not to kick against the pricks.


His humility on occasion attracted the attention of bullies. “Literary” life in Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s had its less enlightened side: there were not a few loud voices and deaf ears and too often argument aimed at putting down others took the place of open-minded discussion. Some of the minnows in the pond imagined they were piranhas. It was no surprise that MacDiarmid chose to be supercilious: “he has no elevation and is… not only dull but vulgar in the worst sense.” I suppose the Great Man was aware how Garioch had little patience with his windy self-promotion (and with what he saw as MacDiarmid’s political naivety).) Nearer home, I heard unkind and unjust comments from people who ought to have known better. On the other hand, those who actually knew him and read his work without preconceptions held him in great esteem and affection.

Polygon, £14.99 pbk

My own part in editing Garioch came about through my work with Callum Macdonald. I edited 37 issues of Lines Review and Callum and I printed as much as we could by Garioch; we also brought out his collection Doktor Faust in Rose Street (1973). When Garioch died Callum asked me to write something for Lines Review but I felt a bit tongue-tied about that and suggested we could do a decent collected edition, which we did, and that was Complete Poetical Works (1983). We followed that with A Garioch Miscellany (1986 ), which included, among other things, samples of his letters, of his book-reviews, and of his way of working on the Belli translations with Antonia Stott. When Callum retired The Saltire Society took over his stock but in due course it became clear that they were about to let Garioch simply go out of print. That’s where Birlinn came in, and the current edition appeared in 2004 with the Polygon imprint, now called Collected Poems, with Garioch’s ordering of the poems restored and a new introduction.

It was heartening to come across Seán Haldane’s piece on Garioch in The Dark Horse (21), an example of how Garioch´s work deserves to be approached. He sees Garioch as in the “first three” along with Maclean and MacDiarmid, and concludes that “Taking Garioch seriously means reading his poems not only with a mind open to his wit and intellect but with a heart open to the intensity of his feeling.” I still feel angry when I see how old misleading labels, once stuck, seem to resist being unstuck. Sometime, somewhere, someone who had done no homework decided that Garioch could adequately be described along the lines of “a Scottish poet who wrote comic verse” (e.g. about a hen). Once started, the belittlement continued as others thoughtlessly stuck on the same label, passing off someone else’s ignorance as their own wisdom. It surely can’t be difficult to see that Garioch was the supreme verse-caftsman of his generation, and that the whole weight of his life is behind all of his work - his knowledge of Edinburgh, his understanding of Scottish history and literature, and his experience of twentieth century Europe.
- Robin Fulton

With thanks to our friends at the Scottish Poetry Library