From Boy to Man: James Robertson, Billy Kay & Rab Wilson

Part of our Life’s Fundamentals strand, we welcome three writers to share their memories of growing up and going to work in the West of Scotland. Novelist James Robertson shares insights into the recent republication of Paisley-born Gordon Williams’s novel, From Scenes Like These. Shortlisted for the first ever Booker Prize, the story follows a young protagonist navigating early adulthood in 1950s Scotland. Broadcaster, writer, and Scots language champion, Billy Kay, introduces Born in Kyle: A Love Letter Tae an Ayrshire Childhood, as he returns to his cultural and linguistic roots in Ayrshire’s Irvine Valley and describes the way of life there in a memoir thrang with love and humour. Rab Wilson’s Collier Laddie is an ode to mining grit and working-class resilience 40 years on from the 1984-85 miners’ strike. Through poems and strike diaries which he kept, Rab vividly captures the enduring legacy of miners at this pivotal moment in industrial history. Chaired by Jim Phillips, Professor of Economics and Social History at the University of Glasgow, whose own book, Coalfield Justice, documents the distinct injustices of the 1984-85 miners’ strike in Scotland.