0:00:01 > 0:00:02I've cried at their loss. I've applauded their triumphs.
0:00:03 > 0:00:06Scotland has a long and rich literary tradition, with authors
0:00:06 > 0:00:11such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Muriel Spark and Alasdair Gray.
0:00:11 > 0:00:14The stories that we love help us understand who we are.
0:00:14 > 0:00:18Adventure stories, the supernatural, suspense,
0:00:18 > 0:00:23dark realism, family drama, romance and, of course, crime.
0:00:23 > 0:00:24Back in the summer we invited you
0:00:24 > 0:00:27to vote for your favourite Scottish book.
0:00:27 > 0:00:30And tonight, we can reveal the result.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43Welcome to Scotland's Favourite Book.
0:00:43 > 0:00:46From an initial longlist of 30 novels, selected by
0:00:46 > 0:00:50a literary panel and curated by the Scottish Book Trust, we're about to
0:00:50 > 0:00:55divulge your top ten, including the all-important number one.
0:00:55 > 0:00:56And along the way,
0:00:56 > 0:01:00some famous faces will be revealing their own top read.
0:01:01 > 0:01:06So to start, a 19th-century Gothic classic and one of the first novels
0:01:06 > 0:01:09to explore the dark Scottish psyche.
0:01:16 > 0:01:18"Go thou then," said he.
0:01:18 > 0:01:20"Thou are called to a high vocation,
0:01:20 > 0:01:22"to cleanse this sanctuary of thy God
0:01:22 > 0:01:26"in this native land by the shedding of blood.
0:01:26 > 0:01:29"Go thou then, like a ruling energy,
0:01:29 > 0:01:33"a master spirit of desolation in the dwellings of the wicked.
0:01:33 > 0:01:37"High shall be your reward both here and in the hereafter."
0:01:40 > 0:01:45I first read the Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner
0:01:45 > 0:01:47when I was in my twenties.
0:01:47 > 0:01:50It was gripping and extraordinary then.
0:01:50 > 0:01:53Rereading it, it is even more compelling.
0:01:54 > 0:01:59James Hogg's masterpiece was first published in 1824,
0:01:59 > 0:02:02but it strikes you as a very modern work.
0:02:02 > 0:02:05It's a complex tale of demonic possession,
0:02:05 > 0:02:09of the struggle between good and evil within one man's soul.
0:02:09 > 0:02:12The justified sinner in question, Robert Wringhim,
0:02:12 > 0:02:16regards himself as one of the elect.
0:02:16 > 0:02:19One of the chosen few who, without doubt,
0:02:19 > 0:02:22will escape eternal damnation.
0:02:22 > 0:02:27What this means to him, ultimately, is that he can do anything.
0:02:29 > 0:02:32Soon after young Wringhim is told by his reverend father
0:02:32 > 0:02:33that he's one of the elect,
0:02:33 > 0:02:37he meets a shape-shifting devilish figure walking in the woods,
0:02:37 > 0:02:41who assures him he really can do what he wants,
0:02:41 > 0:02:44including killing his own brother.
0:02:46 > 0:02:48"I had a desire to slay him, it is true.
0:02:48 > 0:02:53"And such a desire as a thirsty man has to drink,
0:02:53 > 0:02:56"but at the same time, this longing desire
0:02:56 > 0:02:58"was mingled with a certain terror
0:02:58 > 0:03:01"as if I had dreaded that the drink for which I longed was mixed
0:03:01 > 0:03:03"with deadly poison.
0:03:03 > 0:03:08"My mind had so weakened, or rather softened about this time,
0:03:08 > 0:03:11"that my faith began a little to give way and I doubted
0:03:11 > 0:03:15"most presumptuously of the least tangible of all Christian tenets,
0:03:15 > 0:03:18"that is the infallibility of the elect."
0:03:20 > 0:03:23It is a tale framed within a tale,
0:03:23 > 0:03:26where the editor's narrative offers one version of events
0:03:26 > 0:03:30and Wringhim's private memoirs and confessions the other.
0:03:30 > 0:03:35The author raises many questions that the reader is left to answer.
0:03:35 > 0:03:37Just what is going on?
0:03:37 > 0:03:41Is it Satan himself who walks the streets of Glasgow?
0:03:41 > 0:03:45Is it Satan or some disturbed psychological trait
0:03:45 > 0:03:49that's behind the dark and murderous deeds in an Edinburgh close?
0:03:49 > 0:03:53Who do we believe - the narrator of the justified sinner?
0:03:55 > 0:03:59What's amazing to me is how fresh and fast-paced Hogg's work is.
0:03:59 > 0:04:02Some may see it as a Gothic novel,
0:04:02 > 0:04:05some as a psychological crime thriller.
0:04:05 > 0:04:09It's certainly a scathing attack on dogmatic thought.
0:04:09 > 0:04:14With the Reverend Wringhim and his son Robert, we see a lack of doubt,
0:04:14 > 0:04:16a clear moral certitude
0:04:16 > 0:04:21that foreshadows totalitarian mindsets of the 20th century
0:04:21 > 0:04:26and echoes religious fanatics of earlier and indeed current times.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29This is a... This is a terrific book.
0:04:29 > 0:04:32You should flood your library with requests for it.
0:04:39 > 0:04:44Next up, a collection of stories, again set in the 19th century,
0:04:44 > 0:04:48about a certain sleuth who remains very much in our thoughts,
0:04:48 > 0:04:51and in our screens, thanks to a Mr Cumberbatch.
0:04:58 > 0:05:01When young doctor Arthur Conan Doyle
0:05:01 > 0:05:04wrote The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes in 1892,
0:05:04 > 0:05:08he couldn't have foreseen that his detective's popularity would
0:05:08 > 0:05:10go on to span three centuries.
0:05:12 > 0:05:15And that Holmes would become the most portrayed character ever
0:05:15 > 0:05:17on film and television.
0:05:17 > 0:05:20SHUTTERS CLICK PHOTOGRAPHER: Put the hat on!
0:05:20 > 0:05:22Yeah, put it on!
0:05:22 > 0:05:23Just...get it over with.
0:05:26 > 0:05:28APPLAUSE
0:05:28 > 0:05:31Cumberbatch is just one of more than 70 actors to have donned
0:05:31 > 0:05:34Sherlock's famous deerstalker hat.
0:05:34 > 0:05:35Murder, my dear Watson.
0:05:38 > 0:05:41It was while Conan Doyle was studying medicine
0:05:41 > 0:05:43here in his native Edinburgh that he met
0:05:43 > 0:05:46the man who would inspire his famous sleuth.
0:05:48 > 0:05:53I used, as a student, to have an old professor, whose name was Bell,
0:05:53 > 0:05:56who was extraordinarily quick at deductive work.
0:05:56 > 0:06:00He'd make his diagnosis of the disease,
0:06:00 > 0:06:05and also very often of the patient's nationality and occupation,
0:06:05 > 0:06:08entirely by his power of observation.
0:06:09 > 0:06:13Literature's first forensic detective proved so popular,
0:06:13 > 0:06:16Conan Doyle was kept busy writing Holmes stories
0:06:16 > 0:06:18for more than 40 years.
0:06:20 > 0:06:23The book at number eight was published almost a century later,
0:06:23 > 0:06:28proving that, as a nation, we always love a good crime story.
0:06:28 > 0:06:29It was our introduction to
0:06:29 > 0:06:32a somewhat troubled Edinburgh detective.
0:06:42 > 0:06:44In Knots Crosses, Ian Rankin
0:06:44 > 0:06:49sets his SAS operative-turned- hard-drinking cop, John Rebus,
0:06:49 > 0:06:51on the hunt for a serial killer,
0:06:51 > 0:06:54who leaves a trail of strangled young girls
0:06:54 > 0:06:55across Scotland's capital.
0:06:58 > 0:07:01The only clues, a series of knots made of string
0:07:01 > 0:07:06and matchstick crosses delivered through Rebus's door.
0:07:06 > 0:07:08Rankin saw Knots Crosses as
0:07:08 > 0:07:14a 20th-century reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde.
0:07:15 > 0:07:19Hidden behind Edinburgh's picture- perfect elegant architecture
0:07:19 > 0:07:22lies a far darker vision of the city.
0:07:23 > 0:07:26First appearing in 1985,
0:07:26 > 0:07:29Rebus has gone on to become one of Britain's most popular
0:07:29 > 0:07:36fictional detectives and is still cracking cases 31 years later.
0:07:40 > 0:07:41Seventh in your top ten,
0:07:41 > 0:07:44we're sticking in Edinburgh for a novel which garnered cult status
0:07:44 > 0:07:50in the 1990s and inspired a play, a film and a killer soundtrack.
0:07:56 > 0:07:58Trainspotting, the book and then the film,
0:07:58 > 0:08:02gave voice to young working-class Edinburgh.
0:08:02 > 0:08:04Choose life, choose a job, choose a career.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07Choose a family, choose a ... big television, choose washing machines,
0:08:07 > 0:08:11cars, compact disc players and electrical tin-openers.
0:08:12 > 0:08:14TYRES SCREECH
0:08:20 > 0:08:22HE LAUGHS
0:08:24 > 0:08:27I bought Trainspotting because it was one of those books
0:08:27 > 0:08:29that everyone was talking about at the time.
0:08:29 > 0:08:31It was one of those moments that happens maybe every 10 or 20 years,
0:08:31 > 0:08:33and it seemed to be one of those books that people
0:08:33 > 0:08:35who didn't normally read books were getting into.
0:08:35 > 0:08:38I remember getting on the plane to London and the air steward
0:08:38 > 0:08:40clocked the book in my hand and looked down at it
0:08:40 > 0:08:42and he smiled and said, "You're going to enjoy that."
0:08:42 > 0:08:45It just seemed to be a book that everyone was getting behind.
0:08:47 > 0:08:51Set in mid-1980s Leith, Irvine Welsh's irreverent debut,
0:08:51 > 0:08:53and the iconic film that soon followed,
0:08:53 > 0:08:57tells the story of a group of so-called friends
0:08:57 > 0:09:00tied together by heroin addiction and their attempts to escape
0:09:00 > 0:09:03the boredom and brutality of their lives.
0:09:03 > 0:09:05Never again, Swanney, I'm off the skag.
0:09:05 > 0:09:09Are you serious? Yeah. No more. I'm finished with that.
0:09:09 > 0:09:13Irvine Welsh's capacity to shock is something truly astonishing
0:09:13 > 0:09:16and, trust me, I'm hard to shock. He lives in a grey area.
0:09:16 > 0:09:19His characters are morally ambiguous thieves, addicts,
0:09:19 > 0:09:23sociopaths, and yet somehow - somehow - he makes us sympathise
0:09:23 > 0:09:25with his antihero, Mark Renton.
0:09:25 > 0:09:28One of the scenes that stayed with me was when one of Renton's
0:09:28 > 0:09:32junkie pals loses her baby and he starts cooking up.
0:09:35 > 0:09:39Lesley comes intae the room screaming. It's horrible.
0:09:39 > 0:09:42Ah wanted her tae stop. Now. Ah couldnae handle this.
0:09:42 > 0:09:44Nane ay us could.
0:09:44 > 0:09:46"No' now. Not now."
0:09:46 > 0:09:48Ah never wanted anything mair in my life
0:09:48 > 0:09:49than fir her tae stop screaming.
0:09:49 > 0:09:52"The bairn's away! The bairn's away! Dawn! Oh, my God!"
0:09:54 > 0:09:58"She was a good mother. She loved that bairn. It's naebody's fault.
0:09:58 > 0:10:02"Cot death an' that. Happens all the time."
0:10:02 > 0:10:08"Yeah, likesay, cot death, man. Ken what ah mean?" Spud agreed.
0:10:08 > 0:10:12Ah feel thit ah love thum aw. Matty, Spud, Sick Boy and Lesley.
0:10:12 > 0:10:18Ah want tae tell them. Ah try, but it comes oot as, "Ah'm cookin'."
0:10:18 > 0:10:20They look at us scoobied.
0:10:20 > 0:10:24"That's me," ah shrug ma shooders, in self-justification.
0:10:24 > 0:10:26I go ben the livin'-room.
0:10:26 > 0:10:30The gadges move a few steps back and watch in silence as ah cook.
0:10:31 > 0:10:35Lesley comes first, eftir me. That goes without saying.
0:10:42 > 0:10:44The moments of genuine shock in these books
0:10:44 > 0:10:45are easily in double figures.
0:10:45 > 0:10:48You're entering this world of high drama and yet it feels
0:10:48 > 0:10:50believable because it's written with such confidence.
0:10:50 > 0:10:53Irvine Welsh is never scared of what people would think.
0:10:53 > 0:10:54Trainspotting never apologises
0:10:54 > 0:10:57for speaking in its own language of its own world.
0:10:57 > 0:11:00And that at the time was very un-Scottish.
0:11:06 > 0:11:08Your sixth favourite book may not be set in the capital,
0:11:08 > 0:11:12but it was inspired by the city, where its author still lives.
0:11:12 > 0:11:16It's the first in her magical series and it's sold
0:11:16 > 0:11:19more than 100 million copies worldwide, and counting.
0:11:28 > 0:11:31"Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard,
0:11:31 > 0:11:35"but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age.
0:11:35 > 0:11:38"Harry had a thin face, knobbly knees,
0:11:38 > 0:11:41"black hair and bright green eyes.
0:11:41 > 0:11:46"He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Sellotape.
0:11:46 > 0:11:49"The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was a very
0:11:49 > 0:11:54"thin scar on his forehead which was shaped like a bolt of lightning."
0:11:54 > 0:11:56THUNDERCLAP
0:11:56 > 0:12:01In 1996, a then unknown JK Rowling bewitched readers the world over
0:12:01 > 0:12:04with her young wizard's very first adventure,
0:12:04 > 0:12:08Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
0:12:08 > 0:12:11On Harry's 11th birthday, he's saved from humdrum Muggle -
0:12:11 > 0:12:15that's ordinary human to you and me - existence
0:12:15 > 0:12:17by the discovery he has magical powers,
0:12:17 > 0:12:19and is summoned for his first year
0:12:19 > 0:12:22at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
0:12:29 > 0:12:32"First-year students will require
0:12:32 > 0:12:35"three sets of plain work robes, black.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38"One pointed hat, black, for daywear.
0:12:38 > 0:12:42"One pair of protective gloves, dragon-hide or similar.
0:12:42 > 0:12:45"One winter cloak, black, silver fastenings.
0:12:45 > 0:12:49"Please note that all pupils' clothes should carry nametags."
0:12:54 > 0:12:58I first read the book when I was 23 and I loved it immediately.
0:12:58 > 0:13:01JK Rowling's tale of an orphan boy with special powers
0:13:01 > 0:13:04who's drawn into a complex adult world,
0:13:04 > 0:13:07who has to avenge his parents' killers,
0:13:07 > 0:13:08who has to fight evil personified
0:13:08 > 0:13:12by his nemesis Voldemort, is exceptional.
0:13:12 > 0:13:15The reason I love the book is the heart.
0:13:15 > 0:13:18I followed each of the characters' emotional journeys
0:13:18 > 0:13:20like a rollercoaster.
0:13:20 > 0:13:24I've cried at their loss. I've applauded their triumphs.
0:13:24 > 0:13:28The good thing is, I can return to Harry's world whenever I like
0:13:28 > 0:13:31through the books and the spectacular films.
0:13:31 > 0:13:36THEY ROAR
0:13:46 > 0:13:49JK Rowling wrote most of the novel longhand
0:13:49 > 0:13:51in a few of the city's cafes,
0:13:51 > 0:13:55and legend has it she wrote some of it here, at the Elephant House.
0:13:55 > 0:13:59But cafes weren't the only ingredient
0:13:59 > 0:14:00in the Harry Potter recipe.
0:14:00 > 0:14:02Where better than Edinburgh,
0:14:02 > 0:14:07with its Gothic Old Town, to inspire a tale of magic?
0:14:07 > 0:14:10Wingardium Leviosa!
0:14:14 > 0:14:17And it's in this historic Greyfriars Kirkyard
0:14:17 > 0:14:21that JK Rowling found the names of some of her characters.
0:14:21 > 0:14:24Like Professor McGonagall, Professor Moody
0:14:24 > 0:14:26and of course Tom Riddle,
0:14:26 > 0:14:30also known as Voldemort.
0:14:34 > 0:14:37Well, we're halfway through your top ten now,
0:14:37 > 0:14:40and if Trainspotting depicted the dark, drug-fuelled side
0:14:40 > 0:14:44of Edinburgh life, then the book at number five paints
0:14:44 > 0:14:46a very different picture of the city
0:14:46 > 0:14:51and features only the creme de la creme of educated young ladies.
0:14:58 > 0:15:04Set in 1932, Muriel Spark's most famous book presents
0:15:04 > 0:15:06a world on the cusp of change,
0:15:06 > 0:15:12with her forceful literary creation Miss Jean Brodie leading the charge,
0:15:12 > 0:15:16and personified on film by Maggie Smith
0:15:16 > 0:15:18in an Oscar-winning performance.
0:15:18 > 0:15:22Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.
0:15:22 > 0:15:25You girls are my vocation.
0:15:25 > 0:15:30Miss Brodie's charm, glamour and unconventional ideas
0:15:30 > 0:15:33hold dangerous sway over the Brodie set
0:15:33 > 0:15:36at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls,
0:15:36 > 0:15:40as they are introduced to a world of adult games beyond their ken,
0:15:40 > 0:15:44and inspired to acts of bravery and betrayal.
0:15:44 > 0:15:47Our next novel takes its man-on-the-run hero
0:15:47 > 0:15:49on a breathless journey from London
0:15:49 > 0:15:52to the Galloway Hills and back again,
0:15:52 > 0:15:55for an adventure thriller that's inspired numerous adaptations,
0:15:55 > 0:15:59not least by the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock.
0:16:07 > 0:16:09WHISTLE BLOWS
0:16:09 > 0:16:13"My notion was to get off to some wild district...
0:16:13 > 0:16:16"..for I would be like a trapped rat in a city.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20"I fixed on Galloway as the best place to go.
0:16:20 > 0:16:23"It was the nearest wild part of Scotland."
0:16:23 > 0:16:28This is the very spot in Mossdale where Buchan's antihero,
0:16:28 > 0:16:34Richard Hannay, gets off the train and starts his Scottish adventure.
0:16:34 > 0:16:37I first read The Thirty-Nine Steps as a teenager
0:16:37 > 0:16:42and was swept away by the nail-biting pace, jeopardy,
0:16:42 > 0:16:46double-crossing and endlessly surprisingly plot twists
0:16:46 > 0:16:51that keep the reader, and its hero, guessing till the very last pages.
0:16:53 > 0:16:58John Buchan published his most popular novel in 1915,
0:16:58 > 0:17:01a story so thrilling it inspired
0:17:01 > 0:17:06a young Alfred Hitchcock to create one of his best early films.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09It's a tale involving national secrets,
0:17:09 > 0:17:13German spies and an innocent man framed for murder.
0:17:14 > 0:17:18Richard Hannay heads to the hills to escape both the police
0:17:18 > 0:17:22and the evil cabal of the Black Stone gang,
0:17:22 > 0:17:26who are conspiring to ignite a global conflict.
0:17:28 > 0:17:32"I was in a wide semicircle of moorland, with the brown river
0:17:32 > 0:17:37"as radius, and the high hills forming the northern circumference.
0:17:37 > 0:17:41"There was not sign or sound of a human being,
0:17:41 > 0:17:46"only the plashing water and the interminable crying of curlews.
0:17:46 > 0:17:48"Yet, oddly enough,
0:17:48 > 0:17:54"for the first time I felt the terror of the hunted on me."
0:17:54 > 0:17:58As Hannay's chase propels him from hillside to country inn,
0:17:58 > 0:18:02he borrows, or steals, many a different man's identity
0:18:02 > 0:18:08in a desperate attempt to resist arrest and foil the villainous gang.
0:18:14 > 0:18:18The Thirty-Nine Steps is more than an ingenious page-turner.
0:18:18 > 0:18:21With its brilliant narration, spare prose style
0:18:21 > 0:18:24and wonderful turns of phrase,
0:18:24 > 0:18:26it feels fresh and contemporary.
0:18:26 > 0:18:30It's both spy detective and adventure story,
0:18:30 > 0:18:34but its author defined the novel as a romance,
0:18:34 > 0:18:38where the incidents defy the probabilities
0:18:38 > 0:18:42and march just inside the borders of the possible.
0:18:46 > 0:18:50Moving on to your top three, your third-favourite Scottish novel
0:18:50 > 0:18:54is the author's semi-biographical masterwork.
0:18:54 > 0:18:58It's set in Glasgow and a nightmarish parallel city,
0:18:58 > 0:19:00and fuses fantasy and reality
0:19:00 > 0:19:03in one man's desperate search for happiness.
0:19:09 > 0:19:13"A city on the banks of a shrunk river."
0:19:15 > 0:19:20"A city with a 19th-century square full of ugly statues.
0:19:20 > 0:19:22"Am I right?
0:19:22 > 0:19:26"That city is called Unthank.
0:19:26 > 0:19:30"The calendar in Unthank is based on sunlight
0:19:30 > 0:19:36"but only administrators use it. The majority have forgotten the sun.
0:19:36 > 0:19:44"Moreover, they have rejected the clock. They do not measure or plan.
0:19:44 > 0:19:48"Their lives are regulated by simple appetite
0:19:48 > 0:19:51"varied by the occasional impulse."
0:19:52 > 0:19:57"Not surprisingly, nobody is well there."
0:20:00 > 0:20:05It may have taken Alasdair Gray 30 years to write, but when Lanark was
0:20:05 > 0:20:10finally published in 1981, it was a game-changer for Scottish fiction.
0:20:11 > 0:20:15Gray's visionary modern classic transcends categorisation
0:20:15 > 0:20:17and genre
0:20:17 > 0:20:22as it flits between surreal science fiction and naturalism,
0:20:22 > 0:20:26following the journey of flawed hero Duncan Thaw,
0:20:26 > 0:20:30AKA Lanark, through two divergent worlds.
0:20:32 > 0:20:37I first read Lanark when I came to live in this city ten years ago,
0:20:37 > 0:20:44and I love its honesty about being stuck in a dysfunctional male body
0:20:44 > 0:20:47while striving to make art
0:20:47 > 0:20:53and striving to get close to the gorgeous, bright young arty females
0:20:53 > 0:20:58that he, Duncan, so desires.
0:21:01 > 0:21:03"They were late for the film."
0:21:06 > 0:21:08"It had love scenes,
0:21:08 > 0:21:12"which made him very conscious of Marjory beside him."
0:21:16 > 0:21:18"He leaned toward her..."
0:21:20 > 0:21:27"..but she sat so upright and stared so straight forward..."
0:21:28 > 0:21:36"..that he dispiritedly brought out the chocolates
0:21:36 > 0:21:43"and resignedly popped one at intervals..."
0:21:45 > 0:21:47"..into her mouth."
0:21:57 > 0:21:59I love that his epic vision of Scotland
0:21:59 > 0:22:02is not the mythical hills and glens of the Highlands,
0:22:02 > 0:22:08but this city of Glasgow, where he grew up and still lives today -
0:22:08 > 0:22:12and in its colossal scale, it has this real Blakean quality,
0:22:12 > 0:22:16for me, to its artistry and its scope,
0:22:16 > 0:22:21that makes Glasgow seem both heroic and darkly Satanic.
0:22:22 > 0:22:27It's a very simple tale, really, but told with such timeless imagination,
0:22:27 > 0:22:29and that's why it gets my vote.
0:22:33 > 0:22:36Your runner-up at number two
0:22:36 > 0:22:40was the first book to be published by this writer, in 1984.
0:22:40 > 0:22:43It's a murderous tale of a psychopathic teenager
0:22:43 > 0:22:45and his family's dark secrets,
0:22:45 > 0:22:47played out on a remote Scottish island.
0:22:57 > 0:23:00In Iain Banks' debut The Wasp Factory,
0:23:00 > 0:23:0416-year-old Frank Cauldhame is the self-appointed lord of his island,
0:23:04 > 0:23:08where he lives with his experimental scientist father
0:23:08 > 0:23:13and violent, unhinged brother on the loose from a psychiatric hospital.
0:23:15 > 0:23:20Frank occupies his days hunting small animals and prophesying
0:23:20 > 0:23:23the future through bizarre, savage rituals.
0:23:25 > 0:23:27A highly original gothic horror,
0:23:27 > 0:23:31Banks's novel is a study in obsession, blood and death.
0:23:32 > 0:23:35I looked for the two most eccentric things I'd ever done -
0:23:35 > 0:23:36one was building dams,
0:23:36 > 0:23:40and the other one was being a schoolboy bombmaker,
0:23:40 > 0:23:43so I had to - you know, I could write fairly convincingly
0:23:43 > 0:23:45about those things, so I put those into the book -
0:23:45 > 0:23:47but everything else is made up, honest.
0:23:50 > 0:23:53The Wasp Factory showcased the late Iain Banks'
0:23:53 > 0:23:56brilliantly bizarre imaginative powers,
0:23:56 > 0:24:01and became the first of many cult classics and science-fiction epics
0:24:01 > 0:24:02by this prolific author.
0:24:06 > 0:24:10And so, finally, we come to your favourite Scottish novel.
0:24:11 > 0:24:13It's an early 20th-century classic,
0:24:13 > 0:24:18again set in a remote community in the north-east of Scotland.
0:24:18 > 0:24:21Your number one choice is the story of a farmer's daughter
0:24:21 > 0:24:23caught up in the conflict
0:24:23 > 0:24:26between the traditional way of life and the modern world.
0:24:40 > 0:24:42"Below and around where Chris Guthrie lay
0:24:42 > 0:24:46"the June moors whispered and rustled and shook their cloaks,
0:24:46 > 0:24:49"yellow with broom and powdered faintly with purple,
0:24:49 > 0:24:53"that was the heather but not the full passion of its colour yet.
0:24:53 > 0:24:56"And in the east against the cobalt blue of the sky
0:24:56 > 0:25:00"lay the shimmer of the North Sea, that was by Bervie."
0:25:02 > 0:25:05Sunset Song tells the story of young heroine Chris Guthrie
0:25:05 > 0:25:08as she comes of age in the tight-knit farming community
0:25:08 > 0:25:10of fictional Kinraddie
0:25:10 > 0:25:13in author Lewis Grassic Gibbon's native Aberdeenshire.
0:25:15 > 0:25:18I first read Sunset Song when I was in my early teens,
0:25:18 > 0:25:21so, maybe about 13 or 14,
0:25:21 > 0:25:25and it resonated with me, firstly because it's a wonderful story,
0:25:25 > 0:25:26beautifully written -
0:25:26 > 0:25:30but it also said something about the history of the country I grew up in,
0:25:30 > 0:25:35and resonated very strongly with me as a young Scottish woman,
0:25:35 > 0:25:39and I think its themes are timeless to this day.
0:25:43 > 0:25:47I think it's a very early feminist novel.
0:25:47 > 0:25:50She's just a very, very strong character -
0:25:50 > 0:25:53at a time, you know, Sunset Song was written in the early 1930s,
0:25:53 > 0:25:57at a time when not many books would have portrayed
0:25:57 > 0:25:59a female character in that way.
0:26:02 > 0:26:07"Two Chrisses there were that fought for her heart and tormented her.
0:26:07 > 0:26:10"You hated the land and the coarse speak of the folk
0:26:10 > 0:26:12"and learning was brave and fine one day,
0:26:12 > 0:26:17"and the next you'd waken with the peewits crying across the hills,
0:26:17 > 0:26:20"deep and deep, crying in the heart of you
0:26:20 > 0:26:22"and the smell of the earth in your face,
0:26:22 > 0:26:24"almost you'd cry for that."
0:26:26 > 0:26:31Chris, as a character, does personify the story of Scotland.
0:26:31 > 0:26:36We see her struggling to come to terms with some of the changes
0:26:36 > 0:26:37taking place around her.
0:26:42 > 0:26:43"And the land changes,
0:26:43 > 0:26:45"their parks and their steadings are a desolation,
0:26:45 > 0:26:47"where the sheep are pastured."
0:26:50 > 0:26:53"We are told that great machines come soon to till the land,
0:26:53 > 0:26:56"and the great herds come to feed on it."
0:26:58 > 0:27:00"The crofter has gone,
0:27:00 > 0:27:02"the man with the house and the steading of his own
0:27:02 > 0:27:07"and the land closer to his heart than the flesh of his body.
0:27:07 > 0:27:12"Nothing, it has been said, is true but change, nothing abides."
0:27:15 > 0:27:19He did something quite innovative and ground-breaking,
0:27:19 > 0:27:22in that he used...you know, his own language, in that sense,
0:27:22 > 0:27:24in a fictional setting,
0:27:24 > 0:27:28and that was, for me, part of the mystique and the magic of the book.
0:27:28 > 0:27:32I grew up in Ayrshire, so it opened my eyes to parts of the country
0:27:32 > 0:27:36that I hadn't, until that point, been very familiar with.
0:27:37 > 0:27:41Tragically, Grassic Gibbon died just three years after the first book
0:27:41 > 0:27:44in his Scots Quair trilogy was published.
0:27:45 > 0:27:49But thanks to school reading lists and radio, TV and film versions,
0:27:49 > 0:27:52many of us have grown up with Sunset Song,
0:27:52 > 0:27:55and his masterpiece lives on.
0:27:57 > 0:28:00I'm delighted to champion my favourite Scottish book -
0:28:00 > 0:28:04and, as it turns out, Scotland's favourite book -
0:28:04 > 0:28:05Sunset Song.
0:28:05 > 0:28:10So, to one of my heroines, the fantastic, wonderful Chris Guthrie,
0:28:10 > 0:28:13congratulations on making it to number one.
0:28:14 > 0:28:17So, that's it - Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
0:28:17 > 0:28:19is Scotland's favourite book.
0:28:19 > 0:28:23Now, if you haven't read it, or any of the others in the top ten,
0:28:23 > 0:28:24then I do hope you're inspired to do so -
0:28:24 > 0:28:28and if you'd like to see the result of all 30 in the longlist,
0:28:28 > 0:28:29then go to...
0:28:34 > 0:28:36Goodnight, and happy reading.