Since the Union of the Crowns and James the VI and I, we have been seen as one; James’ vision was a Great Britain. Somehow there is an unspoken assumption that we have the same history. Certainly, growing up in Scotland, our history lessons centred on the Battle of Hastings, the Wars of the Roses and the Armada. However, I also knew there was another story. My history was embellished with the colour and excitement of H.E. Marshall who brought me St Columba trekking across Caledonia to convert the Picts, Macbeth and Birnam Wood (before I even knew Shakespeare), Alexander III, and Robert the Bruce and the spider (‘if you do not first succeed, try, try again’). I wept at the Battle of Flodden where ‘The Floo’ers o’ the Forest are a’ wede away’, my heart stirred to the tales of Black Agnes and Kate Barlass, I fled with Bonnie Prince Charlie after Culloden. It is interesting to note that these were all in Marshall’s Scotland’s Story (nd); the tales associated with south of the border before 1603 or after are in Our Island’s Story (nd).

What about the fiction . . . the books I read? Looking back I find I was often reading stories based in a Scottish landscape. There was, of course, The Eagle of the Ninth (1954) following Marcus and Esca north of Hadrian’s Wall. A favourite author was Jane Oliver. I adored The Eaglet and the Angry Dove (1957) – a story set on Iona with St Columba, Bonfire in the Wind (1958) that introduced me to the Covenanters and Grizel Baillie – a real girl who did carry food to her father hiding from the English troops and whose recipe books I saw much later at Mellerstain House; such a thrill to meet a childhood character. Then there was Mary, Queen of Scots and her dramatic escape from the fearsome Douglas family and Loch Leven Castle in Queen Most Fair (1959).

I was not aware of the authors as people (you were not in those days, you just waited anxiously for the next book) or questioned whether they were Scottish themselves. Marguerite de Angeli, certainly wasn’t, but The Black Fox of Lorne (1956) took me on a thrilling adventure shipwrecked on the west coast. Naturally there was Stevenson and, yes, that Wizard of the North, Walter Scott whom my father loved. So we read together Marmion:
A Tale of Flodden Field (1808) and The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). It was not until I became a children’s librarian that I consciously met Scottish authors – in particular Mollie Hunter whose The Stronghold was the Carnegie winner in 1974. Here it is not the usual story set during the Tudor or Stuart time but much further back on Orkney with those mysterious brochs. Her other novels are as interesting, introducing the reader to unusual corners of our island’s story, while The Dragonfly Years (1983) and I’ll Go My Own Way (1985) are precursors of the young adult novel. Or there was Frances M. Hendry and her Quest series and Eileen Dunlop to name two. I am delighted to find that I share some of the same memories as Theresa Breslin. But where are these authors now? Are they still on the shelves of Scottish libraries? What is it like today?