Newsletter – 23rd April 99

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Spring Greetings from Edinburgh where the longer clearer days have been frequently accompanied by cold snaps and the odd snow and hail shower in addition to the usual April showers.

The main purpose of this issue of the newsletter is to inform you about the changes to the Dunnett web pages which I’ve just uploaded. As the main page was getting a bit long and overloaded with graphics, I’ve split everything up into different sections which should make things easier to view, and the pages have a new look.

BOOK NEWS, BIBLIOGRAPHY, and the BOOK COVERS have all moved to separate pages which makes things a little quicker on the main page and allows me to introduce some more decoration. All have been updated of course and I’ve done fresh scans of the covers. The PAST NEWS items also now have a place of their own for people who want to review the older stuff or catch up with things.

There are quite a few new Answers on the QUESTIONS TO DOROTHY section after DD kindly took time out from her Niccolo 8 writing to catch up with the backlog of questions which has been accumulating over the last few months. These are the first of the batch – there are a number of others in the pipeline that I’ll add in over the next few weeks. That whole feature has now been divided into General, Lymond, and Niccolo sections, and as quite a lot of the new questions/answers are on King Hereafter I’ll be adding that section the next time round.

The DUNNETT PLACES TO VISIT feature has been improved with some expanded descriptions and a new section on the Orkney Isles. I’m gradually adding new photographs where possible too.

Another entirely new section is the page on SCOTS PRONUNCIATIONS AND MEANINGS which includes audio files for the most commonly disputed pronunciations and looks at the derivation of some of the standard Scots personal and place-names. I’m quite pleased to have unearthed some interesting stuff there – have a look at the entry for Semple for instance – and am looking forward to more digging.
Please let me know if I’ve missed any names that you want to hear or understand the origins of, and I’ll try to include them in subsequent revisions. For the moment I’m sticking to the Scottish names, as that is obviously the area I’m most familiar with, but if I can do enough research to be confident with the foreign names I may include them later. (Being an appallingly bad linguist I may need Dorothy’s help here! 😉 )

Yet another new section is the MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS page. It was inspired by the recent acquisition by our Mercat Press division of a number of books previously published by the Stationery Office including one very good one on Mary. It looks at Mary’s early life and her relations who we see in Queens’ Play and Checkmate. I plan to develop this further if there is sufficient interest.

Finally there’s a lighter note with a CASTING page for that film we all keep talking about! 😉

Book News

For those of you who aren’t yet aware of them, the new UK Penguin editions of Lymond are mostly now available, and the new US Vintage editions of Niccolo have started to appear with the first three now being available. Full details are on the web page bibliography.

Personal Appearances

For anyone who is likely to be in Edinburgh in August, Dorothy will once again be appearing at the Edinburgh Book Festival, and this time is bringing along her editor – Richenda Todd.
It’s on Saturday 14th August 5pm at the Post Office Theatre. They’ll be discussing the problems of writing a long historical series i.e. historical accuracy, overlapping of events, consistency of events and characters, and they’ll be covering both series of books. If anyone should know the difficulties inherent in that subject it must be her!!

Below is the text of the new Answers, but do have a look at the new layout of the web pages and let me have your opinions.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

New answers uploaded April 99

Where did you find your research material for King Hereafter?

Q. I would like to ask Mrs. Dunnett how long it took her to research and where did she find all of the wonderful history for King Hereafter.

A “A detailed answer would hold up Niccolo 8 for a month (my reading list alone was 700 books long).
Briefly(!):
1975, Day 1, contract to write the first properly researched historical novel on the real Macbeth, on which there is ample academic material. (younger son then aged 11).

Day 2 (virtually), discover the academic material is mostly ancient and full of gaps, the exception being the deconstruction of Shakespeare, which is popular and has been well and accurately tackled.

Day 3, sort out which few areas have been updated, mostly in monograph form, and verify from the universities that absolutely no historical department is currently re-examining this period.

Day 4, resign myself to collecting and analysing primary material, as soon as I have read through and noted the secondaries. This included sources (including foreign ones) for info on the Celts, the Picts, the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons, on current laws and customs on marriage, fostering, bastardy, kingship, on the detailed politics of surrounding countries, on biographies of individuals such as
Canute, Emma, PopeLeo, etc. etc. Also early charters, monastic annals, fragments of early poetry (plus linguistic studies), the Icelandic sagas, saints’ lives, early histories written under the Stewarts, and a lot about the Norman Conquest (plus Norman and Breton charters) to identify the Normans who fled to Macbeth. Also everything relevant in archaeology.

Lovely discoveries about the Archbishop of Dol. Travel, including visits to Rome, Goslar, Vienna, Brittany, Normandy, the Celtic Library at Harvard and all relevant places in the UK, including many visits to Orkney, collecting published material and looking at buildings and museums. Compilation incidentally of 145 interlocking European family trees, laid out in miniscule writing on a piece of
wallpaper 20 feet long.

Discovery that the story still didn’t make sense. Awful dawning realisation that it did make sense if Thorfinn and Macbeth were not half-brothers but the same person. Grinding of teeth (original research is not a good idea for a novelist). Decision (courtesy of my publishers) to continue researching, and in particular track to its source every accepted fact that contradicted this theory.

By the end of 1979, evident to me that the Thorfinn/Macbeth case was stronger than any other, and the investigation was now academically viable. Moment of truth; continue for ten years and exhaust all the lines of research? Take another year, and publish the case as it then stood as non-fiction? Or write, with the facts I then had, the novel I had been contracted to write in 1975? I chose to write the novel, beginning in January 1980 and finishing in March 1981 (younger son now aged nearly 17 and forgiving). The rest, as they say is history…..”

How is Gelis pronounced

Q. One thing I would like to ask Dorothy Dunnett is whether Gelis is pronounced JEALOUS…

A “I’ve never discovered. It’s short for Egidia. I usually try to avoid ‘Jealous’ and try for ‘Jailees’.”

Extra comment from Bill Marshall: I recently came across an entry in a listing of Scots names which gave Egidia as the feminine form of Giles (as in St. Giles). See the web site Pronunciation/Meaning section for further details.

What were your early readings and did they inspire you?

Q. Did she read Quentin Durward (Scott) and The White Company (Arthur Conan Doyle) when she was young? Did they in any way inspire, influence, or direct her imagination?

A “Can’t remember reading The White Company, but my school went in for Walter Scott in a really big way. I once amused Sir Walter’s charming g-g-many g’s-granddaughter by remarking brashly that the books were all right so long as you skipped the first forty pages. They weren’t in the forefront of my memory when I started to write, but everything one has read forms source material, I’m quite sure. I didn’t even realise until recently what a magnificent researcher he was.”

Any influence from Kristin Lavernsdatter

Q. After reading and re-reading King Hereafter I wondered if Dorothy Dunnett had been influenced by Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavernsdatter. Kristin appears to take place about two generations after King Hereafter. It is almost like the gap between Nicholas and Lymond. Naturally, Undset and Dunnett take a different tack in their books but they both present intricate characters.

A “They are wonderful books. I’d never heard of them, much to the shock of two readers – Judy Amory and her husband from Harvard – who promptly repaired my ignorance by sending me the whole trilogy. That probably pre-dated King Hereafter, but my work for that was so different that I don’t recall even thinking about Undset.”

King Hereafter

The first in a series of King Hereafter questions from Heike Meyer

Q. In p 1, ch. 18, Lulach utters something strange. He says ‘One cold winter, the ink froze at Fulda.’ Thorfinn later remembers this when Archbishop Adalbert asks him ‘who interprets your dreams ?’ We couldn’t make head or tail of this, so could you please help ?

A My notes would take weeks to sort out, so this is simply from summaries or from memory and not to be trusted:

As you have probably worked out, Lulach, poor guy, is the many-tongued voice of History, which you can’t trust either. Everything he says directs attention to something uncommon relating to the history of Scotland. I wanted to show that – although the novel should be enjoyed as pure historical romance – there is a serious basis for the new theories about Scotland it posits, and that here, in the gap between the real events and the Shakespeare play, is a classic example of how and why history comes to be distorted. Failing academic footnotes and appendices, which would have been ridiculous, it seemed appropriate to put some of the evidence in the mouth of Lulach the Fool, who bore the name of the prophetic Wild Man of Irish and Welsh history. The Havamal quotation which prefaces the novel is black irony.

Part 1, chapter 18: everything that Lulach says on this page relates to evidence for Macbeth’s real story. There was a King of Alba went to Rome. This was Macbeth. How do we know? Because an Irish monk called Marianus Scotus (born 1028) sat in a monastery at Fulda in Germany and recorded it: 1050 – Rex Scottiae Macbethad Romae argentum pauperibus seminando distribuit. (in MGH). But how could Macbeth afford to scatter gold like seed to the poor? How could he afford to take a king’s escort from Scotland to Rome and back, with all the rich gifts he would have to donate? Answer (mine): Macbeth couldn’t, but Thorfinn with his tributes and shipping trade could.

The frozen ink reference (real) was a pointer to anyone interested that the writings of Marianus Scotus in Fulda would provide food for thought. (The second time, it crops up because Thorfinn is reflecting that Lulach is his dream – not to mention nightmare -interpreter). The monks incidentally were always mumping about the weather: 1047: Nix in occidente in tantum ut silvasfregisset. Another monastic record supplied the information about the six-day hurricane in December 1052 which I described in a scene with Thorfinn in Orkney.

Hope that’s enough to keep you all going for a while longer as you wait for Niccolo 8 😉
I’ll add some more answers in a few weeks.

Best wishes

Bill

Newsletter – 9th Jan 99

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New Year Greetings from Edinburgh!

Niccolo 8

There hadn’t been much recent news until this week so this newsletter is a rather rush job.
It’s main purpose is to confirm what many of you will already have guessed – that Niccolo 8 will be a little later than originally planned. As most of you will know it would normally have been Nov 1999 – all the recent Niccolos have been November in the odd numbered years – but given the tragic events of Sept it was always likely that it would be delayed. At the moment the best guess is that it will be published around the end of March 2000, but this date is by no means cast in stone. There is no word yet of the title – Michael Joseph don’t know it yet so it looks as if Dorothy is teasing us a little longer.

Orders for it – not yet.

Can I stress again that I will announce when we can take orders for it, but that we can’t take them at the moment as Michael Joseph can’t. Any attempt to hold such orders outwith the computer systems that are intended for the purpose would be fraught with potential for mistakes, while if we put them on the system it would be almost inevitable that an order would be sent to Michael Joseph prematurely and that would disappear into a black hole. So please wait until the title is decided and the systems are ready for it.

New commemorative editions of Niccolo planned

There will be another new UK edition of all the Niccolos to commemorate the finishing of the series. They will be in the “B” paperback format and will have more elaborate covers than the current small format Penguin editions. They are likely to come out in two lots – the first 4 in Jan 2000 and the next 3 in March 2000. I’ll give you further details when they become available.

The new Penguin Lymonds

The new Penguin editions of Lymond will be out very shortly – Ringed Castle should be this month and the others should follow in Feb and March. I’m told they have been reset (presumably rather than just reduced from the other editions) so they should be easy on the eye for reading, and they are priced at UKP 7.99 Details for most of them (apart from Pawn in Frankincense which will probably be last out) are on the web site with hotlinks for anyone who wants to order them.
The Michael Joseph trade editions are gradually disappearing as the Penguins come in. We still have copies of some of them – particularly Checkmate which is otherwise now out of print – but supplies will dry up over the next few weeks.

King Hereafter

As hoped we have been able to obtain copies of the US Vintage edition of King Hereafter, so if any of you that are outside the US would like a copy please get in touch. At the current exchange rate we’re selling it at UKP 9.65

Confessions of a Dunnett Reader

I’m half way through Race of Scorpions at the moment but there is never enough time for reading. Spring of the Ram was a fascinating look at the dying embers of the Byzantine world, and has also got me much more interested in the politics and history of the Mediterranean area.
So often the history books fail to give a real perspective on trade and war in these times and you are left trying to see it through modern eyes and ideas. So much depended on a single ship getting through with its cargo or a single engagement by relatively small armies. And how often have we looked at a flat military plan with it’s arrows pointing in all directions but failed to grasp the true significance of the lie of the land, the supply routes, the weather, the politics and internal jostling. Dorothy somehow brings this all to life in a way that seems beyond the dry textbooks (and all other authors).

It has been fascinating to watch Nicholas grow, and the changing opinions of his friends as he does so. At the moment it is easier to identify with him in the hero role – though perhaps not to the extent that you can with Lymond – but his mistakes are either forgiveable in one of his age and experience or are a natural consequence of the conflicts he is set within. (Of course I’m aware that this identification will probably not be so easy in the later books when his motives and morality will be more called into question)

I find myself becoming a little exasperated with Tobie’s attitude at the moment – he seems to have impossibly high ideals and is all too ready to criticise when Nicholas fails to meet them. Yes, there is the same unwillingness to explain himself that Lymond suffers from, but I find myself thinking that someone of Tobie’s intelligence should be seeing and understanding more than he does.

It’s probably a bit soon yet to give an opinion on most of the bigger questions that have so far turned up – but maybe on some of them.
Did he love Marion? Yes I’m pretty sure he did. Maybe the nature of it changed a bit but he seems very genuine in it.
Did he deliberately sink the cannon? Hmm, I’m doubtful about that unless he was even more precocious than he seems and there was a very deep motive involving others plotting in Scotland.
Did he engineer Felix death? No, I can’t see any evidence of that.

There are of course lots of questions, but I need to read more and then examine my instinctive reaction before posing them.

Quick General Summary for new subscribers

This last bit can be skipped by all the old hands. There are however lots of new people coming on board all the time, or people reading this via one of the discussion groups without having seen the web page, who may not know the things the rest take for granted.
I produce this newsletter as part of my work for James Thin Ltd, the 150 year old Edinburgh bookseller. We have long had a close relationship with Dorothy as one of our principle local authors, and for a long time have had many overseas Dunnett customers who order the books from us. The new UK titles are normally published about 7-8 months earlier than the US editions and of course everyone always wanted the books as soon as they could get them. For a long time we had run a conventional mailing list for notification to all these people (indeed we still do for those that are not on email) and Dorothy signs all the books before we send them out.

I set up our first email connection just over 4 years ago and by chance I was asked by Douglas Brown of our Mail Order Dept, who ran the mailing list, to reply to a Dunnett customer who had mentioned her email address in a letter, and from there I suddenly started to get email from other net connected fans. The numbers grew quickly and the first announcement of To Lie With Lions was made by email as well as letter, and when I set up the web site a few months later a Dunnett page was an obvious item for inclusion. It quickly became our most popular page and has remained so despite many advances in the site. If you haven’t seen the page then go to
http://www.jamesthin.co.uk/
for the full framed version and follow the button links for “Scottish” and “Scottish Authors”, (or “Fiction” and “Historical Fiction”) or go directly to
http://www.jamesthin.co.uk/dunnett.htm
for the Dunnett page without the navigation frame.

Most of the routine questions that are often asked are answered on this page and over the years I’ve added a number of other items such as “Questions to Dorothy” and “Dunnett Places to Visit”. You can even see a horoscope for Francis Crawford!
The book availablility lists are always kept as current as possible and there are hotlinks from the book ISBNs into our BookSearch enquiry/ordering system so it’s easy to order them. This system is fully secure for credit card transactions, so you need have no worries about ordering from overseas.

You should be aware that if you want books quickly and are on a different continent from us, then airmail, while expensive, is the best choice. Surface mail to the US and Canada takes between 5 and 8 weeks, and to Australia and the Far East can take 3 months or more. Even airmail isn’t always as fast as you would think – I’ve known cases of books being held up in US Customs and taking 18 days to reach their destination – but is usually only a few days. The vast majority of the orders for new titles as they first appear specify airmail – and those that initially say surface mail often change their minds 😉

From a figure of roughly 120 or so advance orders for Unicorn Hunt we moved to over 200 for TLWL with many more email orders quickly following. Caprice and Rondo was over 400 advance orders and the figure was nearer 600 within a couple of months of it being published, so you can imagine it has become a logistical nightmare to try to get them out as quickly as possible. Hopefully this may be a little easier with Niccolo 8 since it now won’t be in the very busy November period when we are also dealing with a lot of academic orders, and when the postal system is already starting to suffer from the Xmas rush. Of course how quickly Dorothy can sign 600 or so copies is another matter!

In case it’s not obvious I long since stopped regarding this as “real work” and it became a labour of love. Having met Dorothy a number of times and been captivated by her charm, intelligence and sense of humour, I started reading the books properly myself and am now as much a fan as the rest of you. Sometimes it’s hard to know where work stops and discussion begins, but usually if I post from my bill.marshall@jthin.co.uk address then I’m talking business, while if I’m using my personal account on cableinet which I use to participate in the discussion groups then I’m talking as a fan. Though sometimes it can get a bit blurry! 😉

You’re always welcome to contact me if you have any questions that I can help with.

Best wishes to old and new readers alike

Bill

Newsletter – 30th Oct 98

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(This should have gone out yesterday just before the copies were sent to the discussion groups but a software problem meant the server didn’t appear to accept them. I don’t think there’ll be duplicates but apologies if there are any.)

Greeting from a cold wet and stormy Scotland – whatever happened to “mists and mellow fruitfulness” in the Autumn?

Didn’t expect to be doing another newsletter quite so soon but have just had word of a number of new editions of various books that you’ll be interested in.

The UK ones first of all:

Caprice and Rondo is coming out in Penguin paperback on the 3rd December – ISBN 0140252304 Price UKP 7.99
I’ve been trying to find out from the editor whether it will match the first 5 in the series or the odd-one-out TLWL but no luck getting hold of her as yet.

The Lymond Chronicles are also coming out in Penguin paperback – starting with Ringed Castle on 28th January 99 (014027989X UKP 7.99) This is probably because the trade paperback of RC is out of print and they wanted to get a replacement available. The rest of the schedule reverts to the correct order with Game of Kings (0140282394 UKP 7.99) and Queens’ Play (0140282408 UKP 7.99) coming next at the end of February, and Disorderly Knights (0140282459 UKP 7.99) at the end of March. Incidently the trade paperback of Checkmate is also now out of print but there are still a fair number of copies around of it.

Moving to the US:

The rumoured Vintage paperback editions of Niccolo seems to be confirmed now. Niccolo Rising and Spring of the Ram are both scheduled for May 99 according to US Books in Print. There is also a suspicious entry for Race of Scorpions for February 99 but I’d be very surprised if that is true as it wouldn’t make sense to bring out the 3rd volume ahead of the first two like that. Maybe it’s really Feb 2000 and they’ve been hit by the millenium bug 😉 I’ll try and find out more although it’s never easy getting info from the US side. If anyone has any contacts at Random House you could maybe do some digging and let me know what turns up.

Some strange anomalies in Books in Print

It’s amazing how often databases get mixed up and often generate strange rumours. This month’s Books in Print on both sides of the Atlantic had me doing some chasing around in the last couple of days. In the British version I first noticed that the entries for the old Arrow editions of Lymond finally had Out of Print against them (only a few years late!!) – good I thought, we’re making progress at last. Then I noticed that the dates against the prices quoted on their old editions of Moroccan Traffic and Tropical Issue – which have also remained listed – had been updated to 9/98. Since they’ve been unavailable for a couple of years that didn’t make sense so I had to phone them up and confirm that they really hadn’t reprinted them and they had no plans to. I’m still not sure if they even still have the rights to the JJ series or whether they have reverted to Dorothy herself. I plan to ask her next time I’m in touch as it will be important as regards who, if anyone, publishes the final JJ that she plans to write after Niccolo 8 is finished. I don’t think Michael Joseph have picked up the rights but they may have an option to do so.

I also solved a puzzle that one of the discussion group members spotted recently when she noticed that Amazon were advertizing an untitled Dunnett “Novella” due out in 1999. I managed to trace that to Arrow/Hutchinson as well and phoned them again. Puzzled sounds from the other end of the line as the girl tried to work out how to pronounce novella and then how a hardback could be 6.99 and then finally turned up the fact that the title had been cancelled. I suspect that this may have been an old entry in the Arrow schedule that was long ago intended for a JJ book but was dumped when Dorothy moved her historical fiction titles to Michael Joseph.
Oh yes, if you want another good laugh at daft data look up Amazon again and you’ll find an entry for a 1994 hardback Unicorn Hunt marked “not yet published”! You’ll also notice that according to them Judith Wilt co-authored Caprice and Rondo!

Other strange goings on in British Books in Print – the hardbacks of Niccolo Rising and To Lie with Lions, which haven’t been available for quite some time, suddenly made a reappearance as being supposedly in print. Complete rubbish of course as a call to Michael Joseph soon confirmed.

Just to prove that they weren’t to be left out, US Books in Print have suddenly got a listing for a trade cloth edition of Send a Fax to the Kasbah (spelled Kashbah) published by Harcourt Brace in 1992. Strangely enough they don’t quote a price!! 😉

However I think we may have solved the mystery of the Amereon and Buccaneer editions that very few people could ever find in the US. A couple of their editions now have the Bowker Class “Large Type Books” against them, so they may in fact be Large Print editions for people with impaired eyesight – or it could be just Books in Print talking nonsense again! 😉

So, as I said to someone on one of the lists recently – trust our Dunnett web pages rather than anyone else’s search system – at least they’ve had human intervention in their creation 😉

On the subject of the web pages, with all the work on the search engine I’ve been forced over the last few months to neglect the Dunnett pages a little compared to the previous continual updates and new features, and of course as they’ve grown it’s become harder to drop in revisions without rewriting half the text. I also wasn’t sure what to do about including a tribute to Alastair. I’ve just added all the news mentioned above and rearranged things a little, but they really need a complete redesign. So if you see some odd changes back and forth in the next few weeks it’ll probably be me experimenting with different layouts. I still try to keep them as accessible to all browsers as possible, but it’s getting harder to do that and still have any sort of modern look and feel to them. If you’ve any strong views on this let me know.
Recently quite a few of you have been talking about Patrick O’Brien – the historical nautical writer, so I’m planning to put up a page about his books shortly. A complete rewrite of the Science Fiction pages is also long overdue. Looks like I’m going to be busy for a while longer!

Between work and the beginning of the chess season I haven’t been able to read any more of Spring of the Ram since the last newsletter so no “Confession of a Dunnett Reader” this time.

One more item that some of you may be interested in. Bob Gordon has asked me if we would be able to carry his calendar – The Book of Fictional Days – for 1999. This is a ring-bound book-style calendar which “records when things that did not happen occurred”. He’s collected the identifiable dates from a great many fictional books and films and songs and made them into a literary calendar. Naturally there are some entries from our favourite author. Would any of you be interested in this? If you would, get back to me and I’ll get in touch with Bob about taking some.

best wishes to you all

Bill

Newsletter – 3rd October 98

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Greetings from a somewhat grey Edinburgh – after our glorious 3 day “Indian Summer” (the forecasters said it would be 10) in mid-September when we basked in 28 degree warmth we seem to have skipped October and plunged straight into dark November mornings.

This newsletter has taken me a while to get round to writing, because I really wasn’t sure what I should say. It should have been a happy one – with mention of Dorothy’s 75th birthday – but the death of her husband Alastair a few days later has of course changed that completely.

To start with the birthday.
Dorothy celebrated her 75th birthday on the 25th August and, as those of you on the various discussion groups will already know, I sent her a card on behalf of all of you and those of us here at Thins, shortly before I went on holiday a few days before the big day. The card was a fairly elaborate gatefold design and given the difficulties in finding good messages in cards these days I was pleased to find one that was in some ways appropriate.
The verse was:

You’re thought about and spoken of so often through the year
It wouldn’t be a secret that you’re someone very dear
But your birthday is a perfect chance to specially tell you so
And to wish you much more happiness than words could ever show

When I got back to work after the holiday I found the following fax on my desk.

====
Dear Bill, Douglas, Jeanette, and all the Unalloyed Webbers out there in the ether…

A vast pink card stands on the shelf by my parrot (does everyone know about my parrot?) congratulating me on surviving past the allotted span by five years. This has come about solely by the preserving effects of constant praise (the bits of your communications that you permit me to read) and the bracing knowledge that there is a lot of sturdy criticism going on out there from which I am tenderly shielded. I have to say incidentally, never bother to pull punches. Anyone who has brought up two sons can take anything on the chin, and generally has the thick skin to prove it.

What has arrived however is not a critique but a very sweet message which I do take to heart. Come to think of it my mother lived to 92, so there is time even to answer all your questions about Lymond, and Nicholas, and Thorfinn, and JJ before taking off, in a hurry, for Mars. For you know you don’t really want them all answered – just some of them. The rest you will probably manage to sort out for yourselves; in fact many of you, I suspect, have sorted out the next book as well. I look forward to comparing notes when it comes out.

Meanwhile, my thanks and my blessings, and my warmest regards to every one of you.

with affection

Dorothy
====

I actually read this after I returned from Alastair’s funeral service on the Monday morning, so you can imagine I had a lump in my throat. I’d first read of his death in a copy of the Times on the flight home from Austria and was just back in time for the funeral service. I knew he’d been unwell for a couple of weeks but it had been expected that he’d recover. However it seems that his heart hadn’t been able to take the extra strain and simply gave out.

Some of you will have read a description of the funeral which I posted on one of the discussion groups. I found that rather hard to write so if you’ll forgive me I won’t attempt to repeat that here.

I know that some of you had met Alastair and found him a charming man with a ready wit. Some of you may not know what a remarkable life he had led and what he had achieved for his country. I can only touch on a fraction of it here but perhaps this will give you some idea of his range. Of course he had inspired the character of Francis Crawford which says more than anything else can about his intelligence and abilities, while any of you who have read “Among Friends” will have had an insight into his love of Scotland.

He had already achieved a lot in an administrative role as assistant to the famous Tom Johnstone at the Scottish Office before he went into journalism and rose through various posts and newspapers to become editor of The Scotsman. At that time it was languishing in a rather minor backwater, but he turned it around completely to put it back to it’s rightful place as the best quality newspaper in the country, and having done so made it the voice of the Scottish people in pushing for the sort of reforms which have at last given us some control of our own affairs with the Assembly due to open soon. Thankfully he lived to see it voted in, but it’s such a pity that he didn’t see it open. I knew of Alastair long before I ever heard of Dorothy – when, in my teens, I started to regularly read The Scotsman, a couple of years before he left it, he was a legend. In many ways he WAS The Scotsman, and it was a few years before they recovered from his departure. He was offered the editorship of The Times – at that time, much more than now, an enormously influential post – but he turned it down saying he could never leave Scotland. Instead he turned his talents to the oil industry which was vitally important to the country through the developments in the North Sea, and for many years the biggest names in the industry were regular visitors at his house. In the meantime he and Dorothy were constantly working behind the scenes in many areas of Scottish life – the Edinburgh Festival for instance – bringing their vision and energy to the benefit of the country. Somehow he also found time to continue writing and right up to the last couple of months his occasional articles for newspapers were always a delight to read. In a recent interview in the Edinburgh Evening News, Dorothy described him as the real writer in the family, which I think says a great deal.
His 89 years were extremely well spent and his knighthood was richly deserved.

As you can probably imagine, the number of friends and wellwishers was vast, and it was felt by many of Dorothy’s fans that it would be best not to send hundreds of individual letters of condolence as she would almost certainly feel the need to reply to them all individually, and this was a burden we should avoid putting on her. I sent a card, and I know that another letter was sent, explaining this, and she has sent charming handwritten replies to both with thanks to everyone for their best wishes and consideration. I was pleased to hear from her that Alastair had expressed surprise and delight at the birthday card – he was always wonderfully proud of Dorothy’s achievements and the devotion she inspires amongst her readers.

A number of people had suggested making contributions to a trust that Alastair had been involved in setting up, but aside from the fact that the trust in question is not in a position to acept individual donations, the family felt that Alastair would not have wanted any memorial of this kind.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

To return to current matters and to Dorothy’s books, the new US Vintage paperback edition of King Hereafter has now been released in America. I’m told the book has been done in the same style as their Lymond reissues. We don’t yet know whether we will be able to get copies here in the UK – that depends on whether one of the US import wholesalers decides to carry it. I suspect they will but it may be a little while before that is confirmed or copies can get here. It will not of course be published here since Michael Joseph own the rights in this country and they are planning to bring out a hardback edition next year.
For those wanting to order it in the USA the ISBN is 0375704035 and I believe the price is $US 16.00

It is rumoured that Vintage will be producing paperbacks of the first three Niccolos sometime next year, although there are no details as yet.

Confessions of a Dunnett Reader

While I was on holiday in Austria I finally got a chance to finish reading Niccolo Rising and even moved on to Spring of the Ram, although an overfull schedule since my return has meant I’m stalled about a third of the way through that just now.

So completely different from Lymond of course!! I wasn’t really sure that I would like it – how can you possibly follow the best hero and the perfect heroine with anything else? – but once I’d got past the first few chapters of scene-setting the now-familiar exquisite style of the writing carried me on until I began to empathise a bit more with our new “hero”. What a mass of contradictions he is. Unlike Francis who you are always quite sure has the best motives even when he doesn’t explain them (when does he ever 😉 ), Nicholas seems to be constantly in a maze of complex and shifting patterns and plans which no-one else can even guess at, although Tobie at least does a pretty good job of trying. One thing I’ve realised; I’d always rather suspected that business had certain hidden areas – that really successful business has more going on beneath the surface than those of us who are not natural entrepreneurs can guess at. Having read the machinations of the Alum deals I am now quite certain that that is this case!! I wonder which businesses Dorothy got the inspiration from? 😉

Of course I’ve read so much about Nicholas that it’s difficult to know how objectively I’m reading him and how much I’m influenced by foreknowledge, but he does seem to have hidden agendas that neither his fellow cast nor the reader are privy to. I’m reminded of something I heard Dorothy say at one of her talks here in the shop, when she remarked that he was a person of great abilities but no ambition – no clear idea of what he wanted to do – and that was what the series was about. (Of course she has also said completely different things in other talks!!) I will need to go a bit further into the series before I can say too much more but the complexities are already firmly established as a delightful conundrum which will require all my chess-player’s analytical abilities to even comprehend – let alone solve!! Perhaps if that other Edinburgh writer, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, had written multi-volume stories they would have been like this!

That’s enough for now. I need to do some more reading!

It’s strange how Dunnett themes start to crop up in everything you do. The in-flight magazine going to Munich had an article about Prague and how it is built to an astrological design. John Dee apparently visited the city and got a prominent mention. A visit to the castle at Kufstein also revealed a number of exhibits from the time period of our adventures. Although I didn’t get as far west in the Tyrol as the pass which Nicholas would have followed such glimpses still give a fascinating view of how people lived in those times.

Can I just ask everyone something. I’ve been finding recently that one or two of you who have been on the list for a long time don’t seem to have been getting all the newsletters recently. I’m becoming a bit suspicious that there may be a limit somewhere in the distribution list software and so I’m going to send this out in smaller sections. There are over 500 of you receiving the newsletter directly so I’ll split the alphabet into three and send them separately. The most recent newsletters have been in July 98, May 98, March 98, Feb 98 and Jan 98. If you receive this but didn’t get some of the earlier ones please let me know. Also let me know if you would like me to send replacements for any missing ones.

If you know of anyone who would like to receive the newsletters please pass them on to me or get them to press the subscribe button on the main Dunnett web page, and I’ll add them in.

Best wishes to everyone