Liam McIlvanney
@LiamMcIlvanney
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New direction, new publisher, new book. Delighted to have signed with @bonnierbooks_uk and @BenWillisUK. The Good Father will be out from @ZaffreBooks next year. I hope you’ll give it a go….
I have been sitting on this news for some time now, but no longer! I am utterly thrilled to be publishing @LiamMcIlvanney's new contemporary thriller. You *need* to read this game-changing crime novel. ALL OF YOU. Hit me up if you want an early read.
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Old boy in the queue in front of me at PaperPlus, buying The Heretic. Me: ‘Couldn’t help but notice u bought my book. Happy to sign it.’.Him: ‘Your book?’.Me: ‘Yes. I wrote it.’.Him: ‘YOUR book?’.Me: ‘Yes. That’s me. I’m Liam McIlvanney!’ .Him: ‘No you’re not. He’s dead.’ .Me: ….
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Superb. This is how you do it….
'I detest everything the Tories stand for'. Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon MSP says she has spent a political lifetime in opposition to the Tories - adding she will not apologise for standing against their policies. 📺 Sky 501 and YouTube
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Find myself flummoxed at how completely Iain Banks’s books - which were everywhere in the bookshops of my youth - seem to have vanished from view. Be great to think that folk could still wander into a bookshop & discover The Bridge or Espedair Street or this dark beauty…
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I wrote a short piece in tribute to my uncle, Hugh McIlvanney. I hope it begins to do him justice.
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Very sad to hear this news. A great man, a great writer. Thoughts with Caroline, Liz and Conn. Rest In Peace, Uncle Hughie.
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On 30 April 1985, sitting my English ‘O’ Grade in the Assembly Hall of Grange Academy in Kilmarnock, I turned over the exam paper to see…this! 😂
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SF poll 25%. Irish media: ‘Stunning. Historic. What a triumph!’.SNP poll 45%. Scottish media: ‘Has Nicola’s bandwagon run out of road?’.
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The Scottish Suffragettes weren’t messing about, were they?
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I know how deeply @valmcdermid loves RRFC & how strong her ties are with the club (her dad scouted Baxter for the Rovers, for God’s sake). I also know her to be a person of honour and integrity. This is a brave and principled move by Val and a profoundly wrong move by the club.
I have this morning ended my lifelong support of @RaithRovers over their signing of the rapist David Goodwillie. I have cancelled next season’s shirt sponsorship over this disgusting and despicable move. This shatters any claim to be a community or family club. 1/2.
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Sitting in a cafe in Dunoon eating a ‘Scooby’ - a roll with Lorne sausage, egg, bacon and tattie scone. ‘What this needs,’ I say to my wife, ‘is black pudding.’ Quick as a flash she says, ‘That would be a Scooby Dubh…’ #GaelicPuns
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Classic bit of NZ/Scottish accent confusion after a meal in the Water Bar in Wānaka just now. Me: ‘Can I settle up?’ .Barman: ‘Sorry, what’s that?’ .Me: ‘I want to pay.’ .Barman: ‘Ah, right, the toilets are behind you.’ .Me: ….
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So here’s the cover for the next book. My wife glanced at it without her specs and read ‘an absolute master’ as ‘an obsolete roaster’, which is possibly nearer the mark.
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To argue that the SNP can have no legitimate role in the government of the UK is to concede that Scotland is a foreign country.
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Why is this not on a banknote?.
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Alert Level 1 from midnight tonight. PM has played a blinder from day 1. Proud to be part of this #TeamOfFiveMillion
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Research leave now approved, so, all going well, should be back home in Scotland with family for 8 months, June 2023-Jan 2024, living on the Ayrshire coast, eating as much haddock & writing as much crime fiction as I can. Been gone too long. Bring it on! 🏴
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Deeply moved by all the messages of support and condolence for my father. We're hurting but it means a great deal. Thank you.
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Have had a tremendous time being back home in Ayrshire these past seven months, catching up with friends & relatives, seeing some Killie games, getting some writing done. Starting the long haul back to NZ tomorrow. See youse all next time…👋
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Aw naw. Terry Hall. The man. Saw them doing Too Much Too Young on the telly when I was 10. Blown away. Ghost Town took 3 mins to encapsulate being young in Thatcher’s Britain better than almost anything else. RIP…
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Well, this is rather exciting. If anyone can do justice to a Laidlaw prequel, it’s @Beathhigh.
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In his pomp….
Pubs of Scotland: William McIlvanney in Clark's Bar, Dundas Street, Edinburgh. (1989) Pic: Robin Gillanders.
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Indyref2 will be 'bitter and divisive'. Whereas being dragged out of Europe against your will is really quite uplifting.
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It’s a little known fact that the drain coverings in Perth city centre were designed by Edvard Munch.
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Like many fathers and sons, our relationship was complicated, but I still miss him every day. #FathersDay
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Right. That’s novel #5 done and dusted. 104k words and 350 pages of standalone psychological thriller, set on the mean streets - and beach - of Fairlie (North Ayrshire’s Capital of Noir 😉). I’m off to crack open a Guinness Zero…
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It’s publication day for The Heretic. It took me the best part of four years of writing and revising to get to this point, with lots of help from editors & early readers. Huge thanks to everyone who has blurbed, bought, supported the book. I’m deeply grateful 🙏 #GoLittleBook
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Here’s a wee writing tip I’ve found useful. Take a novel you admire, open a doc & type the 1st line & last line of every chapter. Ponder them. You get a good idea of the range of ways to open & close a scene/chapter, & also how the end often loops back to link w the start….
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Right, that’s me finished the edits to The Heretic (sequel to The Quaker): 126k words of yer genuine, bona fide (and slightly overwritten) Tartan Noir. Available from all good bookshops in June. I’m off for a cold one. Possibly two. .
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The letters page of the Irish Times almost never disappoints.
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I shouldn’t be jumping the gun here since I’m about to review the book, but Don Paterson on Scottish tablet in Toy Fights may be the finest page of prose I have read all year. Genius…
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@pacificraft Brilliant. I think my man was feeling something similar as this implausible bearded figure in a Swanndri shirt and dubious accent accosted him….
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Local bookshop emails to say that from today (17 April) they are now permitted to supply ‘books to support health and well-being’ as well as textbooks, but not ‘non-essential’ books ‘like fiction’. There *may* be an argument that novels support well-being. 😉.
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This briefcase. My Uncle Hughie bought it for me when I started my first lecturing job at Aberdeen in ’97. Have now been toting it into work pretty much every day for 27 years. Anyway, buy a Plevier - it’ll last you…
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Right. Have finally submitted McCormack 2, weighing in at 110k words. Not saying it’s any good, but it is - at least until @juliawisdom says otherwise - finished. And, yes, I am cracking open the good stuff. #slainte
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Never trust a man who uses a comma when a semicolon is called for. .
Taking care of your wife and young child is justifiable and reasonable, trying to score political points over it isn’t.
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Well, that’s the Bells here at the bottom of the world. Have a guid yin, folks! 🥃.
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Having gleefully promoted a structural disdain for Scotland (‘it doesn’t matter who you vote for in Scotland; our pals are in charge at Westminster’), the Scottish Tories now discover that they are included in that disdain. Karma’s a bitch. .
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Many thanks for all the McIlvanney Prize good wishes. Delighted and honoured to have been given the nod. Been an emotional night. May now go and have a beer - possibly two -while watching @funlovinwriters. .
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This is Ian MacDonald describing Britain in the Fifties. Plus ça change.
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An independent, nuclear-free, outward-looking Scotland would be a pretty modest progressive beacon in the gloom. But it would be something.
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Bliadhna Mhath Ùr! It’s 2021 already in Aotearoa New Zealand and I can confirm that it’s a whole lot fucking better than 2020! 😉Have a good one! 🏴🇳🇿🥃.
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Coming from the West of Scotland, I’m thinking, ‘Well it’s no *that* difficult, is it?’ 😉👮♂️
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‘You have two minutes on the life and works of Beatrix Potter, starting. now!’
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Away to give a talk about Scottish Studies. Worried I’m not quite tweedy enough…🧐
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Hanging with the auld fella in Paper Plus, Dunedin.
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In the pub celebrating Scotland’s qualification with a few pints and a haggis and black pudding roll, with No. 1 Son behind the bar. #lifeisgood
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Reservoir Dons. (Bonus point for former NZ cabinet minister in the background…)😉
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Fair play to the unflappable Bernard Ponsonby. 'Are you actually telling me what I can & cannot ask?'
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Belatedly, after decades of spurning it, I can now see the utility, logic, and elegance of the Oxford comma and have started using it. Who even am I any more? #IWasBlindButNowICanSee.
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No. 2 Son on his 18th, getting his first (legal) pint. Poured for him by No. 1 Son. Good times. 🍻
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When chapmen billies leave the street. Off to recite ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ at the Dunedin Burns Supper @OSMDunedin. Wish me/them luck…😉
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Have spent much of my academic career immersed in the work of Robert Burns, but the work of Tommy Burns - particularly between 1989 and 1994 - has given me just as much pleasure. Great man. Killie legend. 12 years gone. RIP
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I’m writing a scene in which a drunk man is being oxtered out of a building. There is just no English equivalent of ‘oxtered’, is there?.
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The saltire flying proudly in Roslyn, Dunedin. Happy St Andrew’s Day, folks.
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You’re not alone. Congrats, fella….
Oh how I wish William McIlvanney was here to share this win with a wee Antiquary… 🥃🥃
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Right, that’s me off social media till I finish this damn novel. So, all being well, I should see you all in about three and a half years. 😉 #seeyouontheotherside.
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If there’s an afterlife, I hope Alasdair Gray is now challenging his creator to explain himself, just as Lanark does in the Epilogue. I can’t think of another writer who combines joyous playfulness with deep moral seriousness in quite Gray’s manner. A genius.
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No, you can’t have her. She’s ours.
"We're just having a bit of an earthquake here": New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern barely skipped a beat when a quake struck during a live TV interview.
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Off to chair our ‘Bloody Scotland’ crime fiction event later this afternoon. May have taken the ‘tartan noir’ theme a bit literally…
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Dropped No. 2 Son off at his halls of residence at Otago Uni today, which is a little odd as he was nine years old about ten minutes ago. Where does the time go?
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Our rabbit seems to have taken our Christmas tree for an actual tree and rarely stirs from under it. We may not have the heart to take the tree down, in which case there will be a corner of southern NZ where it’s forever Christmas. 🎄
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‘How far will the Scottish Government’s strategy protect its people and save lives?’, is surely the pertinent question. Not ‘how far will it differ from the UK?’.
In a break from the rest of the UK, Scotland has advised people to wear face coverings in some public places. But how far will the Scottish Govt's strategy differ? Joining @Peston tonight is @NicolaSturgeon, First Minister of Scotland. LIVE @ 1045 | @ITV | @WeAreSTV | #Peston
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Yass! Got the flights booked for our Scotland sojourn later this year (June 2023 to January 2024). I give you fair warning that this will become a Firth of Clyde & questionable Caledonian cuisine stan account on 1st June…😉🏴
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There are no puddings - and few foodstuffs - to rival trifle. I will not be taking questions at this stage.
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Sometimes in life you get a bit of luck that you just don’t deserve. Been married to this wonderful woman for 21 years.
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The pièce de résistance of the humble fish supper: the chip buttie.
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Happy New Year from the bottom of the world, folks! Hope 2022’s a guid yin for you and yours. I’m bringing in the bells, as I have done for the past 33 years, with the wonderful @valmcilvanney. Awrabest!
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We're being driven off a Brexit cliff-edge by the party of Ian Paisley. But, hey, at least we're not independent. Right, Kez?.
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Yay! A copy of The Heretic has finally reached me in my Antipodean fastness. First impression: it’s pretty damn big. 📖
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Ach, just waking up to the news about Sean Connery. What a giant of a man. RIP
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Taking a couple of months off Twitter to try to make some headway with the current novel. See you all further down the line. .
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Bunnets. Burns. Square whisky bottles with squinty labels. Pies.
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Happy Burns Day! Here’s the man himself in Dunedin’s Octagon with (as the old joke has it) his back to the church and his face to the pub.
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When this is all over I mean to travel north, too. Love this one from the great Kathleen Jamie.
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Ducking out for a month or two, folks. Need to get some writing done. See you on the other side….
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You can't present the UK as a diverse, tolerant family of nations & then demand unconditional unity around a Brexit that Scotland rejected.
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You can’t actually have this much fun in an Edinburgh pub.
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