Iain M. Banks (1954–2013) was born #OTD, 16 Feb—a🎂🧵
1/7

“Iain Banks… is a novelist who has his own ‘double’, an author for whom the idea of a split writing persona is emphatically not out of place”

—A 2010 article on Banks’s genre-busting career:
thebottleimp.org.uk/2010/11/readin… Bookclub: THE WASP FACTORY
Available on @BBCSounds – Iain Banks discusses his debut novel with James Naughtie & readers at the @natlibscot
🚨CONTAINS SPOILERS🚨 – read the book before listening to the programme!
2/7
bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01…

VALENTINE WEATHER
Edwin Morgan

Kiss me with rain on your eyelashes,
come on, let us sway together,
under the trees, and to hell with thunder.

—a short 🧵 of Edwin Morgan love poems for #ValentinesDay 💘 & #LGBTHistoryMonth 🏳️‍🌈
1/4 No smoke without you, my fire.
After you left,
your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray
and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey
I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal
of so much love…

—Edwin Morgan, “One Cigarette”
2/4

James Leslie Mitchell (1901–1935), better known as Lewis Grassic Gibbon, was born #OTD, 13 Feb. Author of SUNSET SONG—& many other titles from historical to science fiction—he is one of the most important Scottish writers of the 20th century.
A 🎂🧵…
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digital.nls.uk/learning/sunse… “The ambiguity of authority & reliability in narration, in Scots or English, is central to Hogg, Galt, Stevenson, many others, but in Gibbon’s trilogy it is utterly deconstructed”
—Alan Riach: the influence of Gibbon on contemporary Scottish literature
2/8
thenational.scot/news/15550316.…

Robert Louis Stevenson’s #shortstory “The Bottle Imp” was first published (in English) #OTD, 8 Feb 1891, in the New York Herald. It was originally published in #Samoan translation as “O le Fagu Aitu” in the missionary magazine O le sulu Samoa (The Samoan Torch)

A 👿🧵 …
1/8 Interesting for all sorts of reasons—a #Hawaiian protagonist, a strong female character—“The Bottle Imp” is wonderfully elegant, & moves like a Swiss watch. It also contains a paradox, which arguably undermines Rational Choice Theory in #economics
2/8
📷William Hatherell, 1905

What Scotsman was caught up in a civil war before the age of twenty? Wrote a book that became the inspiration for an #Oscar-winning film? Met a runaway teenager in Paris & married her against the wishes of his family? Lost his ranch to raiding Apaches? Went into Parliament as a #Liberal and came out as a #Socialist? Assaulted a policeman in defence of free speech and was sent to prison? Travelled in disguise in Morocco trying to reach a forbidden city? Was a founder of both @scottishlabour & @theSNP?