I know I’ve not yet commemorated Chuck Berry. I’ll do so on Friday.

The news came today that Colin Dexter, creator of Inspector Morse, has died.

Dexter had at one time the distinction of being the author whose books were most donated to charity shops. (At least in England. In Scotland Ian Rankin fills/filled that role.)

Norman Colin Dexter: 29/9/1930 – 21/3/2017. So it goes.

Looking at the news coverage of the death of Martin McGuiness I did wonder whether the UK was the only country in the world whose media reacted with such an emphasis on his terrorist past rather than his conversion to peacemaking and power sharing. Sinner that repenteth and all that.

(In this context I note Norman Tebbit’s characteristically pungent comments on McGuiness’s death. Anyone would think that Tebbit had never done anything in his life that warranted citicism. Some of the policies he supported as a government minister caused grief to tens – hundreds – of thousands of his fellow citizens – and perhaps the premature deaths of some of them. The tone of his comments suggest he feels McGuiness’s adoption of peace was not genuine. Well, Ian Paisley had much more reason to suspect McGuinness of duplicity yet managed to find common ground. Paisley’s son explicitly acknowledged the change in McGuiness’s attitude. Fair enough Tebbit’s wife was severely injured by the IRA so he has a pressing reason for his contumely but she wouldn’t have been in that hotel if she wasn’t his wife. Then again Tebbit has never been known for acknowledging the viewpoint of his political opponents.)

Whatever, McGuiness was one of the most prominent Irishmen of his times.

James Martin Pacelli McGuinness: 23/5/1950 – 21/3/2017. So it goes.

I have a problem with the novel I’m reading just now.

It’s nothing to do with the subject matter, nor the writing.

It’s the title, Jack Glass.

For a Scot my age those two words conjure up mostly an image of a rabid Presbyterian preacher with black hair and goatee beard, rejoicing (I use the word advisedly) in the title of Pastor Jack Glass. Even when he came to wide public notice (late 1960s? early 1970s?) that Pastor tag seemed impossibly archaic.

Due to his anti-Catholic stance Glass was regarded as Scotland’s answer to Ian Paisley. He vehemently opposed the then Pope’s visit to Scotland in 1982. Given Paisley’s later taking part in government along with Sinn Fein in the Northern Ireland Assembly Glass would perhaps have looked on Paisley as some sort of apostate (if he would ever have allowed such a Latinate word to describe any of his attitudes.) Glass, though, died ten years ago. So it goes.

None of this is likely to have impinged on the author of Jack Glass the novel, as he, Adam Roberts, was born in Croydon. I doubt if even his time studying English at the University of Aberdeen would have been troubled by knowledge or thoughts of the pastor, who, as far as I am aware, was never a household name south of the border. It is, though, a reminder of how cultural specificities can alter perspectives.