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.