Part of the central portion of Orkney’s mainland is known by the name of Harray.

On the way up to Kirbuster Farm Museum we passed a local ceramic artist’s workshop and retail premises. The business’s name is obviously playing on a more widely known enterprise.

I was sad to hear of the death of Rutherglen born actor Robbie Coltrane this week.

As an actor he usually filled the screen – and not because of his physical stature.

I suppose he is best known for his role as Hagrid in the Harry Potter films but I remember him from way back in sketch comedy shows such as A Kick Up the Eighties and Laugh??? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee. He really came to prominence in the BBC Scotland series Tutti Frutti. His delivery of the line, “Don’t get the stripy stuff. It stings my gums,” was masterly.

Then there was his performance as the forensic psychologist Fitz in Cracker, which earned him three BAFTA Awards for best actor.

All in all he has a long, distinguished CV.

Robbie Coltrane (Anthony Robert McMillan,) 30/3/1950 – 14/10/2022. So it goes.

Two posts ago I listed my review of Robert Alan Jamieson’s A Day at the Office, one of the 100 Best Scottish books.

That makes it just about all of the fiction on that list that I have now read, plus the non-fiction The Golden Bough

The only exceptions are The Wind in the Willows (which I believe I did read as a child but can’t remember actually doing so,) the J K Rowling Harry Potter book (which I won’t be reading) and Trainspotting, which along with Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song has appeared on all the lists of Scottish books* which I have covered over the past few years.

Since it was written in Gaelic I’ve also not read An Oidhche Mus Do Sheòl Sinn (The Night Before We Sailed) by Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul (Angus Peter Campbell.)

I feel a sense of satisfaction at not only having tracked down these books but finally reading them.

I have seen the film of Trainspotting, which did not encourage me to read the book. I suppose that is a bullet I must bite sometime though.

*As well as the 100 Best there were:-
The Scotsman’s 20 Scottish Books Everyone Should Read (from 2005.)
The Herald’s 100 Best Scottish Fiction Books
Scotland’s Favourite Book

In a programme on BBC 1 Scotland last night the results of a poll to discover Scotland’s favourite book were announced.

These were apparently voted on from a long list of thirty books.

As usual the titles marked in bold I have read; italics are on my tbr pile.The ones marked by a strike-through I may get round to sometime.

An Oidhche Mus Do Sheol Sinn (The Night Before We Sailed) by Angus Peter Campbell
Garnethill by Denise Mina
Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman
Imagined Corners by Willa Muir
Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin
Laidlaw by William McIlvanney
Lanark by Alasdair Gray
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
So I Am Glad by A.L. Kennedy
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Cone Gatherers by Robin Jenkins
The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh
The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
The White Bird Passes by Jessie Kesson
The Wire in the Blood by Val McDermid
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Trumpet by Jackie Kay
Under the Skin by Michel Faber

Thanks to my working through of the 100 best Scottish Books and the Herald’s “100” best Scottish Fiction Books I have read nineteen of these, with two on the tbr and others maybe to consider.

I suspect that in the fullness of time some of the more modern of them will fall away from public affection.

My strike rate for the final top ten was 7/10. The list (in descending order) was:-

10. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
9. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
8. Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin
7. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
6. Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone by J K Rowling
5. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
4. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
3. Lanark by Alasdair Gray
2. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
1. Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

I am particularly pleased that James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner made it here and the strong showing of Alasdair Gray was also welcome. Personally I don’t think The Wasp Factory is Iain Banks’s best book but only one from each author was on the long list.

Gibbon’s Sunset Song was the one I predicted to the good lady would come first. Since its publication it has been an enduring favourite with Scottish readers.

This was the reason we went to Fort William.

My work colleagues had given me a voucher for two tickets on an excursion from Fort William to Mallaig on the Jacobite Steam train run by West Coast Railways. This is the train that features as the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter films.

We hadn’t been on a steam train since we took the boys on the one at Bo’ness in the long ago.

That British Railways logo is a cracker.

It’s reminiscent of the one used for the British Empire Exhibition of 1924-25.

See more images of the Wembley Lion here.

When we debarked at Mallaig Station the footplatemen were hard at work shovelling coal on the Jacobite’s coal tender.

The end of the line at Mallaig:-