Thrillers about Scottish independence March 18, 2017
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
I’ve a feeling I’ve mentioned this before, but anyone know any good thrillers about Scottish independence? I’m talking about books from the 1960s onwards to the present day? I’ve a vivid memory of being in Dublin Airport (the old terminal sometime around 1975 and someone had a copy of the Sunday Express I think in which was an excerpt from a book where Scotland had gone independent and (I think) taken at least a part of the British nuclear deterrent with it. I’ve a feeling that was part of a series of books. There’s the incredibly gloomy Lands End from the 1970s where an independent Scotland is invaded by a fascist England. And er… that’s it. It doesn’t end well. Any suggestions?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Didn’t Douglas Hurd write one along those lines?
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https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjEsM2Jq-DSAhXPFsAKHUDEDq0QFggsMAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FScotch_on_the_Rocks&usg=AFQjCNHrGetz4HZsGLWjW8SC81SEGwyRVQ&sig2=8kqFLR31ttQYuMELR0bAcw&bvm=bv.149760088,d.ZGg
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Moray McClaren’s ‘The Douglas Affair’ (C1967) deals with the beginning of a mass struggle for Scottish independence. I don’t know if he published a sequel.
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Thanks to you all, that sounds promising OCL, Scotch on the Rocks sounds not so much! :). Its odd how little fiction is based on it – by contrast there’s almost a genre of US invades Canada thrillers.
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is anybody else a fan of Compton Mackenzie and the Todday Island books? The most famous by far is whisky galore, but there’s also one about the home guard during the war. They’re not in the genre sought for here, but most of them have a few early scots nationalist figures in the cast….
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I remember reading both that band rockets galore (tangentially science fiction – or so it seemed), good humoured but pro or anti independence? I can’t recall!
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Compton Mackenzie who wrote it was, I think, a founder, or early member of the SNP. I don’t think the books were ever explicitly pro-nationalist – but they were certainly scathing about London rule.
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Halting State and Rule 34 are a two book series set in and independent Scotland in an alternate late 2020s by Charles Stross.
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I liked them.
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http://www.paul-johnston.co.uk/ Writes a futuristic series set in Scotland. Though I prefer his Greek detective series.
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These I haven’t heard of Jim. Look interesting.
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Got his name from Helena Sheehan.
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Scotch on the Rocks, by Douglas Hurd and Andrew Osmond, is actually not a bad read. I wrote about it (and other imagined future Scotlands) here.
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Great article, I guess all political thrillers dealing with big ticket events like Scottish independence and the like becomes a sort of alternative history fiction ultimately in the end. Rereading some of Craig Thomas’s really quite right wing early 90s thrillers re the USSR even though set in it pre demise they diverge substantially from the actual timeline. And the same us true of so many works and then books like Donald James Monstrum set after another Russian civil war set slightly in the future have a similar issue. That’s funny re the ambiguity in Descent, I read it taking it as read it was an independent Scotland though with some sort of all island links.
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Random google https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rogue-Nation-Alan-Clements/dp/1845965809
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Different nation, but “The War in the Marshes” by Robert Young (Robert Payne) is an allegorical novel about a war between Wales and England.
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/payne_robert
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Lanark by Alasdair Gray (1981) presents an overcast Caledonian dystopia in four books. Not quite a thriller, although it has its moments.
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