As the crime writing
community warms up for the fifth
Bloody Scotland festival, with Val McDermid, Chris Brookmyre, Helen
Fitzgerald, Nicci French, Stuart MacBride and many more, William Sutton offers a guide to
Stirling as a suitable spot for criminal fraternising.
It thrilled me, as a wee boy, that David Balfour, hero of Robert
Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped,
hid under old Stirling Bridge on his cross-country quest to clear his name: the
very same bridge that I passed on the way to the Thistle Centre or Stirling County Cricket Club.
From RLS to Rebus
Stevenson, author of two and half of literature’s most
memorable characters (Long John Silver, Jekyll/Hyde) often stayed here (in the
spa town of Bridge of Allan, along the road from my school). I later discovered
Stevenson’s
cave on the Darn Walk, a welcome escape for those exhausted by Stirling
nightlife and the inspiration for Ben Gunn’s cave in Treasure
Island. That may be a children’s book, but there’s no doubt Stevenson was a
crime writer.
If you don’t consider The
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde a crime novel, read over Hyde’s misdeeds
again and try telling that to Operation Yewtree.
Iain Rankin was astonished how few spotted that his Rebus
novel Hide
and Seek was a homage to Stevenson. Rankin explored his admiration
for Stevenson’s gothic masterpiece in this excellent
BBC documentary.
Deceptively peaceful
Viewed from the Wallace Monument, the Carse of Stirling
seems a peaceful landscape. Yet the area has its share of violence.
I grew up down the road, in Dunblane. Fiction plumbs the
depths of terrible crimes. William McIlvanney, through his hero Laidlaw, urges
us to treat murderers as humans: “There are no monsters…only
people.” But who can imagine Thomas Hamilton’s state of mind as he drove there
from Stirling on March
13 1996?
Today, you will find commemorative gardens, a community
centre, and a memorial to the tragedy in Dunblane Cathedral.
On the High Street, the gold letter box celebrates Andy
Murray’s Olympic victories.
Gateway to the Highlands
Seven battlefields are visible from the top of the Wallace
Monument’s 246 steps. From earliest childhood, I was convinced that the Battle
of Bannockburn was the crux of world history, and that Robert the Bruce’s axe
cracking Henry de Bohun’s head was the most important combat of the millennium.
The back road over Sheriffmuir passes the Gathering Stone
of the Clans, where the Jacobite forces struggled through marshes to an
inconclusive battle. A remote luncheon at the 17th Century Sheriffmuir Inn will inspire windswept
thoughts in any writer.
Stirling in fiction
Stirling Castle, on its rocky outcrop, is the breathtaking
monument that tells me I’m home.
It is also the dramatic location for Tunes of Glory, the
film of James Kennaway’s psychological novel, starring John Mills and Alec
Guinness, in which a suicide is misreported as murder.
Iain Banks’ underrated crime novel, Complicity,
features key moment at Stirling University. Throughout this sassy political
thriller Banks sows seeds of dissent in the characters’ early lives – hopes, loves
and betrayals – laying down clues in nostalgic flashback.
Beside the monument and the University sits Dumyat,
the beginning of the Ochil hills. Rennie McOwan’s Light
on Dumyat, an absorbing children’s adventure story, may tempt to you to try
the stroll up, with glorious views as far as Edinburgh – if it’s not raining.
Auld Enemies
My school history books proclaimed Stirling the gateway to
the Highlands. I never understood why armies didn’t simply go around it – until
I read Tears
for a Tinker.
Jess Smith’s travellers’ tales unravel the secrets of the
peat bogs around Stirling.
Following the clearances, destitute Highlanders were
pardoned and employed to drain the bogs, in return for small patches of land.
They uncovered Roman artefacts, jewellery, weaponry – well beyond the Antonine
Wall – and even whale bones. It was a Labour Colony; yet this exploitation led
to the area’s fruitful settlement.
Divided allegiances
Today Stirling is Scotland’s compromise town. It’s perfect
for events like Bloody Scotland, with divided allegiance to the bigger cities. Stirling
voted strongly to stay EU, after voting almost as definitively to
stay in the UK.
Enjoy the Scotland
v England crime writers football grudge match, free and unticketed at Cowane’s
Hospital, 1.30pm on Sat 20th September.
The Scots will look to celebrate, as William Wallace did at the
Battle of Stirling Bridge. The English will prefer to recall Wallace’s
dismembered head spiked on London Bridge.
Stirling facts (via Stirling
Council):
- The
British currency ‘sterling’ derived from the town mint, producing coins from
silver mined in the Ochils.
- The
Black Boy fountain commemorates 30% of Stirling’s population killed
by the Plague of 1369.
- The
elite S.A.S. unit was founded by James Stirling of that famous Stirling
family.
- The 1971 film Kidnapped, starring Michael Caine, was partly shot in Stirling.
William Sutton, author
of Lawless and the Flowers of Sin (Titan Books), grew up in Dunblane and went to school in nearby Bridge-of-Allan.
Lawless
and the Flowers of Sin is his second mystery featuring a Scots detective
in Victorian London. Lawless
and the Devil of Euston Square tackled the building of the Tube and sewers;
the new book investigates a different kind of underworld.
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