Life and Letters, by Allan Massie – review

It is a safe bet that Alex Salmond has no immediate plans to embrace Allan Massie as one of Scotland’s National Treasures. A Unionist in an increasingly nationalist country, a traditionalist in a time of change, an ungoogler engulfed by the internet, and an amateur of creative activities, cultural and sporting, when the fashion is for professional analysis, Massie could hardly be more out of step with the prevailing ethos of his countrymen. Yet, this collection of his Life & Letters columns for The Spectator illustrates why the larger community of readers and writers should clasp him to their collective bosom as a figure of genuine literary distinction.

As the author of 22 novels and 11 works of non-fiction, as well as a stream of journalism — literary criticism, social punditry and an authoritative rugby column for the Scotsman — Massie is evidently not prone to writer’s block. In one of these essays, he contrasts the hell that composition caused Joseph Conrad — ‘In the course of a working day of eight hours, I write three sentences which I erase before leaving the table in despair’ — with Anthony Trollope’s matter-of-fact remark,‘I finished on Thursday the novel I was writing.