Scots: The Language of the People - Softcover

"Scots - The Language of the People" accompanies the four-part television series to be screened by BBC2 in early 2006. Written and presented by Carl MacDougall, the series tells the story of the Scots language from its common roots with English to the present day. Carl MacDougall has compiled an anthology which features the work of 50 writers, covering more than 800 years, from the anonymous 13th-century makars to Edwin Morgan, Tom Leonard, Adam McNaughtan and Kathleen Jamie. Our greatest writers, William Dunbar, Robert Burns, James Hogg, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Hugh MacDiarmid, are here. Extracts from the great epic poems on Bruce and Wallace, the works of Gavin Douglas, Robert Henryson and Sir David Lyndsay, sit with anonymous ballad singers and unknown writers whose work appeared in 19th-century newspapers and magazines. The great prose pieces are included, from the 16th-century curiosities to stories by John Galt, Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Robert McLellan. Our finest poets and songwriters such as Allan Ramsay, Hamish Henderson, Marion Angus and Robert Fergusson rub shoulders with Robert Tannahill, Neil Munro, Robert Garioch and William Soutar. Each piece carries a separate introduction and the contents are arranged to make the anthology as readable as possible, showing, through living, practical examples, how the language developed and survived and how its present is healthier than ever.

Carl MacDougall wrote and presented Writing Scotland, an eight-part television series on Scottish writing, which was shown on BBC2 in 2004. His first collection of stories, Elvis is Dead, was published in 1986 and since then he has edited several books including the classic short story anthology The Devil and the Giro, written various stories, many works of non-fiction and three prize-winning novels, Stone Over Water, The Lights Below and The Casanova Papers.