Shortlist spotlight – Andrew Greig
18th May, 2022
Andrew Greig, author of the 2022 shortlisted novel Rose Nicolson, spoke to the Prize’s Sheila Averbuch in the first of our Shortlist Spotlight interviews. You can watch the fascinating interview above or on our facebook page.
Andrew also kindly answered some burning questions we posed to him in writing, which you can read below.
Q: How do you feel about being shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction? Do you consider yourself a historical novelist?
A: I am immensely pleased and encouraged and generally It’s somehow particularly apt that a central character of ROSE NICOLSON is the first Lord Scott of Branxholme and Buccleuch, a Border reiver on the rise. My previous novel, FAIR HELEN, was likewise set in latter C16th Scotland, with some overlapping characters (a slightly older Walter Scott appears in it). THAT SUMMER was set in Summer 1940. IN ANOTHER LIGHT had two time frames, roughly Present and in part in Penang late 1920s. Then again, my other 4 novels are contemporary! So my answer would be Sometimes.
Q: How did the people and times you write about in this novel first lodge in your imagination?
A: I was first drawn to C16th Scotland by the Border Ballads, in particular Fair Helen of Kilconnel. A friend alerted me to the fact that Kilconnel is a real place, has a folk tradition of a tragic three-way love story (sometimes known as the Scottish Romeo and Juliet); he showed me the lovers graves, the houses where the protagonists lived, the ruined kirk near which the shot was fired, the crypt, the hidden rendezvous. This made it real for me. I was haunted by the place, and read up on the people, the history, the Reivers, the culture. From this, the novel emerged. It was likewise shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize.
Q: What place does research have in your writing? When does the fiction take over from the facts?
A: Reading is essential, of course. I like my stories to emerge in my mind on the basis of the known and the speculated and the folk stories and ballads. I have to believe in it myself to imagine it, so Place and known History are key. It helps to have a number of less known or completely unknown people in the story – it allows more freedom, and satisfies my more democratic instincts. My narrators tend to be historically real but minor characters, who onlook, get caught up in historical events but are often baffled or mistaken. Much time spent on the ground, walking and looking, getting wet and hungry, understanding the layout and the weather, the physical realities, the streets, houses, rivers and fields – this is how I make it real for myself, and thus, I hope, for the reader. I want to be in the present of the past, and keep at the forefront of my mind that everything that ever happened in the Past happened in the Now, as much as it does for us who live in our Now.
Q: Can writing about the past help us to deal with the present and think about the future?
A: Yes I believe so. Writing about the upheaval of the Reformation, I had Brexit, Scottish Independence, contemporary Rumour and Misinformation in mind. One illuminates the other. It also reminds us that however challenging and venal the Present, the Past was a whole lot rougher!