Sometimes, a festival event comes along that’s so beautifully crafted, you just have to sit back and admire the sheer artistry of it. From Boy to Man was exactly that – a masterclass in festival programming which pulled together three voices bound by shared themes of language, time, place, and the struggles of growing up and growing old in Scotland.

James Robertson – From Scenes Like These

First up, the author James Robertson holds aloft a copy of the novel: From Scenes Like These by Gordon Williams who was born in Paisley in 1934. Originally published in 1968, this was the first Scottish novel shortlisted for the inaugural Booker Prize in 1969. High praise indeed – and after hearing Robertson, you know it’s more than deserved.

Set in the mythical town of Kilkeady, a patchwork of Paisley and Kilmarnock, the story follows 15-year-old Dunky Logan as he steps into the hard, grinding world of farm work. Robertson paints the scene vividly: a Scotland both radically changed and hauntingly familiar. Life has changed dramatically since the 1950s, yet the novel shows that people still endure the same trials, the same crushed hopes, the same raw struggles.

One particular scene which involves Dunky leading a horse to the knackers’ yard –       Robertson calls “quite simply, a brilliant piece of writing.” It’s gutting, tender and cuts to the heart of what the novel captures: working-class dreams repeatedly dashed under the weight of the brutal, unforgiving reality of agricultural life.

Billy Kay – Born in Kyle: A Love Letter Tae an Ayrshire Childhood

Next on stage: the inimitable Billy Kay. This legendary proponent of the Scots language could read a restaurant menu and still have the crowd hanging on every lilting, musical word. His Ayrshire Scots pours out like poetry – rich, warm, full of history and heart.

Reading from his memoir Born in Kyle, Kay summons up a coal-mining world filled with stories: winning a bag of “black gold” in a raffle, childhood dreams fuelled by cowboy movies and American cinema, boxing matches with cousins in Fife and improbable journeys to Moscow, where he stood before Lenin’s tomb and found the name of Scottish socialist hero John Maclean carved into history.

Every story bursts with humour and tenderness. The past isn’t just remembered here, it is fully alive, breathing, singing in the language of the people who lived it.

Rab Wilson – Collier Laddie

Then came Rab Wilson, bringing the raw power of lived history with him. A former miner, Rab isn’t just telling stories – he’s delivering testimony.

Through searing poems, strike diaries, and rare photographs, Rab plunges us deep into the dark underbelly of the 1984–85 miners’ strike. Marches, camaraderie, the slow defeat of a proud industry – it’s all there, and it’s gut-wrenching.

His diary entries from the frontline of Thatcher’s class war are a powerful reminder of how the working class fought, lost and endured. And still endure. His voice is clear, fierce, and utterly authentic; a miner’s son, a miner himself, and now a poet who refuses to let history be forgotten.

Professor Jim Phillips – Coalfield Justice

Chairing it all is economic and social historian, Professor Jim Phillips, whose own book Coalfield Justice lays bare the brutal truth: Scottish miners were twice as likely to be arrested and three times more likely to be sacked than their English or Welsh comrades. Scotland was Thatcher’s easy target – a place where vindictive repression was delivered by the policeman’s truncheon and the judges’ gavel.

Phillips steers the discussion into deep waters: Time. Memory. Survival.

  • James Robertson beautifully reflects on Gordon Williams writing about the 1950s from a London flat in the 1960s, driven by a memory that never fades.
  • Billy Kay calls the 1950s a golden age — full employment, tight-knit communities, lives saturated with meaning and love.
  • Rab Wilson, with his diary, brings the memories of the struggle in real-time: the day-by-day attrition of spirit and solidarity during the strike, a war waged on the workers by their own government.

Billy Kay says it best: comparing Scotland’s loss of its mining culture to the devastation of the buffalo herds for Native Americans. Once a proud way of life – now only memories, relics in a museum.

Holding on to the Fire

From Boy to Man wasn’t just a literary event. It was a beating heart on stage – a call to remember where we came from, the battles fought, the songs sung and the dreams chased even when the odds were stacked against us.

Through novels, memoirs, and poems, James Robertson, Billy Kay, and Rab Wilson showed us that the past isn’t dead. It’s carried in language, in memory, and in the fighting spirit of those who refuse to let it be forgotten.

This event wasn’t nostalgia. It was resistance. It was pride.

And it was absolutely magnificent.

 

Joe Smith.