16
Cost in pounds per week of the ‘eatwell plate’ devised by nutritional experts for poor families in Britain
398
Annual turnover in millions of pounds of Starbuck’s cafes in Britain (on which the company failed to make a profit)
400
Profit in thousands of pounds made by George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, by selling his house in Cheshire
400
Pay-off in thousands of pounds for Phillippa Williamson, head of the Serious Fraud Office, when she took voluntary redundancy
450
Pay-off in thousands of pounds for George Entwistle, the BBC’s director-general for 54 days (though some say it was 55)
The roll of honour in this, the 1oth anniversary year of the Young Scotland Programme
Morag McCracken
Balfour + Manson LLP
Winner, spring programme
Rachel Adamson
Scottish Funding Council for Further and Higher Education
Winner, autumn programme
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Near St Andrews
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
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C J Sansom is an Anglo-Scottish writer who has achieved great success with a series of historical novels set in the Tudor period. They feature a crippled lawyer, Matthew Shardlake, who has to negotiate his way through the dangerous religious and political landscape of the times.
The appeal of the novels is that they offer compelling narratives set against a well-researched background that depicts not only the manipulations and betrayals of church and state, but also the rough texture of life for ordinary people.
Sansom’s most recent novel, ‘Dominion’, is also historical, but in a different sense. It provides an alternative scenario to the events of the second world war. In Sansom’s version, Churchill has lost to the appeasers and Britain has surrendered to Nazi Germany after Dunkirk. A progressively authoritarian regime runs the country, controlling the media and suppressing dissent. The story focuses on the efforts of a resistance movement, the risks its members run and their mission to restore democracy to a nation suffering under a warped and oppressive ideology.
In a fascinating historical note at the end of the book, Sansom says that he has always been intrigued by the notion of alternative history. An example he does not cite (though, as we shall see, he does have trenchant things to say about the current Scottish political scene) could be: ‘What might have happened if Scots had voted in sufficient numbers in favour of a Scottish Assembly in the 1979 referendum?’. It is safe to predict that a major collision with the Thatcher government would have followed but it is much less clear how this would have worked out in the longer term. Would it have accelerated the drive for independence or would the forces of neo-liberalism have proved more powerful than nationalist aspirations?
What Sansom does say about Scotland has provoked hostile reactions from SNP supporters. Tracing the history of the nationalist movement, he argues that in the early days elements within it were sympathetic to fascism and that it peddled the dream ‘that the expression of nationhood would release some sort of “mystical spirit” that would somehow resolve all problems’. He goes on to suggest that even today ‘the SNP are a party without politics in the conventional sense, willing to tack to the political right (as in the 70s) or the left (as in the 80s and 90s) or the centre (as today) if they think it will help them win independence’.