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Judith Jaafar

I would like to applaud Joanne McNally, as Ian Petrie has done, for her forthright commentary on the plight of the Palestinians. I may have more knowledge on this subject than most of SR readers, as I was married to a Lebanese husband, and have myself Lebanese citizenship.
     I was in Beirut at the time of the Sabra and Chatilla massacre, one of the most heinous crimes that Israel has perpetrated, and lived in my parents-in-law’s flat in West Beirut as rockets were flying over us from east to west, and west to east during the civil war.      In abject fear, I dragged my mattress off the bed and placed it in the central hall of the flat, well away from the French windows which adorned the bedrooms. My Lebanese family taunted me and laughed, they’d got so used to it. I wonder how they would have fared on Argyle Street on a Saturday night? That’s a lightening joke, no comparison.
     I then heard from relatives in Jouaya, my husband’s village in south Lebanon, near the Israeli border, that Israeli tanks had come in and flattened just about everything, including whole families in clapped-out old Mercedes who were trying to flee the village – families of six or eight just bulldozed over and squashed to death. Nobody in Jouaya was a Palestinian or a trouble-maker, just people eking out an existence. Is it any wonder that they now support Hizbollah?
     I have a really funny story about the Irish UN peace-keeping lads that were manning the ‘new’ Lebanon/Israel border, a border that was reassigned so the Israelis could divert the Litani river to water their orange groves in Gallilee and deprive the Lebanese of the river they had used for thousands of years. As far as I know, it’s still with Israel, the land that has never been given back, much like the Golan Heights. If you want to know about the Irish squaddies, please ask.
     Oh, I could go on and on, the subject of another article entirely, listing atrocities by the dozen and incidents as late as 2003 when I was out and about in Beirut with Amal (means hope), my sister-in-law, minding our own business and having a bottle or two of rich Lebanese Kefraya wine in a nice beach-side hostelry when Israeli jets flew over at sound-breaking speed, so low you could almost have touched them.
     I was amazed and fascinated, Amal was drunk and couldn’t care less, the rest of the patrons were under the tables praying to God or Allah. An illegal incursion into Lebanese sovereign air-space? Of course, I was told, happens all the time, as an intimidatory gesture.
     Anyway, good luck to Joanne, she may need it. I’ve learned not to raise my head above the parapet, much to my shame, as any commentary or opinion that suggests the state of Israel is out of control (with western complicity) is dubbed ‘anti-semitic’. Well, I’ve just done it now, haven’t I?
     I just wish that Fatah and Hamas would get together and produce a united front, but that isn’t going to happen as long as agents provacateurs and vested interests are in control. Wake up, Arab world, wake up.

She had the eternal youth

that an inquiring

mind possesses

Barbara Millar’s person of the week

‘We are all immensely broadened in our outlooks and knowledge of the world – and all the while enjoying a series of books from which we’ll still be discovering new surprises long into our old age.’

     The six volumes of the Lymond Chronicles were part of what Dunnett viewed as a larger, 14-volume work, which included the eight novels of the House of Niccolo, written later and set in the 15th century, the main protagonist being a dye yard apprentice from Bruges, with exceptional skills of code-writing and accounting. This series tells the tale of Lymond’s ancestors and the novels extended still further geographically, taking in Poland, Iceland, Madeira, Egypt and the West African city of Timbuktu, as well many contemporary important urban centres.
     Interspersed with these works, Dunnett produced seven lighter detective stories featuring a bifocal-wearing secret agent in the guise of a portrait-painting yachtsman, Johnson Johnson, originally published under her maiden name.
     Thousands of readers began eagerly to read about such topics as 15th-century Scottish coinage, Russian politics and the trading effects of Alum mining and dye working on Renaissance Europe, Bill Marshall pointed out. ‘That is the Dunnett effect. People scour art galleries looking for pictures of Venetian bankers and Brussels traders or seek out the Icelandic sagas to broaden their understanding of an ancient king who was later "framed" by Shakespeare. We are all immensely broadened in our outlooks and knowledge of the world – and all the while enjoying a series of books from which we’ll still be discovering new surprises long into our old age.’
     ‘King Hereafter’ (1982) was written after her publisher suggested she write a single volume book on a major Scottish historical figure such as Mary, Queen of Scots or Bonnie Prince Charlie. Dunnett chose to focus on Macbeth, although she knew little about him and soon discovered how scarce and widely scattered was 11th-century original source material. Her book ranges from Norway and Orkney to the emerging kingdom of Alba, the England of Cnut (Canute) and all the way to Rome, where Macbeth had made a pilgrimage. It took her seven years to complete and, although a work of fiction, remains true to overall history.
     In addition to her writing, Dunnett was also on the board of trustees of the National Library of Scotland, a trustee of the Scottish National War Memorial and a director of the Edinburgh Book Festival. She was a non-executive director of Scottish Television, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and worked on numerous committees. In 1992 she was awarded an OBE for services to literature.
     Bill Marshall, who knew her well, described her as ‘simply the most intelligent and charming person I’ve ever met or hope to meet’ with ‘bright and almost mischievous eyes, a laughing smile, the eternal youth that an inquiring mind possesses’. She could hold an audience spellbound, he added, ‘with a light and mellifluous voice and a sparkling wit’ but she also remained ‘totally unassuming and modest’.
     Dunnett collaborated with her husband on a photography book about the Scottish Highlands, published in 1988. He was knighted in 1995 and died in 1998, aged 89, leaving his widow and their two sons, Ninian and Mungo. In 2001 Dunnett founded the Dorothy Dunnett Readers’ Association to promote interest in the period of history about which she wrote and also collaborated with Elspeth Morrison on ‘The Dorothy Dunnett Companion’, which provides a comprehensive guide to the minutiae of the art, culture, manners and science of those times. At the time of her death she was helping compile a second companion volume. Her final novel – ‘Gemini’ – was published in 2000.
     She became unwell and was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and pancreas, dying at the age of 78 in November 2001 – 10 years ago – in an Edinburgh hospice. In 2006 a memorial stone to Dorothy Dunnett was laid alongside those for Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott in the Makars’ Court, off Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. The stone contains her name, her coat of arms and a fitting quote from one of her books: ‘Where are the links of the chain…joining us to the past’.

Barbara Millar is a trustee of the Institute of Contemporary Scotland

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