When Sean Bradley first discovered that Gillian Tait, his friend and neighbour in the Grassmarket, was writing a guidebook to Edinburgh he could barely credit it. Four years on, he discovers that she has now written an utterly charming book on Fife, 111 Places in FifeThat You Shouldn’t Miss. He says, ‘her enthusiasm, learning and natural wit leaps off every page!’
In a recent interview he discovered how she works.
SB: Having lived for years in a place overrun, if not ruined, by the tourist industry, how do you feel about encouraging visitors in their pernicious wanderings by writing yet more visitor guides?
This was certainly a concern, especially in the case of some of the ancient sites – the likes of Dunino Den, the cup-and-ring-marked stones on the Binn in Burntisland or the graveyard at Tulliallan Kirk. Their unique atmosphere – not to mention their physical fabric – would definitely be damaged if they became magnets for noisy gaggles of irresponsible selfie-takers, or groups led by the type of glib, ill-informed tour guides that we see so much of in the streets of Edinburgh. But I must say I don’t actually think that visitors of that kind would see much attraction in these out-of-the-way spots – they haven’t been hyped (yet) by film or TV fiction, or on social media. At any rate, I can only hope that the way I’ve described them in the book makes it clear that this kind of mindless tourism would not be welcome or appropriate there.
Equally, I’ve included many enterprises that really deserve greater recognition by a wider public – places that depend on a regular stream of appreciative visitors to ensure their future preservation. I’m thinking particularly of the many excellent independent ventures that are only kept going by the laudable work of volunteers – the tiny mining heritage museum in West Wemyss, the Harbour Light Tower in North Queensferry, the Fife Heritage Railway, the society that manages tours of the Wemyss Caves, and many others.
I was also struck right from the start by how very few of the visitors ‘doing Scotland’, from overseas, or indeed England, are even aware of the world-class attractions to be found just across the Forth from the capital. The wonderful historic centre of Dunfermline comes to mind. I revisited it for the first time in years on a sunny summer Saturday in 2018, when the book was just a burgeoning idea, and I could hardly believe how peaceful and deserted it was – there were no more than half a dozen people visiting the fabulous Abbey and Palace. At the same time, the Old Town of Edinburgh was absolutely hoaching – bursting at the seams (even though it was still pre-Festival).
SB: You clearly have a great flair for writing, not to mention photography, how has your background in art history and museum work led you to travel writing?
My first book in this series, 111 Places in Edinburgh, came about thanks to a recommendation from a friend in the publishing world, whom I got to know when I was working with my former husband, an ex-museum director turned author. He wrote on themes that covered a broad spectrum of art and archaeology – passions of mine since my student days – and I contributed to most of his books and articles in various ways, editing and proof-reading his texts as well as doing research and discussing the content. We travelled widely together over the years to many of the world’s greatest heritage sites for background research, as well as for his curatorial assignments.
But I’d been an inveterate independent traveller for a long time before that, since the early 1970s, when my vade mecum was generally from the Blue Guide or Companion Guide series – plus the relevant pages torn out of a second-hand copy of Europe on $10 a Day. I’ve pored over a huge number of guide books in my time – of vastly variable quality – so I suppose I’ve learned my craft gradually, by osmosis!
I pride myself on avoiding ‘padding’ in my texts. My career in the museum sector, which involved writing technical reports and articles, taught me the value of being clear, accurate and succinct when imparting information. But I also try to introduce an element of humour into the guides wherever possible. For years I’ve written occasional humorous material for an audience of friends – parody songs in the musical societies that I sing with, satirical Christmas cards, and so on. I love wordplay.
The photography is a challenge that I really enjoy. It’s been a hobby of mine since I was a child with a cherished Brownie 127; I later graduated to an SLR, and I learned to use specialist techniques when I worked as a painting conservator. Being a bit of a luddite, I was initially very reluctant to abandon film and adopt digital photography. It’s changed everything, of course – nowadays, anyone who can pick up a smartphone is a photographer. I concentrate chiefly on the framing of an intriguing image when I’m composing my shots, as well as the all-important quality of the light. The pictures are just as important as the words in the 111 Places books – which are beautifully designed. It’s a simple, egalitarian format: each place gets one page of text plus a full-page photo.
SB: How have the local people and the communities shaped the understanding and appreciation of the unmissable places you write about? And, in general, did you find that locals appreciated these places as much as you did?
It’s fair to say that I got a wide variety of responses from the Fifers that I spoke to in the course of my wanderings around their ‘places’, everything from legitimate pride and enthusiasm to baffled incomprehension. I was fortunate to meet several erudite, helpful and well-informed enthusiasts of local heritage and history in various towns, but it was often sadly clear that they were ploughing a pretty lonely furrow as far as support from the wider community was concerned. At times there was incredulity about what I was doing, as in ‘Don’t bother with Glenrothes – there’s nothing there.’ But I also met some who were keen to tell me about Fife’s role in their specialist subject (usually golf, or the Second World War).
When I was out and about doing my photography and research, I often used to ask the way from passers-by on the street, walkers on the footpaths, or fellow bus travellers, even though I knew where I was going, just to see what they had to say. Sometimes they weren’t even aware of the existence of a local museum, monument or natural feature, or they’d heard of it but couldn’t see why it might be of any interest to them. And there was also embarrassment: ‘The Botanic Garden? I think it might be back that way. Actually, I’ve lived in St Andrews for 25 years, but I’ve never been there myself – sorry!’
The thing about these 111 Places books is that they’re not solely designed for tourists. They’re also intended to open the eyes of locals to the wealth of truly fascinating places on their doorstep – to encourage residents, as well as regular visitors who are already familiar with the most famous sights, to discover enterprises of all kinds that were previously unknown to them, and to look at old haunts in a new light.
SB: You’ve now worked on books focusing on Edinburgh, Glasgow and Fife. Can you say how the experience of working the three books differed, in terms of choice of locations, ease of gathering information, reactions of locals, not to mention your enjoyment of them?
I find it quite hard now to think back to the days when 111 Places first became part of my life, although that was only just over six years ago. My approach to the books has developed since then in a direction that I can best describe as instinctive, or even idiosyncratic – I like to do things my way! 111 Fife was certainly the most enjoyable to work on – it was the most personal of the three projects, and I’d like to think that my enthusiasm for what became a real voyage of discovery is reflected both in my writing and my photos.
It seems to me now that the experience of doing 111 Edinburgh has actually changed and perhaps intensified the way in which I look at the world around me – every time I go to a new place (whether or not I’m not going to be writing about it), or revisit a town or city that I thought I knew, I find myself seeking out lesser-known spots, interesting stories and unusual photo opportunities. I suppose I always did that to some extent, but now it’s become second nature. Of course, I haven’t been very far afield lately, so I’ve contented myself in recent months mainly with finding yet more intriguing corners of empty Edinburgh to photograph.
The publishers provide helpful guidelines about types of location to consider for your 111 places, such as redundant buildings with interesting new uses, places with literary or celebrity connections, the tallest or longest or oldest such-and-such, shops with unusual stories, art studios that are open to the public, unusual sporting venues, and so on. So that was the initial springboard for my research on 111 Edinburgh. I also had a good look at a couple of other titles (on London and Rome), which gave me several useful ideas as well as bringing home the importance of the photographs, particularly in the book’s initial impact on prospective purchasers flicking through it in a bookshop.
Authors have to submit a full list of the 111 places, with brief descriptions, for approval, before going ahead with the writing and photography, though obviously there’s some leeway for later changes. The main thing really is to end up with a good mix – not too many museums, churches, pubs or whatever – so that the guide has a wide appeal and gives a rounded view of the city’s attractions. For 111 Edinburgh I began by listing the places that immediately came to my mind. Among the first were a couple of atmospheric historic places that I’d been fond of since my student days, which both have good stories attached to them – the reconstructed apse of Trinity College kirk, and the tower of the Flodden Wall at the top of the Vennel.
I already owned a small selection of guides and other books about Edinburgh, and I also made frequent use of the excellent Scottish Department of the Central Library for my research. The internet proved to be invaluable, of course – though it took me some time at first to pick my way through the plethora of unreliable sites with paragraphs copied and pasted from other places, often with glaring spelling errors, ill-researched and badly written half-truths or downright nonsense. But once I’d worked out how to make best use of Google, I found numerous useful articles and other sources of information.
I also picked the brains of many Edinburgher friends and acquaintances, several of whom came up with excellent suggestions. Interestingly, though, the ‘place’ that people mentioned most frequently turned out to be a complete fiction. This was the (mythical) gravestone in Canongate Kirkyard that supposedly inspired Dickens to write the character of Ebenezer Scrooge, after he misread the inscription. This tale began life as a mischievous (but pretty obvious) spoof or hoax, but later ‘went viral’ as genuine historical fact.
The texts all have to fit exactly on a single page; that generally amounts to a little over 300 words. With the Edinburgh book I found this a difficult length at first, usually because there was so much I wanted to say about a place that it was very hard (and time-consuming) to choose what to highlight and what to leave out. I kept getting side-tracked in my research, down fascinating but irrelevant wynds, and soon found that I had far too much information to condense. But editing my own texts for Edinburgh, in what had to be a ruthless way, was a really good discipline. Now that I’m used to writing to that length, I found it a much more enjoyable challenge when I was writing the Fife book – there’s a great satisfaction that comes from getting the number of characters just right!
After the Edinburgh book was published in 2016, I worked as an editor and proof-reader on several other 111 Places books – mainly English translations of German and Italian language titles, on European cities and regions – good experience that gave me an insight into the range and variety of the series, and how other authors had approached their brief. Then the proposal for the Glasgow title came up – I turned down the idea of writing it myself, but ended up being very closely involved with it from start to finish. I felt that, for the local market in particular, the title needed a well-known, dyed-in-the-wool Weegie as author, to give it the right credentials (and authentic Glaswegian humour), so I suggested long-time Herald journalist Tom Shields. I was happy to offer my services as photographer – that’s the easy bit as far as I’m concerned! – and after an initial chat, I agreed to be his editor as well. We worked together on the project from the start. With my experience of the rest of the 111 series, I was able to advise him on various matters, including the right balance of locations (not too many pubs and restaurants…). And I brought my own personal perspective on the city – particularly its art, architecture and museums, which I know well from my former life – which complemented his native knowledge and interests, and newspaperman’s network of contacts.
With the Fife book, the main challenge was actually the photography – trying to plan my outings to make the most of decent weather wherever possible. It’s really important to have the right quality of natural light if you want to capture a vivid and striking image, particularly for exterior shots. Though Fife does have an impressive annual quota of sunshine, the extreme unpredictability of the Scottish climate makes it very difficult to schedule trips in advance. (With the Edinburgh book this wasn’t such a problem, since I was usually able to be flexible and just nip out for an hour or two, camera in hand, whenever there was a window of opportunity.) Fortunately I found an excellent Fife-based private weather-forecasting website, which was astonishingly accurate in predicting conditions in individual towns, almost on an hour-by-hour basis. This was especially useful during the weeks I spent as a temporary resident of various towns in the Kingdom. It was amazing how the conditions could vary in a single day between places only a few miles apart, especially in the East Neuk.
SB: Your Fife book is full of surprises – including the ‘pumfells’ on p70 – especially for someone who hadn’t realised that Kincardine is actually in Fife! The well-kent phrase ‘Fife’s got everything’ comes to life in its pages. Were you impressed by the wide range of sights the Kingdom had to offer?
I certainly was – though I was also struck by how effectively some of the less picturesque aspects of its history and heritage have been swept away. I hadn’t fully realised how little visual evidence there was left of its long and hugely significant industrial past, particularly in coal mining, of course. I was also surprised and intrigued by the huge range of fascinating Fifers who have left their mark in many disparate ways, from the deeply principled councillor and life-long communist Willie Clarke, who died in 2018, to Marjory Fleming, a child writer born in 1803 who left a delightful collection of work from her short life of not quite 9 years.
As to the extent of the Kingdom – you’re not the only one who’s a bit hazy about the extent of its western reaches! I knew Kincardine, and indeed nearby Culross, because I spent part of my formative years in Clackmannanshire, further up the Forth. But I must admit I wasn’t too sure beforehand where Kinross-shire ended and Fife began.
SB: Another surprise for me was your designation of Rosyth as a Garden City. As editor of Lou Rosenburg book on the influence of the Garden City Movement on Scottish housing, it struck me that this was suggestive of Housebuilders’ or Fife Tourism promotion?
I used the title ‘The Garden City’ for the text on Rosyth essentially to draw attention to its important role in housing reform in Scotland, and the original intentions of the planners. But on reflection, I should have made that title more provocative – it would have been much better if I’d added a question mark at the end! I agree that some careful rewording of the text is called for, for the book’s second edition.
SB: I’m sure you’ve been asked this question many times but here goes. Why 111 Places – is there any reason for the choice of that particular number?
The publishers are a German company called Emons (after the surname of its founder), who are based in Cologne. (111 Places is a huge worldwide series, by the way, with nearly 500 titles in German, French and Italian as well as English.) There seem to be several reasons why they first came up with the number 111 – it’s visually attractive, and it makes a change from the more usual 100 or 101. But it also has to do with their home city of Cologne, where the number 11 has a special significance. The annual carnival there begins at 11.11am on 11 November. The city’s ancient coat of arms has 11 little flecks on it that are generally interpreted as teardrops. These are said to refer to the tragic legend of St Ursula, a 4th-century Brittanic princess who was martyred there, along with 11 virginal companions, by the troops of Attila the Hun. This number was later inflated to 11,000, due to a clerical error by a medieval monk!
