Monday 11 August 2014


 Just submitted my writing career info to Dumfries and Galloway Writer's website

Chosen for Book Trust's 'Children's Books of the Year' 1992

 
My publications include:  Focus on Russian and the Republics (Evans 1996);  Anita Roddick Body and Soul (Rudomino 1992); Letters about NATO (Rudomino 1994); Europe 1992 – The United States of Europe ? (Watts/Gloucester 1990); Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova (Watts/Aladdin Books Ltd 1992); Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan (Watts/Aladdin Books 1992) Christianity for the Twentyfirst Century - the Life and Work of Alexander Men’ (with Ann Shukman, SCM Press 1996);  the Xenophobe’s Guide to the Russians (Ravette 1995);  Strong Enough For Two (Piccadilly Press 1994);  The New Europe (Gloucester 1993)  Focus on the Soviet Union (Hamilton 1993);  The NATO Letters (Rudomino 1994);  Diary of a Young Capitalist (Rudomino 1992);  Glasnost’, the Gorbachev Revolution (Hamish Hamilton, 1989).  Translations include Armenian Tragedy by Yuri Rost (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1992);  The Soviet Mafia by Arkady Vaksberg) with John Roberts, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1993).  ‘Sitka Spruce’ for Sage Press (March 2002). Poems published in Lanark Writers' Group's 'Again October'. Elizabeth Roberts began her working life as a journalist with Thomson Newspapers, first as a reporter on the South Wales Echo, then, after a brief spell  as a general reporter for  independently-owned The American (a weekly in London), then as Women's Editor of the Watford Evening Echo and then as a staff reporter/feature writer on the Sunday Times. A 50-minute video ‘Sitka Spruce:  Scotland’s No. 1 Timber Tree’ to which she contributed footage, research and script,  was launched in September 2002 by Rosebank Productions.   Her adaptation with director Mark Rozovsky  of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ 'A Russian Rehearsal', commissioned by Donald Smith of The Netherbow/Story-Telling Centre in Edinburgh is  in repertory in Moscow at the  State Theatre ‘At the Nikitsky Gates’.   Another collaboration,  ‘Wallace’s Women’ , a play in Scots with Margaret McSeveney opened at Lanark Town Hall and ran for four weeks at the Netherbow  Theatre, Edinburgh at the 1998 Edinburgh Festival fringe. Member Brownsbank Writers Group led by James Robertson, Matthew Fitt , Gerry Cambridge, Aonghas Macneal and Linda Cracknell.





Friday 8 August 2014

What a pleasure to spend four hours yesterday at Summerhall with Richard Demarco guiding us round his collection. I took my copy of his The Road To Meikle Seggie published in 1978 for him to sign. We have known each other, we reckon, for over 40 years. Richard will be at Wigtown on Oct 1st talking about the series of paintings he has just exhibited in Moscow, organised at our conference in Moffat last September: An Imaginary Journey of Lermontov Through Scotland.

Another date for your diaries: the launch at EIBF on August 15th at 18.30 of the Scottish poets' tribute to Lermontov  published by Carcanet Press, After Lermontov - devised by Ekaterina Genieva and myself to mark the 200th anniversary since Lermontov's death at the age of 27. He was descended from a Borders family, the Learmonths, and by extension related to Thomas the Rhymer, of Ercildoune. In troubled times like the present, these links are worth celebrating.