A memoir by Scottish writer, Jock Stein. Illustrated by Margaret E Stein.
‘Everyone is a philosopher in some sense, searching for wisdom,’ Jock Stein writes near the start of this memoir. And near the end of it he says, “I am trying to respond to what has happened to me”. In between he tells the stories of his life, making a web of connections between those stories, his Christian faith, and his understanding and practice of poetry. This could be a lethally tedious or smug combination, but far from it: Jock’s journey is one in which the author is much more fascinated by the world and the people he encounters than by himself. The memoir is punctuated by his poems, and the poetry by his memories, and the result is a book full of insight, incident and ideas, which had me pausing to reflect on numerous occasions’. – James Robertson
Available to buy at Foyles.
From the Scottish PEN anthology, Declarations: On Freedom for Writers and Readers, Professor Sir Tom Devine selected Jock Stein’s piece “Tones of Destiny”, which can be read here: