These poems are the result of a bereavement. I attended counselling groups but was at first unable to find words to express grief. To confront it directly was too painful as indeed was any kind of writing. Then I started reading again.

Written by his closest political associate for over twenty years, and based on a raft of documentary and eyewitness information, much of it appearing in print for the first time, this is the no-holds barred inside story of the rise and fall of one of the most fascinating figures in recent Scottish politics.

1861. When the body of an unknown woman is found in an Edinburgh close, Detective Constable Faro assumes the killing is a random act of violence – until he finds a playing card, the nine of diamonds, underneath her corpse. His superiors scoff at his suspicions of a serial killer, but days later a man is attacked in the street, and left badly bruised and battered with the nine of diamonds in his pocket.

Lanark, a modern vision of hell, is set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, and tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw. A work of extraordinary imagination and wide range, its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind’s inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying.

What strange secret made rich, beautiful, tempestuous Bella Baxter irresistible to the poor Scottish medical student Archie McCandless? Was it her mysterious origin in the home of his monstrous friend Godwin Baxter, the genius whose voice could perforate eardrums?

1982, Janine is a searing portrait of male need and inadequacy, as explored via the lonely sexual fantasies of Jock McLeish, failed husband, lover and businessman. Yet there is hope here, too, and the humour, imaginative and textual energy of the narrative achieves its own kind of redemption in the end.

This pamphlet is for anyone alarmed by the present British government. It argues that the component nations of the United Kingdom can become true democracies only by declaring themselves republics.

Life is a complicated business with no simple fix for damage done, casually or intentionally. In the face of her ex-husband’s need for forgiveness, Ruth wonders about its presence, or absence, in the important relationships of her life, the different things it represents to different people and what it really means to her. People often take refuge in Ruth’s friendship.