Photograph © Murdo MacLeod
New dramatisation set in North-East Scotland
Writing what sadly became his final novel, Iain Banks
exercised literary and geographical licence, placing 'Stonemouth' on an estuary
between Aberdeen and Peterhead. In reality the only estuary of any size or
worth on this thirty mile stretch of Aberdeenshire coast is the Ythan at
Newburgh. (That will upset folk living at the mouth of the River Don.) On a bay, not
an estuary, Stonehaven is in Kincardineshire, fifteen miles south of Aberdeen.
And don't confuse the Aberdeenshire Newburgh with Newburgh in Fife. Iain
couldn't use a town's real name because the novel features corruption and
criminals - he feared a writ from Stonehaven businesses or a visit from the
notorious Newburgh crimelords. Glasgow-based Slate North Films and BBC2
(co-producers of a new TV adaption) have also circumvented this problem by
using MacDuff on the Moray Firth as the setting for 'Stonemouth'. The two-part rite-of-passage tale stars Peterhead's own
Peter Mullan.
Scenes for the drama have also been shot in
Helensburgh and across the Clyde at Greenock and Gourock, where Iain Banks
spent most of his childhood before going to settle in Fife.
Iain Banks is second on my list of Scotland’s most
accomplished novelists for the last 80 years. My favourite author is Lewis
Grassic Gibbon, who wrote the seminal ‘Sunset Song’, a pioneering tale of tough
times farming in Kincardineshire during the early years of the 20th century and
the first part of his ‘Scots Quair’ trilogy. Grassic Gibbon relocated Aberdeen
for ‘A Scots Quair’: 'Kinraddie' was the name he gave to his home village and
estate of Arbuthnott in the Mearns countryside south of Stonehaven. Living in
Welwyn Garden City, he didn't really bother to disguise the area and its
inhabitants - upon publication Sunset Song upset a lot of Mearns folk.
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