Meeting the Collier Laddie
An Interview with Rab Wilson
Join us as Rab Wilson, author of Collier Laddie, takes part in our series of quick-fire Q&As!
What is a quick-fire Q&A?
We have our interviewee pick a number at random and we ask them the general question listed next to it.
Shortly after we switch to asking book-specific questions, to give you a brief insight into our wonderful writers and their books.
_____________________________
What is your favourite breakfast?
Boiled egg and toast.
What are your three favourite books?
Rub'aiy'at of Omar Khayy'am by Edward Fitzgerald
Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes by Daniel Everett
Listening to the Music the Machines Make by Richard Evans
What job would you be terrible at?
I've got a proven track record, so I can admit to engineering.
Who is your favourite author?
I suppose it depends on the genre. If it's, I used to read a lot of science fiction.
I love Philip K Dick’s stories. I think he's a master of science fiction. I love his imagination.
What were you like in school?
I was pretty rebellious. It was the age of the Sex Pistols, punk rock and the Clash. I became very rebellious as a teenager. It affected my academic performance.
But it was what it was. It was great music and great times.
What is your favourite thing about being an author?
Authors get to write their world. You get to be yourself or to put down your truth on paper. It is to be true to yourself, to be true to the world and to express yourself through your writing.
How long was Collier Laddie in the works for?
It’s a bit of a giveaway with the subject matter, but over 40 years.
What is something people would not know about this book just by reading it?
It's a book that wears its heart on its sleeve, when you pick it up you know exactly what it is going to be about.
I suppose they might not know the backstory – the political context, the time, the machinations of the Tory government of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Margaret Thatcher and Nicholas Ridley. Hopefully, Collier Laddie might lead them to read a bit, because it's a fascinating story that needs to be known.
How did you celebrate the publication?
Doing the various launches are celebrations in themselves. We had a weekend of launches, myself and Seán Gray, the tried musician and singer who put out an album of songs based on my poems.
Each event brings another celebration.
Why did you choose the cover that you did?
It is a splendid photograph of me as a young man, probably about 22 years old.
The photograph encapsulates and epitomizes the whole story and an industry that has gone, erased from our landscape. Even though that's me as a young man working in that industry, the whole industry has disappeared from the landscape of not only Scotland but Britain. It's a personal memoir of my time in that mining industry. It's also a memorial to that lost industry.
What emotional reaction did you expect people to have to this book?
Well, it's a very emotive subject. It has a lot of sad and bitter memories for many people who were involved in it. Whether that's men or women who were adults or children at the time. It was a very bitter dispute. You can still feel the sense of injustice and bitterness that people who were involved in the strike feel today.
I mean, these were people who lost the war. This was a class war. People still carry the scars of that to this day.
Why did you choose the title that you did?
Choosing the title for any sort of book is always a bit of, a bit of a conundrum. We needed something that encapsulated what the book was about.
Collier Laddie was a title that did what it said on the tin. It is a Collier Laddie on the front cover, but there was also a link back to Robert Burn’s song My Collier Laddie. It is an important link to show just how far back in history mining goes.
