Alan McCredie – författare

One hundred and fifty years after it was first contested, photographer Alan McCredie and writer Daniel Gray spent the 2023/24 football season seeking out the charms of the modern Scottish Cup. Travelling to matches from hamlet to Hampden, they found them in abundance.

A Scotsman and an Englishman, a camera and a notebook. The pictures tell a thousand stories, the words tell the time. This is Scotland, captured at its most crucial point for 300 years.United by a love of Scotland, warts and all. Especially its warts, in fact. Gray and McCredie set out on a journey high and low, mainland and island, rust and heather, to document a country and its people. Here is a country caught and sketched before it disappears, one of flaking pub signs and tenant crofters, Italian cafes and proper fitba’ grounds.Stunning and moving images are coupled with lyrical and nostalgic prose to make a work which will become a reference point, a caledonian comfort, an antidote to shortbread-tin Scotland.

A photography project charting 100 weeks in the life of Scotland, and the people who live there.The photos are of all aspects of Scottish culture – politics, art, social issues, sport, energy and anything else that catches the eye. It is an interesting time to be living in Scotland and McCredie was keen to record and document this vibrant and exciting period to show the country, and those who live there, in a positive light by examining the many varied aspects that make up a modern country.

This book is a celebration of all that is dreich. To my mind the images in this book are uplifting and joyful. There is nothing miserable about dreich. A sunny day has no more right to exist than a dreich one. Here, then, are fifty dreich images, accompanied by fifty equally dreich captions.